November 2022 Afghanistan, India, Turkey, Ukraine, UK
AFGHANISTAN It was a wonderful experience to be online present with brother A and his house group in Afghanistan this week, and to baptize sisters N and S and brother N. In the teeth of Taliban opposition, the group meet in a home and place a Bible verse with a cross on it on the wall as they have their meetings. This is incredible bravery. Obviously there's the issue of trust- they preach the Gospel by personal contact, invite someone to a house meeting... but they could be stooges, who knows. Thus it has ever been with the persecuted church, from the days of Rome to the underground churches of the USSR and now to Taliban controlled Afghanistan. Let us pray for them. In the photo you can see the poster on their wall, with us inquisitively looking at it from our far safer positions in the
UK and
Australia.
INDIA We were happy to online baptize TAPAS, a medical doctor who had left Hinduism and became convinced of the Lord Jesus after studying with us online. We were with him online as he travelled from his home to the banks of a tributary of the Ganges river near Calcutta, early one morning. After prayer with us online he then immersed himself:
TURKEY This week we were able to baptize yet more users of the
Farsi Bible Companion app- husband and wife ISA and ZAHRA in Turkey .
UKRAINE Brother Sergej reports that he's been without electricity for some time, but last night baptized a young widow woman called NATALYA with three young children. He says he couldn't take any photos at the time because their phones were flat and they had very little light. He concludes: "Despite the difficulties here, I'm trying to preach and to take the word of truth further to people".
UK Thanks to the continued wonderful witness of brother Siavash and others, it was a pleasure to baptize JAVAD in central London. Here we are celebrating in a coffee shop afterwards with
Farsi Bible Basics:
We had a very full house at Croydon
Church in a Pub this week. Some new folks started attending having been watching our meetings online for some months. The talk was about forgiveness in Matthew 18, and the discussion afterwards was very mature and helpful, indicative of the real spiritual progress in so many who attend. It's all on the video, but the camera was stationary so you don't see all the contributors, and you'll have to listen hard to pick up all the comments- but worth doing. It's at
https://youtu.be/Kx1Tgb7tvKU Unfortunately the planned purchase of a hall has fallen through at the very last minute. All donated funds are in process of being returned, so if anyone for any reason hasn't been contacted by us, please do get in touch. Do pray for us as we go forward in trying to find a better and larger meeting place. We do have a rental option in mind and in due course will let you know more about it.
PRAYER POINTS - For the group in Afghanistan taking such risks to meet and preach
- For all those persecuted by extremist Islamism who are in such difficulties all over the world
- For those in Ukraine suffering with power and energy shortages in the sub zero temperatures
- For our future directions in south London UK
With love from your brothers and sisters of Carelinks