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Carelinks | Italy ... continued
thrown off and left to die in the desert if a
tyre got flat and the traffickers wanted less
weight...
They had already been given Bibles, but those
who had good contacts they hoped to per-
suade of God’s truth were given another copy,
for we emphasized that part of our calling is
in order to share the Gospel with others.
It was hard packing them all back onto the
coach to take them back to their hard lives in
low life suburbs or on the streets of hostile,
racist cities. You can see a video of it all via
the link below. Please do pray for them and
for our wisdom in the great work of pastoral
follow up.
I
n July we baptized brother Francis, another
poor homeless migrant in Italy with no doc-
uments. We took food to the derelict building
where he was living, and words cannot de-
scribe the place. It had been gutted with fire,
the plastic cladding on the walls and handrails
all melted and peeling. It had become a drug
den for Italian drug addicts and is a very scary
place. Nine Africans sleep on the upper floor,
but only go there to sleep late at night, as the
downstairs is used by addicts and criminals in
the day time and they are at risk of attack
from right wing neo-Fascist thugs as well.
We found Francis living in a room with a small
chair in it, on which he placed his NEV Bible.
On his door he had painted a cross and the
word “Jesus”.
Most of the other Africans were Muslims, and
he just lives there in fear of his life at night.
But he is very positive. “Have you got water?”.
“Oh yes!” he beams, “We take it from
over the road, from a pipe”. There’s
obviously no electricity or toilet. We
took food up there, including late at
night. Into the very darkest of places,
the light of God’s love and the good
news of His Son must enter, and it did.
All this is even worse when you hear
the tragic story of Francis; how he was
trafficked by the smuggling gangs in
Libya, who sold him on to other gangs,
who tortured him to get him to phone
back to Ghana and get money sent to
them. Those like him who couldn’t
raise the money were then sold on
cheaply to other gangs, who also tried
to extort money by even worse torture,
killing many in the group to scare the
others to, by any means, find someone
to send money to the traffickers. Fran-
cis has a wife and two children back in Ghana,
and can’t return because he has no docu-
ments. His testimony is at: