The Plight of Women

She was an intelligent 14-year-old Asian girl with a very bright future.

But Sena, like many women in Asia, was merely considered a toy for men to use. She faced harassment, was stalked and subjected to lewd comments and indecent exposure. Finally she was thrown to the ground and sexually assaulted by a group of men. Neighbours saw it happen—and did nothing.
Tormented, and unable to bear the humiliation, Sena turned to the only escape she knew— Suicide.

Jalem was headed toward the same fate…
Her family considered her a curse. As a child, Jalem was forced to perform manual labour. She was beaten, deprived of food and, at times, chained in her room. Why? She was a girl. Jalem also considered suicide as an escape.

But she met a Gospel for Asia supported missionary

She learned of the hope and dignity she could find in Jesus, and she would never be the same. Suddenly she discovered value that only comes from knowing Christ.
Jalem found a family in a loving church. They cared for her and helped her to build a new life. Today she shares how God miraculously changed her life with other hopeless women. She serves as a missionary, dedicated to reaching other Asian women as desperate as she once was.

Why is there such widespread desperation among Asian women?

Asian women face unimaginable challenges & degradation.
Young girls throughout Asia are abducted and forced into a life of prostitution, with every agonizing day one step closer to an early death from AIDS.
Widows in India bear the blame for their husband’s death. They’re shunned by their communities, rejected by their families and forced into an inhumane lifestyle. Tens of thousands take their own life just to end the pain.
Every year in India more than 7,000 women are doused with kerosene and burned to death—by their husbands. The wife’s crime: an insufficient dowry.

It is no surprise that the suicide rate among young women in India is ten times higher than the world’s average.

These are but a few of the tragic conditions faced by millions of Asian women. They are trapped in a never-ending cycle of misery. Utterly without hope.

Yet today, in the midst of a hopeless situation, there is glorious hope.

Through the heroic efforts of 2000 women missionaries like Jalem who have dedicated their lives to bringing God’s love to the women of Asia, we can reach them. In many Asian cultures, genders rarely mix, so traditional male missionaries are severely limited in ministering to women. However, it is possible to send trained, dedicated women missionaries to reach the millions who still wait to hear that they are precious to Jesus.
After three years of intense training, GFA-supported missionaries like Jalem are driven by a passion: to relieve the pain and suffering of women of Asia by introducing them to the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. They heroically face persecution, beatings and imprisonment to tell hurting women like Sena about a Saviour who offers hope for eternity, and strength for today.
Hundreds of thousands of Asian women’s lives are being transformed by GFA’s dedicated women missionaries, but millions more still wait.
Every day in South Asia, nearly 80,000 precious souls perish without knowing Christ’s love. We must send more missionaries.

Would you consider sending one of these dedicated Women Missionaries today?  You can enable her reach other Asian women with the love of Christ. For just £20 a month you can sponsor a missionary today.  Please go to (copy and paste):

http://www.gfauk.org/sponsor/SearchResults?bt=Missionary&gender=F.

Another wedding!

We (my wife and I) will shortly be heading north, with the caravan, to Banchory.  Tomorrow, I am to participate in the wedding, in Aberdeen, of one of the daughters of dear friends who are currently serving the Lord in Nepal - well, they have taken a break ('furlough' is the official term!) in order to be at the wedding!  We plan to return home on Sunday, and I would hope to add a fresh post then!

It won't be as grand an affair as the wedding that is being planned for next year.  The television cameras will not be there.  It won't even get a mention on the various news programmes - although the local newspaper might show a single photograph.  But Hayley and Carl have something that I suspect is not the case with William and Kate.  They are entering marriage with the Lord.  He won't be just a convenient backdrop for a lavish ceremony, but an integral part of their life together.  We pray His abundant blessing upon them.

Yesterday's methods don't work as well today!

I've been watching some athletics on the T.V. I was particularly interested in the pole vault. Attention was being given to the special pit into which the vaulter could place the end of the pole. He was using a flexible, probably carbon-fibre, pole with an amazing 'springiness'. He was wearing tight-fitting clothing that would have cut down air resistance. He had a very deep foam base on which to land - presumably providing increased confidence in the knowledge that no bones were likely to be broken.

I thought of some other sports, and the ways in which equipment has improved, dramatically, over recent years. A team of Dutch cyclists had spent the night camped beside us. Their cycles had very narrow tyres, and very light frames. They were each wearing skintight-fitting clothing, and a helmet that would provide greater confidence of limited injury in the case of a fall. I recalled reading that champion cyclists ride machines that have carbon-fibre frames, and spokeless wheels that are so narrow one could almost shave using the edges!

It made me wonder if the constant breaking of records has, in some sports at least, as much to do with improvements in equipment design and technology as with the actual physical fitness, and prowess, of the athlete involved! And I realised that no modern athlete would continue to compete in, e.g., knee-length flapping shorts, and with a fairly rigid pole for the pole vault. Anyone who did would certainy be unlikely to break any records!

My thoughts turned to the Body of Christ - the Church on earth. I thought of the exploits of people like Paul - travelling around so much of the Mediterranean world of his day, on foot, or by small wooden-hulled ship, in a long flowing robe. I thought of the writing that he accomplished - by hand (or, at least, by the hand of his amanuensis/secretary), on parchment, with home-made ink. I thought of later disciples of Jesus - of Hudson Taylor in China; of Clive of India; of Mary Slessor in Africa; of David Brainard in North America; of countless others who risked life and limb in the most diffcult circumstances - who carried the Good News of the salvation that is available in Jesus, the Christ, to the uttermost parts of the earth.

They achieved much, with limited resources, low technology, poor transport. And what of today?! Even where the church is seeking to continue to fulfil the Great Commission (Matt.28:18-20 - and never leave out v.18!), is it not true that so many do so using last century's technology? "Let's have a mission! We'll invite a well-known (to Christians!) Christian speaker, and we'll hold meetings every night from Monday to Friday, at 7.30p.m. We'll put out 5,000 invitation leaflets in a massive door-to-door exercise, and we'll place an advert in the local newspaper."

Sixty, fifty, even forty, years ago that would probably have been a wonderful way in which to propagate the Gospel. People didn't live in centrally-heated, fully-insulated, homes with 24/7 television displayed on 54" plasma screens; broadband internet connections; DVD players; electronic games - and with a car outside to transport them to visit friends, or just down to the local pub, in relative comfort, even in the foulest of weather conditions.

Today, that's the sort of competition that the church faces! Not in every case. I know. There are many families in which the picture that I have just painted is only a dream. But for a vast number, the thought of going to a church building, to listen to even the most gifted of speakers talk for forty minutes in between the singing of songs that are meaningless to them - yes, even the majority of the best of modern songs that I love to sing! - among people who, if my experience of visiting some congregations/fellowships is any guide, totally ignore them anyway, is about attractive as the thought of using the clothing, equipment, and technology of the 1950s would be to a modern athlete.

That is one reason why I maintain this blog site. I actually reach more people in an average week here, than do many clergymen in a church setting! And, of course, although I have my regular, and faithful, visitors (for whom I am very grateful); and although a fair number of people have set up an RSS feed so that each post goes directly to their e-mail Inbox (and they, also, are very much appreciated), I also have a considerable number of visitors who simply find the blog through a search-engine when they are seeking information on a particular topic that I have placed as a key-word for a post. And some of them become regular, and valued, visitors - and even 'followers'!

I find it interesting to speculate on what the top athletes of a former age might have achieved if they had had access to today's sporting technology. I find it even more interesting to speculate as to what Paul, or any of the other great missionaries and church leaders of the past, might have achieved if they had had access to today's communications technology!

May the church as a whole - and not just the few honourable exceptions - use the technology that the Lord has provided, to effectively spread the Gospel message in a technological age, that many might hear, and believe; and that the Day of His return might be hastened. When the Lord Jesus told His disciples that they would be "fishers of men", I'm certain that He expected them to use appropriate bait!