China Aid, Monday, November 8, 2021 (excerpts)

Deacon Xu Jiale and his wife Qin of Early Rain Covenant Church started to share the gospel with the national security officers of Chengdu District who stay at their home. Police have continued face-to-face surveillance since last week.

Shen Bing and wife Li moved in with Deacon Xu last week,  expelled from their own home.  Police moved into the house last week to discourage Shen and Li from staying.  Deacon Xu and his wife are in their 70s.  All 4 believers took their harassment with peace and joy. Kind and meek to the police, they took the opportunity to preach the gospel to them.  Police were not offended.  Rather, they became interested in it. 

On November 5, police installed two surveillance cameras at the entrance of Deacon Xu’s home. Working personnel began a large project outside Deacon Xu’s place: installing cameras, digging the ground, and burying power lines.  Qin reportedly told the workers:

“Great! Surveillance cameras make us safe. It would be great to install chips in each individual. One chip in the body, the other in the brain, wouldn’t it be great? Thank God, thank the Lord for their care of us. God knows that we are old and can’t defeat evil gangsters, so He allows cameras to be installed so that we are protected, and gangsters won’t intrude on our house. The cameras will record malicious deeds of gangsters.” 

Police on duty at Deacon Xu’s home each day, have meals in their living room during the day and sleep in the living room at night. The couples prayed together one evening and wept. Suddenly, the officers broke into the house but stood by quietly until they finished praying. The leader of the police said in surprise, “You all are so emotional! Ugh, you win!”

On the first night, a police officer fell asleep at the dining room table. Li put a jacket on him because of the cold nights in Chengdu. She wrote a poem reflecting on the experience:

Gently, Took off the coat gently

Put it on the person who is on the night shift

Don’t wake up the person who is in deep sleep

Cold midnight, Children, poor children 

May you in your weary dream See angels 

Even if being at my own place We have no freedom

The elderly and gray-haired Deacon Xu couple continuously preached the gospel to the officers, becoming Christ’s beautiful testimony.

Voice of the Martyrs, 1 November 2021 (excerpts)

Despite the change in leadership in 2018, churches in Cuba face unrelenting pressure from the government, which remains committed to communism’s atheistic ideology and sees churches as a threat to the revolution begun by Che Guevara and Fidel Castro in the 1950s.

Cubans remain poor, with the government seeking to control every aspect of life. When church leaders resist state teachings that are contrary to God’s Word and disobey government restrictions on Christian witness, they are called in for interrogation. Although gathering in unregistered churches and constructing new church buildings are banned, many churches boldly worship despite the risks.

Unlike the overt violence Christians faced during the communist revolution, more subtle methods of persecution are now used by the Cuban government, largely out of concern for its global reputation. Christian leaders are often summoned by government officials for questioning or held for up to 48 hours to pressure them, and churches are demolished by hired gangs so the government can deny responsibility.

Legal church buildings are seized, and no new church buildings have been legally built in the country since the revolution. Many believers meet in illegal house churches, often extensions of the pastor’s home or shaded structures in the backyard of a family’s home. Churches continue to grow through active evangelistic activity, but some believers have never owned a Bible because of government oppression. Though no Christians are known to be imprisoned in Cuba, many are closely watched so that they are effectively under house arrest. In addition, Christians are often denied jobs and educational opportunities.

Barnabas Fund, 1 November 2021 (excerpts)

Two Muslim brothers known for their hatred and harassment of Christians have been jailed for life by Alexandria Criminal Court for the killing of Egyptian Christian shopkeeper Ramsis Hermina, 47.

Under Egyptian law it means that Nasser and Ali al-Sambo must serve 25 years in prison for the brutal attack on 10 December 2020 in which two other Christian men, including Mr Hermina’s brother, were injured.

Ramsis Hermina was held by Ali al-Sambo while his brother Nasser stabbed him in the abdomen and neck

The brothers were known for their religious fanaticism and for their harassment of Christians, especially Christian shopkeepers, in the al-Wardayan district where they lived. This escalated when Nasser was released from serving time in prison for previous violent behaviour, as he claimed that Christians testified against him.

On the morning of the attack, the brothers’ mother, who was in poor health, died. Hours later Nasser and Ali al-Sambo left their home in a fit of rage and, armed with knives, a sword and clubs, headed to the Christian-owned shops, shouting obscenities against Christians and accusing them of being the cause of their mother’s death.

Mr Hermina heard the shouting and hurried to bring in the household goods he had on display outside his shop. He was caught by the brothers and, as Ali held him, Nasser stabbed him in the abdomen and neck.

Mr Hermina’s brother Adel, 60, who owns a shop next door, and another shopkeeper, Tareq Fawzy Shenouda, went to help him but Adel was stabbed and Mr Shenouda was hit on the head with a club and stabbed. The al-Sambo brothers went on to ransack all three of the men’s shops.

Barnabas Fund, 11 October 2021

A deceased Christian woman in eastern Sri Lanka, was buried according to Hindu rites after residents refused to allow a Christian ceremony.

The village administrative officers appointed by the government along with ten members of a local Rural Development Committee argued that a Christian funeral was not permitted in the village cemetery.

Instead they pressured the woman’s two daughters into allowing the 27 September funeral to be carried out according to Hindu customs.

A Barnabas Fund contact confirms that this is a recurrent problem for Christian converts in Sri Lanka’s Hindu-majority eastern coast region, especially those in rural areas, as burial grounds are controlled by local temples.

In some cases, he reported, villagers have exhumed the bodies of Christians from temple-controlled burial grounds and discarded them.

“The converts from Hindu backgrounds to Christianity in the eastern province have been through severe persecution in the past,” he added. “Churches and Christian homes have been burnt, and converts have been assaulted in several places.”

Sri Lankan Christians, 8% of the population, suffer discrimination and harassment and sometimes violence from Buddhist extremists, Muslim extremists and Hindu extremists.