Talita Kum

Adrian (Adi) Poppa’s summer camp for HIV-affected young adults has now ended but we don’t have an update on that yet.

The summer camps for the Talita Kum 1 and 2 children are due to take place in July.  This is a quiet period for both houses and allows the staff to rebuild their energy.

The Talita Kum 2 annual audit has been taking place to assess how well they have used EU funding.

Adrian should hear by the end of September if his application for EU funds for the ongoing operational costs of the Talita Kum houses has been successful.  Approval of the application would allow them to pay their teachers a fairer wage.

Daniel Centre

The Centre has applied for renewal of its fire and safety licence, due in September 2020, and is awaiting an answer. 

Attendance at the After-Care meetings for previous and current residents of the Centre has been more sporadic of late and is a subject for prayer.

Ionuz has fallen again and now dislocated his healthy shoulder – his promised apartment has so far not materialised.  Floreen should have joined the Centre on June 18 but has not appeared yet.

Ciprian has quit his job at MacDonalds and is disheartened.  Julian has been cleared of hepatitis concerns but needs glasses and an operation.

World Watch Monitor, June 18, 2019 

An evangelical church in central Ethiopia has been ordered to vacate its building, 10 years after it started meeting there, and churches elsewhere in the region say pressure is increasing on them, too.

The Mekane Yesus Evangelical Church, about 400km southeast of the capital Addis Ababa, was ordered by the Oromia Regional State Authorities to leave its premises within 30 days.

The eviction letter, dated 15 May and signed by the mayor, said the church’s neighbours had complained of noise.

“This is really a surprising move”, a source told World Watch Monitor. “Other religious institutions use much more powerful sound systems all over the country. Noise from mosques and Ethiopian Orthodox churches can be heard throughout the day and even at night. This decision is nothing other than a display of animosity towards Protestant churches in the region”.

The source said the congregation secured the building from a private owner 10 years ago and had been using it without incident.

Crackdown on Eritrean Christians continues

Barnabas Fund, 28 June 2019

Pregnant women and children were arrested by security forces in a raid on a church on Sunday 23 June, the latest victims of a government crackdown on Christians in Eritrea.

Since religious registration policies were introduced in 2002, Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Lutheran churches – as well as Sunni Islam – are alone legally permitted.  Non-registered religious groups are considered a threat to the state and can be severely persecuted despite Eritrea being party to the right of religious freedom in article 18 of the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The raid is the latest in a catalogue of recent persecution including the seizing of 21 registered church health facilities and the arresting five registered ministers in June for complaining about government interference, and of 141 Christians gathered at one meeting in May.

The report this year from the UN Special Rapporteur stated that “strengthening respect for freedom of religion and belief’ is a ‘main human rights challenge’ in Eritrea”.

“Evangelical and Pentecostal communities continue to face serious restrictions to practising their faith.”

Christian Solidarity Worldwide, June 30, 2019

Since December 2015, at least 40 churches or church-related buildings such as seminaries have been partially or completely destroyed in two areas of Chile.

Though the government launched an investigation into the arson attacks in 2016 and some people were arrested, the attacks have continued.  The most recent target was a Catholic church, burned down on 8 January 2019.

Handwritten notes, signs and pamphlets have been found at many of the sites of the attacks, the content of which indicates that churches are a specific target.  Leaflets found at the sites of two of the churches included a threat to burn “all the churches”.

The continuing attacks have sown fear among Christians with many congregations worried that their church or church buildings might be the next target.

Many of the targeted churches have members from very low-income backgrounds, and they now face a very difficult situation to rebuild their churches after the complete destruction of the building and contents.

Morning Star News, June 19, 2019

Local authorities in western Burma last month forced three Christians to convert to Buddhism in southern Rakhine state.  Five local officials took two ethnic Chin Christians from their homes to a monastery and threatened to expel them from the village if they did not convert to Buddhism.

The officials also threatened that the two Christians would be fined if they engaged in Christian activities.

In a separate case, a Buddhist monk took Christian U San Tin Aung to a village administration office and compelled him to sign documents stating conversion to Buddhism or else he would be expelled from the village.

The officials also banned the three men from visiting the homes of Christians and doing business with them.

Village officials have told the Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO) leaders that they do not want them to visit as doing so now would only worsen treatment of Chin Christians there.

Encouraging Buddhism to try to unite Burma’s disparate peoples, the Burmese government has long persecuted Chin Christians for their faith.

Pray that the car will soon be back and functioning efficiently so Dawn will be able to get back into the prisons.

Fraser had an encouraging week in Angola. Power and internet supply were better than expected.

A Brazilian missionary trainee there has written a handbook in Portuguese on the interactive learning environment used by many colleges and by the NetAct portal and will give Fraser a copy to put on the portal for NetAct Portuguese-speaking members to use.

A white South African trainee had been in Angola 3 times with the South African army during apartheid and implied that he’d killed during that time.  It had taken him 20 years to come to terms with it.  5 senior Angolan church leaders there got up, stood with him and prayed with him. God’s love and power breaking down barriers and bringing healing.

Fraser is now in Kenya for 2 weeks.  Patrick Sookhdeo from Barnabas Fund is doing 4 days’ teaching before the NetAct AGM next week. Preparation has been going well so far. 

NetACT has been offered resources, perhaps illegally.  Pray that, if the resources have to be rejected, it would not spoil the relationship between NetACT and the offerors.

Talita Kum

Adrian Poppa, the Director of Talita Kum, has been doing a summer camp for HIV-affected young adults for several years now.   About 35 attend his Bible-based camps.

He also runs summer camps for the children who have attended Talita Kum 1 and 2 during the school year.

The Talita Kum children’s Bible-based play at the city fair on June 1^st was a huge success with 500 in the audience, including half of the school children of Jimbolia.

Only 1/3 of the available EU funds for this area of Romania have so far been applied for, which raises the chances of Adrian’s own application being successful.

Approval of the application would allow them to pay their teachers a fairer wage.

 

Daniel Centre

Balazs was very encouraged by how his report to the Blythswood Trustees was received and affirmed in Evanton last month.    

The Centre has now located the Christianity Today course in the Romanian language and will start doing this at lunchtime on Sundays in September.

The Centre’s fire and safety licence is due for renewal in September 2020.  Corruption, which was declared a national emergency in Romania when it first joined the EU, can delay the granting or renewal of such licences, but Balazs has not been asked for a bribe since beginning with Blythswood in 2002.

The young man (Istvan) has not adapted well to life in the Centre and will now go to live with his aunt instead.

World Watch Monitor, May 22, 2019  

Nearly 100 Christians were killed, 300 churches and 6,000 Christian homes damaged in Odisha after the killing of a Hindu Swami on 23 August 2008.

By the end of that year, seven Christians were arrested and, in 2013, found guilty of the murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.  The convictions shocked India’s Christian community, still reeling after the deadly attacks.

Gornath Chalanseth, one of the seven, was freed on bail by India’s Supreme Court on May 21.

After greeting his family, Chalanseth was ushered into a nearby church and shouted his thanksgiving, tears of joy running down his cheeks.  “Gradually I found solace in prayer. Prayer gave me peace of mind and I always remained disciplined in the jail,” Gornath said.

Impressed by his conduct, jail officials made him ‘wall guard’ to watch over 40 prisoners in the jail that had over 400 prisoners.  As news of the bail came, the jail chief asked Gornath: “How will we find a replacement for you as wall guard?”

Assyrian Church in Iran shut down

Barnabas Fund, 4 June 2019

Iranian security agents stormed into a 100-year-old Assyrian church and tore the cross from its tower in Tabriz in the north-west Syria on 9 May.

They changed the locks, installed monitoring equipment and “made it clear that no longer the Assyrian people are allowed to hold any worship service there.

The pastor has called on Christians worldwide to send letters to Iranian embassies in a “strong wave of protest”.

The church had been officially seized by a court order in 2011, but worshippers had been allowed to continue using the building.

The persecution began last Christmas when government agents prevented local pastors in nearby cities and Tehran from visiting Tabriz to hold worship services. 

Historic Assyrian and Armenian Christian minorities who have their own languages, not spoken by the Muslim majority, are usually allowed to worship freely in those languages.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide, June 9, 2019

Between 15 November 2018 and 4 December, there were two unprecedented attacks on church-run Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps.

More than 40 people were killed in an attack on the Sacred Heart Catholic Cathedral in Alindao Town and 2 children at a similar cap in Ippy Town. 

The camps were open to all people, regardless of their ethnicity or religion.  Everything was burned, and there was a level of despair which was really heart-breaking.

On 6 February, seven armed groups signed a new peace agreement negotiated by the African Union.  It did not include amnesties for armed groups such as those targeting the IDP camps, and those can consequently be brought to justice.