DAWN Fridayfax 1995 #36

News from Islamic world, Colombia, India, Uganda

Radio Mission: Bible course the hard way

One of the staff of the Swedish radio mission IBRA told us the following story: a young Moslem in an Arab-speaking country heard the evangelistic broadcasts and wanted to join the Bible study course. He wrote to the radio station, but did not receive an answer. One day, his parents called him and showed him the many letters which the mission had sent him. They had intercepted them all, and proceeded to burn them in front of him. He didn't give up, and searched the ashes for anything which may have survived. He found a small corner which had not been burned, containing the address. He wrote again, this time giving a different address, asking the radio station to send him the Bible-study material. Since then, he has been an eager student - just like hundreds of thousands of others in the still-Islamic countries.

Source: IBRA

Colombia: Drug bosses are saved

Jaime had made himself a small fortune working for years for a Colombian drug cartel. His life was constantly in danger because of the battles between the various drug gangs, so he learned to live his life on the run and sleep with a gun in his hand. The day of reckoning eventually arrived, and he was "shot" by a sniper from only two metres away. To his great amazement, he survived - not only that, but none of the bullets entered his body.

Uncomprehending, he ran his hands again and again over his body to check. That day, Jaime prayer a prayer that changed his life. He kneeled down and prayed that God would forgive him and do something new in his life. He was unaware that his mother was praying exactly the same thing for him, many miles away. Jaime became a Christian, and that night slept for the first time with a Bible in his arms instead of a gun. He returned to Armenia, his hometown in the famous "coffee country", became a member of a church and has since spoken of the gospel many of his earlier dealers and bosses - the "capos" - frequently in danger of his life. He often managed to overcome the barriers and speak with the heads of the drug cartels, telling them how Jesus had forgiven him and changed his life.

Today, he is one of the region's Christian leaders. Official circles have reported that many of Colombia's drug dealers have been saved in the meantime.

Source: Berna Salcedo, DAWN Ministries, Fax +1 (719) 548-7460 Tel. 548-7475

Bihar: Postman becomes an evangelist - 15,000 want to be baptised

The postman became suspicious of some letters he was delivering. He could not understand why so many people in his area repeatedly received identical envelopes. In the end, curiosity overcame him and he opened one of these ominous letters - and, surprised, read the gospel, which was being sent to these people as part of a Bible-study course run by a Christian radio station.

He was fascinated by the message, and showed his "discovery" to a friend - who also decided to become a Christian. The "examined" letter included the address of the Friends Missionary Prayer Band (FMPB), an indigenous Indian missionary organisation, which had lost one of its missionaries as a martyr in the spiritually hard Bihar several years before. Bihar is a politically unstable area with 89 million inhabitants in 271 towns and 67,503 villages, and has become known as "the missionaries' graveyard".

The new-found Christians knew nothing of that, and wrote to the FMPB asking them to send someone to evangelise Bihar. The FMPB leadership delayed their answer, fearing the letter to be nothing more than a request for a new human sacrifice. Apart from that, the request came from only a simple postman.

In the end, the postman and his friend, a lawyer, grabbed the initiative themselves and went into many villages declaring the gospel as they understood it. As some missionaries finally arrived there a few years later - in 1992 - they were overcome with surprise; they found 15,000 people waiting to be baptised, who had all been saved through the work of the postman and his friend.

Source: Matthew Philip, New India for Christ, India

Uganda: Moslem security officer is saved

At the end of May 1995, an African team supported by the German mission organisation Diguna was on the way to a crusade in Uganda. The team, which came from Zaire, was stopped at a roadblock, and had their papers confiscated because of suspicion towards the many Zairean refugees. They were instructed to go to the Secret Service's head office, where their papers were returned on condition that a security officer could accompany them. They continued their journey with mixed feelings, because the man was a Moslem. He not only made sure that the team could preach "nothing political" in the villages, but also listened very carefully to the prayer times. He soon began to read the Bible and join in the choruses. At one meeting, he finally went forward wearing all his equipment to begin a new life following Jesus.

Source: DIGUNA, Fax (49) 2773-71527

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