Upper Room Prayer Ministry
Each week, we will focus on a different mission area and list specific prayer requests for that ministry.
Chile Earthquake
The Southern Baptist assessment team continues their work. Cliff Satterwhite, South Carolina disaster relief director, reported that feeding blue hats and assistants from South Carolina and Southern Baptist of Texas Conventions departed Monday afternoon from Atlanta en route to Santiago, Chile. From there the team will travel overland to the quake damaged area. These volunteers will teach Chilean Baptists how to do mass care feeding. The team members from South Carolina also include incident command and communications specialists. Pray for these and other volunteers as this response continues. A second team is scheduled to depart March 15th.
Worldview: The year of living dangerously
By Erich Bridges
RICHMOND, Va. (BP)--What do you think about when you look back on the past year of your life?
Family joys and heartaches, perhaps. Victories and defeats on the job or at school. Sickness and health. Events in the lives of close friends. Odds are, you aren’t remembering the physical beatings you took for Christ.
Rasheed* and Farooq* are.
I’ve written several times about Rasheed and Farooq, two Muslims in India who have become committed followers of Jesus Christ. They lead a growing movement of Muslim-background believers in Mumbai, India’s largest city. The urban giant’s 20 million people include some 2 million Muslims — a large but often marginalized minority that is showing increasing openness to the Gospel.
Last time we checked in with Rasheed, he was lying in a hospital bed with a head wound, broken rib and internal injuries suffered during a brutal attack at the hands of people angered by his stand for Jesus. He had led two Muslim men to faith in Christ. One of them went home and told family members. Enraged, they found Rasheed, pushed him down and beat him with a cricket bat until others rescued him. He was hospitalized for nearly a month.
“Rasheed is almost fully recovered now,” says a Christian worker who keeps in touch with him. “He is looking for work again while continuing to teach six leaders of jama’ats” — indigenous worship groups composed of Muslim-background followers of Jesus — and leading five jama’ats himself.
“While he was recovering, three more Muslims gave their lives to Christ through the faithful witness of believers in his groups.”
Farooq, meanwhile, has stayed busy with more than 70 Shi’ite Muslim “seeker groups” investigating the Gospel. Spiritual seekers in the groups now probably surpass 1,000.
“The Muslims they speak with are incredulous,” reports the worker. “They say, ‘This is the first time we have heard this truth.’”
The year 2009, the worker adds, was a “very good year — and a difficult year — for both Farooq and Rasheed.”
A selected chronology of the year’s events in their lives and ministries:
-- Rasheed begins a jama’at in his hometown and four more elsewhere.
-- Farooq is framed, arrested and beaten for sharing his faith with Muslim seekers. He loses his possessions and sustains painful leg injuries. “I did nothing wrong,” he declares. “I know that God was with me in jail and through the whole ordeal. I can trust Him for anything!”
-- Exonerated and released from jail, Farooq promptly restarts the seeker meeting that was the source of his persecution.
-- Nawab* becomes a believer in Farooq’s native place. He begins two jama’ats and currently conducts a weekly seeker meeting.
-- Many women’s seeker meetings begin. More than 50 women now attend three jama’ats.
-- Thirty new leaders are trained to launch seeker meetings following extensive evangelistic outreach during an annual Muslim festival.
-- During Ramadan outreach efforts, two leaders are beaten for sharing Jesus. One lies in a coma for several days. Both recover.
At least 52 new jama’ats are begun during the year, bringing Farooq’s total to more than 100. It’s getting harder to count them, he reports.
“It wasn’t an easy year, but God has done amazing things in the hearts of Farooq and Rasheed, as well as in the hearts of the Muslim-background believers whose faith and fearlessness have grown in ways we never could have imagined,” reflects the Christian worker.
Next time somebody tells you the Gospel will never penetrate the Muslim world, or that Muslims aren’t interested in knowing about Jesus Christ, remember Rasheed, Farooq and many others like them.
They beg to differ — and they put their lives on the line daily to prove otherwise.
Prayer Needs: Prayer for Muslims around the world. Pray that God would open their eyes to the truth. Ask God to bring many to commit their lives to reaching the Muslim people.
Recent Haiti update from IMB:
By Tristan Taylor
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (BP)—In certain places on the northern outskirts of Port-au-Prince, cars are stuck in traffic jams, street vendors are selling vegetables and people are filling restaurants. Despite these pockets of activity on the outskirts, the effects of the earthquake that claimed more than 150,000 Haitian lives two weeks ago continue to echo loudly throughout the city and surrounding areas.
In hospitals, volunteers offer medical care for broken bones and missionaries deliver supplies to help rebuild broken lives. But the catastrophe also has broken apart countless families.
Enso Jean Louis is alone in L’Hopital de Fermathe. He was brought to this hospital nearly two weeks after the quake. But unlike many of his fellow patients, the 22-year-old wasn’t accompanied by any family.
With bolts protruding from both sides of his injured right leg, he lies on a bed in a far corner of the ward. The bolts are attached to a brace that holds his bone in place. Filled with the noise of scrub-clad medics rushing to treat the injured, the room is overflowing with patients and visiting family members. But there is no one at Enso’s bedside.
“My parents were taking care of us,” he says in Haitian Creole. “I relied on them. I do not know what can be done now.”
When the earthquake hit, Enso and his sister were watching television on the second story of his family’s house. His parents were downstairs with his other five siblings. Enso was knocked into the yard where a block of concrete fell on his leg. The second story of the house collapsed onto the first, taking the lives of those downstairs.
The sister who was with him upstairs survived, but the two were soon separated when Enso was taken for medical care.
“I do not know where she is,” he says. “Today is 15 days without seeing [anyone I know]. I feel that I am alone. There are no people coming here. They are not looking for me.”
But Enso, a believer, clings to his faith. As he stares at the ceiling through hazy eyes, his fingers wrap tighter around a blue Creole-language New Testament.
The quake separated loved ones as some were trapped under rubble and others were rushed away for medical care. The situation was made worse when hundreds of unidentified bodies were buried in mass graves. Haitians may search for loved ones for months to come, wondering who might still be alive.
But for now, many feel the added ache of loneliness — a pain sometimes not immediately visible to volunteers or treatable by doctors. They long for a listening ear, an encouraging smile and a friend with whom to share hope.
Prayer Needs
--Pray that locations can be found quickly to set up base camps.
--Lift up all of those serving on the response team. Intercede for physical stamina
.
--The joint Southern Baptist response to the Haiti earthquake launches this coming week with four "strategically-selected" medical teams. Four "strategically-selected" medical teams are being sent through the Dominican Republic to Haiti along with two representatives from the Florida convention who will continue to make arrangements for trained disaster relief teams to travel in and out of the country. Pray for these needs.
---Please remain vigilant in praying for those who are suffering infection without adequate medication. Ask God to protect Haitians living in improvised camps from the spread of contagious diseases.
From the International Mission Board
Week of Prayer for Lottie Moon Christmas Offering
Tucking away a JESUS film and a few Bibles in her belongings, Zahra boards a bus in the capital city of Tehran to share the gsoepl with relatives in the Iranian countryside.
Zahra is taking a risk by carrying evangelistic material in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Distributing Bibles is illegal. Converting to Christianity can be punishable by prison or death. Despite the risks, Zahra felt burdened to act after seeing her tribe listed as an unreached people grou in material produced by the IMB.
While it is safe to share the gospel in small home groups to escape notice, the Lord gave Zahra boldness when the movie being shown on the bus malfunctioned. She handed the JESUS film to the driver, who played it all the way through.
Eight of the forty people on the bus told her they were interested in becoming Chirstians. During home visits, Zahra led the driver, his wife, and their three grown chldren to the Lord - as well as her own sister.
Prayer Needs
Pray for Christians who risk their lives to share the gospel in Iran.
Pray for the people of Iran to be able to hear and read God's Word.
Outreach at Fort Hood - a note from Robert Dees of Campus Crusade
“I know you grieve with me. Because on November 5th, 13 US troops were killed and 30 were wounded by one of their own.
I wanted you to know that God, in His providence, has already used Military Ministry in a special way at Fort Hood--paving the way to bring comfort and the Gospel to troops "for such a time as this."
Last year Military Ministry began major outreaches at Fort Hood, training pastors and laymen from 33 churches to help soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder, holding military marriage conferences, working with chaplains on the base, and more. Two Military Ministry staff couples are "stationed" at Ford Hood. Though we grieve at this terrible tragedy, we praise God that so many people are already positioned to help the soldiers and families affected by this act, and that so many troops have already heard the Gospel.
Your prayers for American troops around the globe are coveted. Please pray for them as they process this act--thinking not only of what they might encounter on the battlefield, but of what could happen when they're "safe" on base. “
Update from Chet Cantrell, East St Louis Christian Activity Center.
This past summer was a special time and a time of big events: sports camps; 126 elementary kids at Camp Penuel; 54 teenagers at Kids Across America, and a group that was hosted for a week by Knightdale Baptist Church in North Carolina. Nine of our teenagers participated in a joint mission trip with youth from Winstanley Baptist Church to Sarasota, Florida.
Our fall programs include tutoring, computer classes, acting, choir, art, language, martial arts, recreation, Kids for Christ and mentoring. The Christian Activity Health Center opened last December in partnership with SIH Foundation and is successfully open two days per week. This fall, Crisis Nursery of St Louis also opened an office at our facility; we are excited about both partnerships.
Ways you can help
Pray. Keep our ministry in your daily prayers.
Adopt a City Block. Provide clean-up and enhance the lives of the residents on the block.
Adoprt a Child for Christmas.
For information on all of these opportunities, visit us at www.cacesl.org.
Recent update from Bob and Susan, missionaries serving in South Africa.
We are still working in the villages of Ndlambe and Woodlands. We hope to start a new Bible study in Pikoli. A new work has also begun in Alexandra. Nineteen people were baptized there earlier this yer after a tent crusade. Bob continues to work with them through discipleship and leadership training.
Prayer Requests
Pray for Susan as she pursues a Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy through long-distance learning at Liberty University. Pray for her to be able to balance time between study, ministry and family.
Pray for new work in Alexandra. Pray that God will raise up leaders to catch the vision.
Pray for our new student interns, Becca and Lizzie. Pray that God will direct their next steps as they explore God's call to missions on their lives.
You can find more information on praying for missions on our Upper Room Prayer Minstry page on the web site.