India | Ain't Complicated

“This is my future.”

I learned about this astounding child from Steve Schippert. Here’s a little bit of what The Anchoress has to say:

Namrata Nayak knows who she is. At 10 years of age, she understands the world in ways many of us never will, no matter how long we tread the stony paths.

[…]

But I will let her speak for herself, because Namrata Nayak does not need anyone to speak for her. Observe her astonishing and heroic witness.

“The world has seen my face destroyed by the fire, now it must come to know my smile full of love and peace…I want to dedicate my life to spreading the Gospel.”

“[W]e forgive the Hindu radicals who attacked us, who burned our homes…They were out of their minds, they do not know the love of Jesus. For this reason, I now want to study so that when I am older I can tell everyone how much Jesus loves us. This is my future.”

And here:
“Christmas is a time to thank the baby Jesus who saved me from the fire and saved my face which was disfigured and wounded…There is so much pain and suffering, and I don’t know how long the special forces will protect us,” she told Asia News. “But Christmas is a time of gratitude. I am afraid that my people will still be attacked, but this is our life. If God has saved me, he can save other Christians too.”

God bless you and keep you and use you even more, Namrata.

“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them” (Isaiah 11:6).

“Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein” (Luke 18:17).

Terror Strike: India

Reuters reports: Mumbai hit by deadly attacks

At least 10 people were killed and 26 wounded in a series of shootings around India’s financial capital Mumbai on Wednesday night, with two five-star hotels among the targets in what police called a terror attack.

Maharahstra state police chief A.N. Roy said attackers had fired automatic weapons indiscriminately, and used grenades, adding that they were still holed up in some buildings.

“These are terrorist strikes in at least seven places,” he told the NDTV news channel.

“Unknown terrorists have gone with automatic weapons and opened fire indiscriminately. At a few places they even used grenades.

Police said targets included the luxury Taj and Oberoi hotels, with television stations showing the lobby of both hotels on fire and people being evacuated from the Oberoi with their hands on their heads.

But the Times of India reports at least 80 dead:

Terror struck the country’s financial capital late on Wednesday night as coordinate serial explosions and indiscriminate firing rocked eight areas across Mumbai including the crowded CST railway station, two five star hotels–Oberoi and Taj.

At least 80 people were dead and 250 injured in the terror attacks, hospital sources said.

Two terrorists were still inside the Oberoi Hotel and commando operation was on.

Is this an effort to further destabilize the global economy?

Does it portend attacks on other financial centers?

Who knows. Maybe Al Qaeda. Certainly God.

There’s also this headline out there: Report of Terror Threat on Subways

The New York Police Department deployed extra officers and stepped up security measures in the subways and other mass-transit stations on Wednesday after learning of al Qaeda discussions to coordinate a wave of explosions in the subway system over the holidays, the authorities announced.

Well, whatever’s going on, we need to pray for those in authority and in law enforcement and in emergency services.

And for those suffering in India.

And for God’s people, that they may rise to represent His love and compassion and helpfulness.

Orissa Updates

Mission Network News

Four Christian relief workers were beaten, threatened and then arrested in Orissa on Tuesday, November 4. The World Evangelical Alliance says the four were arrested under “forced conversion” charges.

The workers were on their way to the Discipleship Centre which focuses on holistic care, education, health care and similar disaster relief projects when an unknown motorist collided with one of their motorbikes, causing minor injuries to the worker.

A crowd gathered around the scene, quickly turning into a group of 400. The mob beat the DC staff members, threatening to set fire to them at a local cremation centre. Included in the mob were two Hindu groups that had already been protesting against what they perceived to be forced conversions from local Christians.

When police arrived, the workers were arrested for supposedly forcing Christian conversions and causing the motorbike accident. The four are currently in the custody of Orissa police.

Read it all

Orissa Update

To put the financial crisis in a different perspective:

Christian villages burned, 12,000 people missing from refugee camps

About 12,000 people have disappeared from the refugee camps set up by the government of Orissa to accommodate the Christians fleeing from the violence of Hindu radicals and from their destroyed villages. Meanwhile, a dozen more houses have been burned, while the government of the state assures that it is doing everything possible to maintain security.

Since August 24, a campaign of attacks against Christians and their institutions has been underway in the district of Kandhamal, killing 60 people and forcing 50,000 more to flee. Of these, at least 15,000 have been accommodated in refugee camps overseen by the government. But the Christians do not feel safe; in recent days, attacks have been conducted by Hindu fundamentalist groups against Christians in the camps, with threats and attempts to reconvert them to Hinduism. No Christians from the outside are permitted to enter the camps, and even volunteers and medical personnel from nongovernmental organizations are closely monitored, under the suspicion of wanting to favor conversions to Christianity.

Meanwhile, news of more burned villages is coming from the diocese of Bhubaneshwar. Yesterday, in the village of Balligada, 25 homes belonging to Christians were first ransacked and then set on fire. On October 7 in Phiringia and Sujeli (G. Udayagiri), six homes were attacked and destroyed.

Orissa

First, from the Indian Catholic:

The death toll in the continuing anti-Christian violence in Orissa state rose to 50 as India celebrated the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, father of the nation and champion of peace.
The latest victim, Lalgi Nayak, a Protestant, succumbed to a gash on his neck and other injuries on Oct. 1. He was injured on Sept. 30, when Hindu extremists attacked his Rudangia village, UCA News reported.

Bibhu Datta Das, a legal consultant for the Church of North India, told UCA News on Oct. 2 that Nayak and others were attacked because they “heroically” resisted demands by Hindu fanatics to denounce their Christian faith.

“Such murders are rampant” in Orissa, said the lawyer representing the unified Protestant Church. He added that perpetrators of the violence that began on Aug. 24 not only burn down houses and churches but “demand that Christians accept Hinduism or face death.”

Sindh Today reports:

The Manmohan Singh government has committed to buy energy worth $70 billion from the ‘dying US nuclear industry’ under the nuclear deal, Communist Party of India-Marxist CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat said here Thursday.

[…]

Karat condemned the continuing violence against Chrisitians in Orissa and serial bomb blasts in Tripura late Wednesday.

‘The Orissa government has failed to control the violence. It is shocking. The Naveen Patnaik government and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders should be held responsible for it,’ he said.

World Sikh News has this:

There was little that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh could do to persuade the French President Nicholas Sarkozy on the issue of Sikh turbans as he was under fire with the European Union ticking him off for New Delhi’s failure to prevent massacre of Christians in Orissa and Karnataka. At the India-EU summit, Sarkozy, as head of the European Council, and Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, took up the issue very strongly about Hindutva terror outfit’s attacks on Christians, leaving Manmohan Singh with little room to push the Sikh demand for removing the ban on turbans in French schools.

What Would You Read?

Uzbekistan: Fifteen year sentence for reading “prohibited” Christian literature? Well, time will tell what his sentence is. According to the story, the issue isn’t Bible reading. It’s reading other Christian literature. So look at your book shelves. Which Christian book would you still read even if it meant your arrest. And possible torture. And possible long-term imprisonment?

In other news at the same site:

Young Evangelist Beaten Unconscious in India

Yemen: Christian arrests may herald new era of persecution.

Church Planters in India

Despite Persecution…

It can take up to two years to train a church planter in India.

Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Mission India’s Dave Stravers says the spiritual climate is that ready. “It can be quite embarrassing because we don’t have the resources to train everyone who wants to receive help from us. We actually have almost 4,000 church planters on the waiting list, waiting for our training. So that’s the number one need–he training. Then, we of course provide them with materials, so they need some Scriptures,” and the ministry furnishes a bicycle to increase mobility.

Through this approach, many have responded to the Gospel. That has brought its own set of problems to church planters.

A backlash reaction to the sudden growth of the church has prompted anti-conversion laws in seven states. Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Arunachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh are giving indirect support to militant groups and resulting in ongoing violence against Christians.

Even in states where such laws are not written, they are acted on by the local authorities. Says Stravers, “Often, [the church planters’] lives will be threatened; they’ll get beaten up; they’ll be warned to leave: ‘Don’t come back here again or we’ll kill you.’ This is quite a common form of intimidation, and the high success of the church planters is really attributed to the work of Jesus and the Holy Spirit in India.”

Reports of village churches being attacked, raided or otherwise destroyed continue to be a daily reality throughout the country. New converts to Christianity are often cast out of their families and face poverty and ostracism.

Continue to pray that the Mission India team would remain bold in their vision. Pray, too, that God would provide the resources they need to train those who would be church planters, and that new believers would be grounded in the Scriptures.