Gospel for Asia

Gospel for Asia (GFA) is a nonprofit founded in 1979 committed to serving “the least of these” in Asia. GFA supports national field workers who in turn bring the love of Christ to those living in rural and under-served areas. Whether it’s providing the opportunity for a brighter future for a child in Asia through their  Bridge of Hope program  or giving away a sewing machine to help a family generate income, GFA has stood by its mission to transform communities through the love of Christ, one individual at a time. After serving in ministry for nearly 40 years, GFA has had the opportunity to make an impact both overseas and at home. Here’s what Christian leaders are saying about Gospel for Asia and it’s founder KP Yohannan: KP Yohannan says his life was hugely impacted by George Verwer, beginning 40+ years ago serving with Operation Mobilization in India. George Verwer Founder of  Operation Mobilization , author,  and an advocate for evangelism and m...

Wills Point, Texas – Gospel for Asia ( GFA ) –  Discussing the importance of women national workers in Asia cannot be overemphasized. Millions of Asian women face unimaginable pain, misery and degradation. In Acts chapter 16, the Apostle Paul tells of visiting the city of Philippi for a number of days. On a Saturday, he and those with him retired to a river bank where believers customarily gathered for Sabbath prayers. It was there that he met Lydia, an entrepreneur (centuries before entrepreneur was even a word) from the city of Thyatira. Both Paul and Lydia were a long way from their respective homes. They were in Philippi, a city in Macedonia named for its former king Philip, the father of Alexander the Great. When Paul met Lydia, the city was under Roman rule and was, in fact, planned to be converted into a miniature version of Rome. Thyatira, Lydia's hometown and base of operations, was located in Asia Minor, nearly 600 miles away by land. Lydia, like the ...

Wills Point, Texas – Gospel for Asia (GFA) Special Report –  Discussing the plight of widows worldwide as they face tragedy, discrimination, and suffering. Accounts of the humiliations, insults and indignations suffered by widows worldwide would make anyone cringe. Gulika, a widow in Asia, experienced helplessness after the people in her village turned their backs on her after her husband's death. A woman in Nigeria was harassed by her brother-in-law asking for documents of her house before her husband's body even left for the funeral home—and then insisted she had to leave. Another Nigerian woman's husband lay in a hospital bed when her sister-in-law demanded a huge amount of money from their bank account. When the wife refused, her in-law swore she would regret it. "Three days after, my husband died, his family descended on me, took his cars away and emptied the house." In connection with last year's International Widows Day, CNN s...

Wills Point, Texas – Gospel for Asia Special Report (GFA) –  Discussing the troubling problem of the lack of toilets - basic sanitation, and open defecation for millions throughout the world. What If You Didn't Have a Toilet? So I remind myself of toilet scenarios I do know about, then extrapolate some personal situations out to extreme what-ifs. Our home, in which we have lived for 38 years, has its own septic system. During that time, when we had extreme storms, the power would go out. This meant that no water could be pumped from our underground well, and this electric outage disabled our showers, our faucets and our toilets. I used to store plastic bottles of water so when things went black we could brush our teeth, get dressed by candlelight (since there are no windows in any of our bathrooms), and—get this—flush our toilets. If the power did not come back on for a couple days, the frozen food thawed and an excess of detritus threatened to overflow the toilet basin. ...

Wills Point, Texas – GFA Special Report (Gospel for Asia) –  Discussing the troubling problem of open defecation and the lack of basic sanitation for millions throughout the world. Talking Openly About Open Defecation Another key dilemma in this discussion—open defecation, hardly a dinner-table topic or a mission committee agenda item—is the fact that accessibility to toilets does not always indicate usage. Changing habits is mostly a matter of changing mindsets in the face of the stranglehold of deeply entrenched beliefs. Elizabeth Royte, in a comprehensive August 2017 National Geographic Magazine article , reports visiting Parameswaran Iyer, India's secretary of drinking water and sanitation, in 2016. A hand-numbered sign on his wall tracks progress. "You see that?" he asks. "One hundred thousand is the number of villages that are ODF today." (ODF is the acronym for open defecation free). Royte reports working the internal math: "Just 5...

2.3 billion worldwide lack basic sanitation facilities and 892 million still defecate in the open, according to World Health Organization. Wills Point, Texas – Gospel for Asia Special Report (GFA) –  Discussing the troubling problem of open defecation and the lack of basic sanitation facilities for millions throughout the world. Karen Burton Mains, author For much of my adult life, it has been my privilege to hang out with the "renegades" of Christian missions, that relief-and-development crowd that rushes to help during natural disasters, struggles to alleviate the suffering and abasement of refugee displacement, and pays concerted attention to the everyday struggles of everyday living in the developing nations of the world. The first trip I made around the world was at the invitation of Food for the Hungry, and I traveled with Larry Ward, the executive director at the time, and his wife, Lorraine. It was on this trip I became convinced this particular crew o...

Wills Point, Texas – GFA ( Gospel for Asia ) –  Discussing how the Unsponsored Children's Fund helps provide a chance for hope and life to children without sponsors. My name is Nirash. I am only a child. I am always sad. We have very little to eat. Sometimes I have to walk to the river with my mother to carry water home for cooking. It is a long walk and the water pots are heavy. There is always someone in my family who is sick. I can't read or write because I have no one to teach me. My mother and father can't read or write either. My father works very hard every day. When he comes home, he is so tired that he gets angry easily. He complains about his work in the fields and the way he is treated by his overseers. He is sad because he does not earn enough money to take care of us and to pay something called his debts. My mother has told me that I may have to go to work soon, perhaps in a brick kiln, to earn enough money to feed us better. I...

The average young adult in America looks forward expectantly to a life free from the rules of home; free to build their future; free to make their own decisions. They look forward to the world of adulthood that they see being living out around them. This is natural and, therefore, to be expected. However, there are also those who have responded to the call of the Lord to present themselves as a "living sacrifice" forsaking their own dreams to be set apart for His work. The Apostle Paul describes this as their "reasonable service." (Romans 12:1) It is not possible to present ourselves as a "living sacrifice" unless we do it as a "willing sacrifice." Doing so requires an entirely different mindset. Paul explained that mindset in his letter to the Philippians (Philippians 2:5-8). Although Jesus had all the riches of Heaven to enjoy for all of eternity, He "made Himself of no reputation and took the form of a servant." ...