Gospel for Asia

Gospel for Asia (GFA World), Wills Point, Texas – Discussing the stories of Bridge of Hope center’s impact on the lives of thousands of children. Hope. An optimistic state of mind based on an expectation of positive outcomes. Hope is a reason to keep on keeping on. It is a reason to keep on living. People without hope live in despair. No one can reasonably say how many people live in despair. It is fair to say, however, that most people who live in abject poverty eventually lose the hope they once had. It is impossible to know exactly when that hope is lost, but for many, it is sometime during their childhood years when they begin to realize that the obstacles in the way to what they hope for are insurmountable. As the hopes and joys of early childhood are clouded by the realities of their inability to escape their destitute life, despair creeps into their hearts until every ray of hope is replaced by a dark cloud of doom. They can’t get to where they had hoped to go from where they ...

Tony and Kelly are partner-supported members of the GFA Mission Support Team. I remember the first time I met Tony. It was late at night, and I had just arrived at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. I was standing at the arrivals curb waiting for someone I had never met to give me a ride to the GFA campus in Wills Point. (I could almost hear my mother’s voice telling me to never accept a ride from a stranger—especially in the dark of night.) Fortunately, the first and only person to offer me a ride was the one GFA had asked to take me to Wills Point. Turns out that Tony is a member of the GFA Mission Support Team. The drive to GFA provided plenty of time to get to know him. You see, I had thought that Wills Point was a Dallas suburb. But it’s not. I don’t even know for sure how long the ride was or how far we traveled. I’m not saying that the GFA campus is at the end of the world, but in the daytime, you can just about see it from there. I’m almost positive that I saw a sign ...

Bridge of Hope students “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt Imagine 168 million children . That’s a very difficult thing to do. In perspective, 168 million is about one-half the entire population of the United States. What’s the point? More than 168 million children worldwide are deprived of the education they need to succeed because they live in abject poverty and are forced to work to survive. Some turn to begging. Others search garbage dumps for food, shelter or clothing. These underprivileged children are extremely vulnerable to sickness, disease, death or the bondage and exploitation of human trafficking. Poverty is widely considered as the top reason why children work at inappropriate jobs for their ages . Children work because their parents are poor, and they must supplement the family income or provide unpaid labor until debts are ...

Gospel for Asia (GFA World), Wills Point, Texas – Discussing the challenge to change minds on open defecation in Asia. “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” —Galatians 6:9 If all your friends are doing it, would you jump off a cliff? That sounds like something your mom might have said. But what if the cliff is really just a big rock on a bank, and there’s a beautiful, clear swimming hole down below? Perspective changes everything, doesn’t it? Peer pressure can sometimes be great. In parts of Asia where open defecation is still widely practiced, tradition says that’s how things are done. But times are changing. Education is spreading. Nudges from the community to break with tradition and use a latrine can save lives. It takes a village to change a mind, and that’s happening throughout rural Asia right now. Proactive Communities Make Open Defecation Less Socially Acceptable In the hours after dusk and before dawn, a ritual as ol...

Aaliya was fortunate. She survived her prenatal condition and her birth. Nonetheless, her life as a child was miserable, primarily because she was – through no fault of her own – a girl. Gospel for Asia (GFA World), Wills Point, Texas – Discussing when girls are considered to be a curse to their families. There’s just something about a brand new baby girl that can put a twinkle in her father’s eyes and a smile on her mother’s face. It’s a joyful scene when the new addition to the family arrives and is soon cradle in her mother’s arms. In just a few minutes, baby will be adorned in pink, and family members will be taking pictures of the newborn. Minutes later, those photos will be delivered to a myriad of family friends over social media. Those friends will post congratulations and add emojis, digital stickers and all other manners of online artwork to celebrate the occasion. Not so much in India, China and other Asian countries. To the contrary, in many Eastern cultures, women are rega...

Gospel for Asia (GFA World) , Wills Point, Texas – Discussing the topic of gendercide. Whoever dreamed up the idea of gender reveals was onto something fun. Have you seen them on social media? Sometimes, they’re baby shower games or scavenger hunts that bring the participants ever closer to finding out the big secret. Sometimes, they’re clever videos. One of the most bittersweet examples was for a military wife whose husband had been killed in action before meeting his new child. His fellow soldiers made a video of the big reveal with a shower of pink tissue paper and confetti descending as they cheered for the new baby girl. Gender reveals have surprise endings by nature: something pink or something blue. In America, we tend to cheer for girls and boys, alike. In parts of Asia, the happiness scale dips heavily in favor of boys. Many girls never have confetti, applause or even a chance at life beyond the earliest days of protection in their mother’s tummy. Selective Abortion Accounts ...

Titus literally has to climb mountains like these to minister to people in churches in this area, as well as villages that have never heard the Good News. Gospel for Asia (GFA World), Wills Point, Texas – Discussing Titus, who literally has to climb mountains on foot to minister to people. When Jesus told His disciples that His plan was for them to go into all the world, He meant ALL the world (see Matthew 28:19–20). Starting with the first 11 and Paul, followers of Jesus have been going wherever they need to go to share Christ’s love. Whether that’s to our neighbors or whether it’s to people living across the globe in a far, distant country, they all have one thing in common: They need to hear about Jesus. The Bible says that whoever chooses to believe in and follow Him shall be saved (see Romans 10:13). But that Scripture verse is followed by several questions that must be answered honestly by every Christian. Not the least of these questions is “How shall they believe in Him of whom...

Gospel for Asia (GFA World) , Wills Point, Texas – Discussing what people can actually do to help resolve the global water crisis. “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor.” — Ecclesiastes 4:9 We learn about the importance of working together when we’re children. As early as kindergarten, careful teachers share lessons about helping others. Moms and dads often start those lessons even younger. If everyone helps out around the house, chores get done more quickly with less of a burden on one person. The core messages are responsibility and finding strength in numbers. The most daunting and insurmountable obstacles aren’t so intimidating after all, not when everyone shares the load. For one person reading sad stories about the global water crisis , it might seem impossible to solve. How much of a difference can one person really make? Alone, it would feel like moving a beach, one tiny grain of sand at a time. But together, people can be heroes who move mou...

During the Christmas gift distribution program of the Gospel for Asia -supported church she attended, Hansini received a sewing machine. She began sewing and selling mosquito nets. That’s when the miracles began to happen in her family. (In 2017, GFA distributed more than 300,000 mosquito nets to people in Asia at risk of getting bit by malaria infected mosquitos). Gospel for Asia (GFA World) , Wills Point, Texas – How one Asian daughter used mosquito nets to elevate her family out of poverty and show them the love of God in the process. We should never underestimate what God can do with something we can hold in our hands. God can use anything to accomplish His purposes, and He uses ordinary people and ordinary things to bring honor and glory to Himself. Remember the story of Moses in Exodus and how God used a simple stick to reveal His power? Moses had only a walking stick in his hand, but when he dropped it to the ground, as the Lord told him, it turned into a snake. When he picked i...

Will malaria finally stop claiming innocent lives in this decade or this century? Maybe. Great strides are made every year toward infection prevention and disease cures. Still, since time immemorial, it remains one of the most stubborn diseases in the world. Malaria preventatives and cures work if the right medication is administered in time. That’s a blessing. A childhood vaccine that could protect against infection is finally on the horizon. Insecticides also attack the disease from the opposite direction by controlling the population of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Yet, even with all these efforts, the insects as well as the parasites they host are notoriously resilient. It’s always an uphill battle. The World Health Organization (WHO) believes several countries could eliminate malaria by 2020. They refer to those locations as “E-2020” countries. Global organizations and medical research groups do great work toward eventual total eradication. South-East Asia, Africa and the America...

Cowering in the corner … children in Asia like Bijay are often in need of assistance at home and at school, to escape the cycle of poverty that plagues them. Gospel for Asia (GFA World), Wills Point, Texas – One young child’s journey from cowering in the corner. Day after day, night after night, the scene was all too familiar. Bijay would withdraw to a corner of his home in an attempt to avoid becoming the object of the venting of his father’s drunken rages. It is a scene that is common in many homes where the family lives in abject poverty , and there seems to be no hope for today or all the tomorrows that will follow. At his tender age, Bijay could understand the poverty. His family was one of many in the village whose fathers worked in the rice paddies to provide an income upon which they could barely subsist. For Bijay, poverty was ‘normal.’ What Bijay could not understand was the indignity that a life of poverty had heaped upon his father. Kuwar had once been a young boy like Bija...

Is there anything in the world more precious than a baby who’s safe and sound in dreamland? Parents do everything they can to protect their children from harm. Unfortunately, some of the most dangerous risks are unavoidable without help. Many exist just because of where a family happens to live. Malaria is one such risk, and it has no respect for the age, fragility or innocence of a person. Malaria is no ordinary disease. You’ve heard of it, almost certainly. You probably have a general idea about how it spreads and in which parts of the world it tends to thrive. But do you know what really happens when a person is infected? And are you aware that the world’s first malaria vaccine has only recently entered testing in the field? It’s an age-old problem that still needs a definitive solution. How old? According to the Journal of Infectious Disease , Hippocrates, widely regarded as the father of medicine, discussed a disease that many believe was malaria. Modern scientists have also disco...

National missionaries provide hope and help to women with desperate needs all across Asia, and thereby serve the least of these. Gospel for Asia (GFA World) , Wills Point, TX – Discussing what motivates us to serve “the least of these”. Driven by a passion to serve people Jesus referred to as “the least of these,” in 1979, Dr. KP Yohannan led a group of prayer believers to establish Gospel for Asia with a vision to turn the passion into practice. Putting Our Passion into Practice to Serve the Least of These While millions of people in North America were consumed with the debut of the Dukes of Hazzard, the release of The Muppet Movie, the introduction of the McDonald’s Happy Meal, and things on a more significant scale such as the American hostage crisis in Iran, the search for the Unabomber, and the peace talks in Washington between Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin, a small group of Christians had been fasting and praying in Dallas. They were praying that the Lord would...

Gospel for Asia (GFA World), Wills Point, TX – Discussing miracles from the past and the present. Each of the Gospels shares examples of the many miracles that Jesus did during His earthly ministry 2,000 years ago. Many of them involved healing people when there was no other hope of healing. Though there are many accounts of Jesus offering healing to the blind, the lame and the deaf, John ends his Gospel account telling us that “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book” (John 20:30). What is more, he tells us that there were “also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25). Though Christ has returned to His Father in Heaven, His work on earth is not yet done. His mercy and grace are still extended to all who believe. His message is delivered by believers all around the globe. While many who read this ha...

Education for young girls in Asia is often sacrificed for family roles like fetching clean drinking water for their families . Tens of thousands of young girls in Asia drop out of school every year. Half of them stop attending at the primary school level, and The Times of India says the number is rising. Several factors affect the likelihood of girls graduating. But the drinking water crisis remains a constant threat . According to the United Nations, women and girls in rural Asia bear the overwhelming majority of responsibilities for finding and carrying clean drinking water. It’s not a minor chore, not like walking a few steps to a well and carrying it back inside the home. Clean, disease-free water is often miles away. Fetching safe drinking water is a necessary full-time job that comes at the expense of education, among other serious risks . GFA’s clean water initiatives does more than give families better access to water that’s safe to drink. It gives girls the freedom to focus o...

Ashley, serving with GFA since 2012, shares her experiences as a School of Discipleship student and then as a behind-the-scenes missionary in the Mission Support Team. Her life and journey with Jesus has grown through the encouragement of being involved in the Christ-centered, missions-focused community. I was only 18 years old when I decided to leave my home and family in Pennsylvania and come to Texas to join GFA’s School of Discipleship (SD). During my SD year, it wasn’t so much the classes and the books I read that impacted me, although going through the books and classes were a good thing. It was seeing the Christian life lived out in a Christ-centered community that really impacted me and still does today. God spoke to me a lot that year through some godly leaders here at GFA, who encouraged me to pursue Christ with all my heart. I can say without a doubt that this is exactly what my journey has been: pursuing God with all my heart and seeing others pursue Him too. I only planne...

Loneliness is a companion of poverty. The despair in which many poor find themselves in is not the lack of resources as much as it is the loneliness of feeling unwanted and unloved . The only cure for loneliness is knowing that someone genuinely cares about you, regardless of your circumstances. Somedev was lonely because his father was never at home . In fact, his father had deserted Somedev and his mother. Somedev was lonely and his mother, Jerusha, was heartbroken as she had lost her husband to another woman and now faced the prospect of having to raise her son on her own. One day, Jerusha heard some women talking about a Bridge of Hope center in a nearby village where children could receive free education, food and medical care . Knowing this could be the answer to her needs and her son’s loneliness, she asked the ladies to come to her home. When the women, who were Bridge of Hope staff, went and shared the love of God with her, Jerusha broke down in tears . She had never heard o...

Sandy, a behind-the-scenes missionary with GFA, shares her family’s journey through 20 years of dedicated service. Still today, she and her husband Ralph face the unfinished task together, all for the sake of Christ and His love. Although my husband Ralph and I were both raised in Christian homes, we had become very disillusioned within the church. We felt there had to be more to the Christian life than works and the fear that we would never be good enough for Heaven. After much prayer and searching, we discovered three things that changed our lives: grace, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We have not been the same since. Desiring to Serve the Lord Together In 1997, after my husband completed a degree in business information systems, it was apparent to Ralph and me that we needed to use this skill for God. But we had no idea how to even begin. All we knew was that we wanted to work together as a team for the Lord. We heard an advertisement on the radio about a national Christian job placemen...