the magazine summer 2013 AT THE OFFICE
ASIALINK HQ CORE VALUES
OF ASIALINK A LETTER FROM
OUR CHAIRMAN PROJECTS
DIGITAL WORD
A LETTER FROM
Our Chairman
Welcome to our Summer 2013 magazine. It’s a little different this time as we focus on our ministry here at home as well as reporting on some of our projects that you so generously support with prayer and finance. We start with a message from our Chairman… Dear AsiaLink friends, Earlier this year I visited North Korea with a group. Despite being involved with AsiaLink for many years, I’d not been able to make an overseas visit until I retired. So this was it, and whilst I have had overseas missions in my heart for over 50 years, I was overwhelmed by the experience. We made the journey from northern China to the North Korean capital Pyongyang by train, a journey of about five and a half hours. The countryside was bleak and forbidding as we passed mile after mile of infertile-looking land being manually tilled and shaped by thousands of people. I am not a prayerful person, though I say my prayers daily. I am more comfortable giving practical help, but here I could do nothing for the old lady struggling with a load of stones on her back, or the young women pushing heavy loads along dirt roads. Here I prayed like I never have before, since it was the only response I could make to what I was seeing. I have kept on praying since my return, and will continue holding those dear people before the Lord, realising that I am able to use the most powerful weapon in my Christian armoury. Each morning, our group met in an hotel room to study the Scriptures and to pray and praise. We read the book of Hebrews together, and when we read chapter 2, verses 9-11, it was like an electric shock hitting me. Christ who suffered for us, suffered and still feels the suffering of his children, and is not ashamed to call anyone his brother or sister. These people with a miserable existence under a tyrannical rule are as precious to our Saviour as anyone is and the most I can do is to pray that “while we do not see everything subject to Him,” there is no-one outside His will for the world. I would urge you to pray for Kim Jong Un, the Supreme leader of the country, who was educated in Europe, and known then as a “nice guy.” Our God can save him. Pray for those who secretly know the Saviour and pray too for those who quietly work from nearby countries to get aid to the neediest in the land. Pray that this land, which is shrouded in secrecy and paranoia, might be bathed in the transforming love of our Mighty God. Chairman of AsiaLink Board of Trustees
BEAUTIFUL FEET
DIGITAL WORD
GOAL Encourage and facilitate Asian evangelists and missionaries
GOAL Making God’s Word available to those who don’t read, cannot read or are unable to receive traditional printed Bibles.
WHAT’S HAPPENING?
Mongolians are working hard to ensure the Good News moves out beyond their own borders. It’s evidence of a growing, committed and sacrificial church. They are especially keen to go to those areas of Asia where the old and expansive Mongolian empire formerly dominated and it is therefore no surprise to hear of ministry by Mongolian workers in places where westerners find it extremely difficult to obtain visas, where they stand out as obviously foreign or where access to locals is restricted.
WHAT’S HAPPENING?
100 solar-powered players were sent to Burma in May this year. A further 300 were provided for the blind in India. Our partners have been making the Scriptures available to those who are nonliterate, for over 30 years.
AsiaLink’s Mongolian partners have been ministering in restrictedaccess regions that we choose not to publicize here. We are hugely encouraged at seeing fruit like this.
They report that, “Many who had gathered were either blind from birth or had lost sight due to sickness. It was wonderful to watch them turn on the player for the first time. The joy in their faces was just so beautiful to watch. They had longed to read the Bible by themselves and now with their new Audio Bible they no longer have to depend on any one to read it for them.”
IRAQ SCRIPTURES
SE ASIA BIBLE PRINTING
GOAL Place easy-to-read Arabic New Testaments in as many Iraqi homes as will receive them.
GOAL Provide God’s Word for many of the smaller people groups in the region.
WHAT’S HAPPENING?
As God’s Word is distributed, it has been great to hear of others passing it on to their neighbours. Some of the work is being carried out in conjunction with local churches. It’s a great encouragement to them too and indeed non-Christians have been attracted in – among them Muslims wanting to read God’s Word. “One of our disciples who had been saved a couple of month ago invited two of his friends. He gave them copies of the New Testament. They wanted to pray with us and ask Christ to save them.” And that’s exactly what happened!
WHAT’S HAPPENING?
The Communist countries of Laos and Vietnam contain more than 250 tribes, dozens of which had full Bibles or New Testaments translated prior to the arrival of Communism in 1975. Since then, many believers have been deprived of the Scriptures in their own languages because governments oppose the spread of the Christian faith. To date, our partners have printed 325,961 Bibles and New Testaments in 47 languages of Southeast Asia. Over the summer months, teams will travel to Asia to hand-deliver God’s Word to different groups. Please pray for this ministry!
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CORE VALUES OF ASIALINK We are deeply committed to the urgent and unfinished task of evangelism and nurturing young churches in Asia. Our desire is to stimulate passionate missionary vision among churches around the world as well as in our countries of ministry. Perhaps you have heard the comment that a certain church “has no missionary vision”. It is sometimes the case and, when true, desperately sad. Equally worrying, perhaps, is that the opposite can also be true – mission agencies can have no church vision. We hope that’s not the case in AsiaLink and we work hard to ensure it isn’t! One key function of a local church is “sending”. It is not easy for a local church from Ballymena or Bury to negotiate ministry in the Himalayas or northern Vietnam. The geography alone is challenging to say nothing of the logistics, cultural obstacles, the relationships needed and the experience to know how and where to work. We try to provide quality, researched and fruitful opportunities for churches to send their people into missionary work. It’s one way we can help.
Take, for example, the short-term trips that are offered several times a year. Thankfully, the days are gone when short-term work was regarded as the poor cousin of missionary work, as if the duration spent engaging with the unsaved in other cultures determined whether or not that work could be classed as genuinely “missionary” in nature. Our conviction is that God is most interested in a committed life (as opposed to a life-long commitment). Many churches have sent their people with us on our travels around Asia. We try to go in humility, responding to what Asia’s churches ask us to do. Some want us to take Bibles into difficult places – so that’s what we do. The gratitude of Asia’s Christians is not easily forgotten. For others, being in Asia is quite simply breathtaking. They look, listen and learn, their minds and hearts working overtime to capture and process the enormity of getting the Gospel into strange places with complicated belief systems and languages that sometimes don’t even have an alphabet. Others simply carry their own church’s greetings to believers in Asia. They go to share their lives and encourage local churches in a different part of the world. Sometimes, “being” achieves more than “doing”.
In truth, good short-term trips help those who are sent as well as those who receive them. However, a significant benefit of short-term travel is the impact on the sending church itself. Hopefully, those who travel with us will return to their sending churches with a greater desire to be faithful to the Gospel. There is a bigger picture though. We are a part of in an increasingly connected world and also a thoroughly connected church. While we want to help churches at home send their people to Asia, we want more than that. We want to help Asian churches send Asians too. It is our privilege to connect churches with Sri Lankans who train and send workers to places where westerners would struggle to get a visa never mind minister effectively. We partner with Mongolians to train and send their workers. Chinese churches send some remarkable missionaries to remarkable places, too. We are also able to help Nepali churches send out Nepali workers, Vietnamese send out Vietnamese, Lao send Lao, Burmese send Burmese, and so forth.
Helping Asia’s churches send their missionaries to difficult places is an important part of what we do. There is more though. We can help local churches to send but we can also keep them informed. We hope you enjoy our magazines! We also hope you enjoy our speakers and the presentations they use. They minister week by week across many different churches, working hard to both inform and inspire from firsthand experience. The goal is to frame what they say in the Bible’s big picture of God’s great work on earth.
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We want to help Asian churches send Asians Our videos do the same. The Tears of the Saints presentation has been seen by hundreds of thousands of people (perhaps millions) in many languages and countries. A 2013 updated version has just been
released. It has stirred youth groups in Chile and challenged churches in Hong Kong. They have watched it in South Africa and been moved by it in Malaysia. Mission agencies across the world have requested to use it, as have church conferences, websites and countless individuals on their own personal journey with the Lord. We certainly have a vision for missions in AsiaLink but we also have a vision for the local church. We want to make much of God’s mission, and hopefully, less of ourselves. We want to show what He is doing and inspire churches everywhere to commit to the challenge of doing whatever it takes to make God known everywhere. Having been told what God is doing and what still needs to be done, one response we heard recently was unequivocal, “I just want to sell everything and go, right now, and tell some unreached people group somewhere all about Jesus!” It’s exactly what we delight to hear!
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WELCOME TO ASIALINK HQ
Ever wondered where this magazine comes from? Or where your donation is processed? Or who answers the phone when you call us? Welcome to AsiaLink HQ! We are based near Preston in Lancashire but our admin team actually reaches as far as Wick in Scotland and Ballyclare in Northern Ireland. At our main office in Wesham, Lancashire, we have a team of four to serve you. If you ring or pop in you would speak to Pamela, Ethel, Colin or John. Here we process all the wonderful gifts you send in for the ministry of AsiaLink as well as produce all the important accounts and reports required by the governing authorities to ensure our accountability. Last year we processed some 16,400 transactions at this office including about 3000 cheques. Reclaiming tax though Gift Aid is a valuable part of our work as ÂŁ78,000 was given to us by Her Majesty's
Revenue and Customs to further the Gospel in Asia! We also make sure that funds are sent securely to our partners in Asia to carry out the various projects. We are always pleased to hear from you by phone. Ethel and John are part-time and Pamela and Colin are sometimes elsewhere, so do leave a message if we are not around to answer your call. Isabel loved working for AsiaLink so much that when her husband moved about as far north as you can go to pastor a church in Wick, she took the work with her! Now she processes all the new additions and changes to our database remotely from her home. Noeleen is based at our busy Northern Ireland office, helping husband Gordon, our director there, communicating with friends from that part of the world. Of course, we do a lot more as well! So do keep in touch with us, it’s our privilege to serve you.
WHO IS DAVID?
David is AsiaLink’s regional representative covering central and southern England and the Republic of Ireland. Here’s some information you may not know about David... When did you join AL and what did you do before? For the past 30 years I have lived in East Anglia with my wife Angela, having myself originated from Co Cork – Republic of Ireland. During that time I have undertaken farm management, evangelism and pastoral ministry before joining AsiaLink in 2006. What do you most enjoy about your job? There are many enjoyable parts to my job but the ones I enjoy most are interacting with our partners in Asia whose influences help fire up my heart with a passion to glorify God and make Jesus famous on the earth. The best bit of all is coming under the Holy Spirit's anointing to stand before the church in the Republic of Ireland and the UK and see His word and His commission move us all to lose ourselves in prayer and involvement. What's the most challenging part? My biggest challenge, by far, is to maintain such an intimate daily relationship with Jesus and my loved ones that it makes living the Christian life the most attractive lifestyle which anyone would want to abandon themselves to.
Where have you visited in Asia? During my annual visits to Asia over the past seven years I have been privileged to go to Burma, North Korea, China, India, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. Tell us about your family. My wife Angela, a piano teacher, and I will celebrate 30 years of a delightful marriage this July. Our first son Peter died at birth in 1986 but we have two grown sons, Jack (24) an engineer who is a gifted guitar player. George (23) who is married to Sarah, works for IVP in Nottingham and has a passion for piano, guitar and leading worship. We also have two daughters, Harriet (14) who loves the cello and socialising but unfortunately has to go to school! Poppy our youngest who is nine composes her own piano music and is quite a bright student in our local primary school. How do you relax? Relaxation comes with great difficulty but my favourite past times are most forms of DIY, especially welding and working with metal and wood. I also love computers and gadgets!
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AFGHAN CENTRE FOR THE DEAF GOAL Teach language and culture, equip with basic job skills, offer help in finding employment. WHAT’S HAPPENING? We introduced this work to you last year and now there is a new class of students. Seven deaf and mute boys and girls have been coming for several weeks and are keen not only to learn sign language but also writing, reading and even some maths!
Successful grassroots ministries in Afghanistan are hard to come by. Education in the country is desperately lacking, not least among the physically handicapped. Students in the centre range from eight to forty years old. Our partners in Afghanistan wrote following their recent visit, “The deaf students develop a remarkable level of trust and self-confidence, especially the girls. It was a lot of fun watching them! Sadly, the chief funding organization from the USA is unable to provide help any more.”
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