More and more people are coming to faith in Jesus in Central Asia. Most of the new believers are Muslims, but people from other backgrounds are also coming to the churches we work with.
Growth is quiet. The government has placed many restrictions on religious freedom, including the ability to share your faith, so Christians must tread carefully.
A powerful tool for demonstrating God's love in action, when it is not legal to preach with words outside the four walls of the church, is the Bags of Hope project. Bags of Hope is food for poor and dysfunctional families. The parents may be addicts, and the distribution of the bags ensures that vulnerable children are fed.
Since 2012, Danish European Mission improvers and donors have supported a church in the northern part of a country in Central Asia. The project went well and was expanded in 2019 to a city in the south of the country and in 2020 to a city in another country in Central Asia.
A nightmare come true
One of those who has received help is Zanagul. She says: "I think one of the best experiences has to be when a person wakes up after a horrible nightmare and realizes that the horror they experienced was just a bad dream.
But what do you do when a nightmare is actually real?
My husband and I found ourselves in such a state as our middle daughter often had strong epileptic seizures and suffered from other illnesses at the same time. Over time, this led my husband into a dark depression that he tried to suppress with alcohol, which only made the situation worse - both for him and for our family.
I felt that all the responsibility fell on my fragile shoulders and it saddened me and drained me of joy. When things were bad, I prayed and hoped that there was a God who heard me!
I proved myself strong enough to cope with the hardships of life, but my husband did not. One day, things went wrong while I was away. Our daughter had had another strong epileptic seizure and then my husband committed suicide. He hanged himself. It was absolutely horrible and has traumatized me ever since. It was just before it was too late for me too.
There I was left with three children, one of whom could not live a normal life due to her disability, and now I was also without my husband's income. Due to my daughter's illness, I couldn't take a full-time job, so we had to live off my small income from part-time jobs. The authorities wouldn't grant me financial disability support because they didn't consider the child to be disabled enough.
Bags of hope
"Church" I thought, I'm not a Christian! I guess you can't be. But then I thought, well, they are also people who believe that God is somewhere.
So I started receiving these big bags of food that helped us and gave us enough food on the table. I started to get to know the Christians from the church when they came to me with the bags. They made a big impression on me when we talked and drank tea together.
They also started to help me advocate my case to the authorities. I have now been granted financial disability support for my child, and of course I am happy about that.
All this has shown me that God works through Christians who are so involved in compassionate service.
I have now come to believe in Jesus, as they have told me about. I am still very young in my new faith and there are still things I do not fully understand. But I read in the Kitab Mukaddes - the Bible - and also attend a home group. The church building is quite far from my house, so I haven't been there that many times yet.
I am very grateful to God for everything. And I thank all of you who pray for people like me and help people in need. Now I feel that there is hope and that I no longer have to face adversity alone," Zanagul concludes.
