Reality in Asia {Gospel for Asia}

 

How many of us love getting to hang out with other women? We all need our girls! They help us figure out how to raise our kids, tell us when we need a course correction, lift us up when we are struggling, and infuse us with chocolate. We have book clubs and Bible studies together. We send each other notes, emails and Facebook messages. But what if we couldn’t do that? I had the opportunity not too long ago, to travel to Southeast Asia with a group of fellow Gospel for Asia staff members. There, I was blessed to meet many women from all different stages of life. First I met groups of giggling little girls at a Bridge of Hope center. They sang songs for us in their native language and recited Bible verses they had memorized. Their beautiful liquid brown eyes and big smiles warmed everyone’s hearts. These few dozen girls were the lucky ones in their community – they get to learn how to read and write, are taught the love of a Savior, are fed each day and are also kept off the streets and out of harm’s way.

                 

Next I met a class of women Bible college students who are training to become missionaries. Most of them seemed very young and very tiny, and yet their spirits were gigantic! Two of the ladies are forever etched in my memory. Both standing at barely five feet tall, they told me of how the Lord is leading them to give their lives to work in a large city’s red light district, ministering to prostitutes and other sex workers. They weren’t afraid because God is bigger.

Several days later we attended a church service with a small group of believers in a remote village in northern India. There I met women who were mostly illiterate. It saddened me to think that they couldn’t have the blessing of being able to read their Bible. One woman was holding a very small child who was obviously very sick. She told us her baby was a year old, but wouldn’t eat. Our traveling companion told us that women in these remote villages are so uneducated that they have never been taught how to care for sick children, and there is no medical care available nearby. All the women gathered and laid hands on this dear child and prayed for her. Barring a miraculous intervention, that child is probably dead by now. Finally we met a group of believers who were elderly and had leprosy. Many of these precious sisters were missing fingers and toes, but the joy of the Lord was so apparent in them! One woman, who appeared to be ancient, came and just wanted to hug my husband. She had no teeth and no fingers, but she just wanted to share the love of Jesus with him.

Women in poor, rural villages in Asia have very hard lives due to their culture. Imagine a small mud hut with no electricity or running water. Your nearest water source is a dirty pond ¼ mile away. Your husband is working all day and your responsibility is to care for the home. You have to walk with clay pots and buckets to gather water for cooking, drinking and cleaning. Hopefully, the pigs or cows aren’t bathing in the pond when you get there. Hopefully, your family won’t get sick from this water. To cook each day, you gather and dry piles of animal dung for your fire. Read a book? Impossible, even if you had one! There’s not a school anywhere nearby, so you never learned how to read.

On laundry day, you may have to haul your family’s meager clothing down to the pond where you soap up the clothing and pound it on a rock to wash. You then dry those clothes on a different rock or you carry the wet clothing back to your house to hang it. If anyone in your family gets sick, you take an offering to your god and hope for the best. Maybe you call the local witch doctor and have him cast a spell. Life is lived in fear. Hope is thin. This is the reality that multiplied millions of women in Asia face every day! No girls to lunch with. No book clubs. No chocolate.

Each of you, Allume sisters, is called to blog and share what God is doing in your lives with your audience. You are needed to be the voice of the millions of illiterate women in Asia. You are needed to speak out for the street children, sex workers and lepers. We are looking for bloggers with a passion for the lost that are willing to share the sufferings and great need of the women of Asia. You have the opportunity to be the answer by asking your audience to bring the Good New to thousands of wives and mothers in Asia through women missionaries. You also can invite them to sponsor children who so desperately need to hear and experience the love of Christ. Will you pray and consider joining Gospel for Asia’s Blog for Asia program to become that voice?    

Cari Poweziak is a book worm, failed blogger, pastor’s wife and home team missionary serving with Gospel for Asia. She and her husband of 17 years, Joe, have two adopted kiddos Harmony 13 and Josiah (aka Pookie) 9. Cari coordinates Gospel for Asia’s Blog for Asia team.   www.blogforasia.org
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