Homes and Hope for Distressed Families

In many areas of East Asia where poverty is rampant, there are no churches and few believers. These areas are particularly rooted in Buddhism and resistant to the gospel.

But your generosity helped believers go out into these communities, offering the love and hope Christ offers.

We identified local families with significant needs in six rural communities. Teams of believers traveled into those communities.

With your help, they brought warm clothes, food, vitamins, hygiene kits, and simple health education to nomadic herdsmen and their families to sustain them during the harsh winter months.

We find that many children lack the warm clothes needed to make the long treks to and from school in extreme weather.

A recurring concern is the lack of sanitary containers to carry water from wells our teams previously built, so families were also given clean water containers.

Bringing these essentials opened the door to sharing the gospel and distributing Bibles to hundreds. In addition, national believers partnered with you in this outreach project, living out the Great Commission and serving “the least of these” (Matthew 28:19; 25:40).

This outpouring of God’s love met tangible needs and helped establish favorable relations with several government officials.

Thanks to your “partnership in the gospel,” national believers had more than 90 people came to faith in Jesus!

Please continue joining us in prayer:

• Praise the Lord for these new believers. Pray for their spiritual growth.
• Ask God to burden East Asian believers to reach these difficult places to help with discipleship and form a new church in these remote regions.
• Pray for wisdom as our team seeks creative ways to reach nomadic people and connect them with other believers, especially through digital engagement.
• Ask the Lord to guide us as we seek to address the significant mental health needs among these people through trauma healing ministries.

Your sacrificial gifts and prayers support outreach projects like this one, allowing us to demonstrate the love of Christ in tangible ways and open doors to share the gospel with East Asians.

Thank you so much for your generosity to this ministry and the East Asian people God calls us to equip and train. Your prayers and sacrificial giving take the love of Christ to families in need by replacing yurts destroyed by natural disasters, drilling deepwater wells for those with little access to clean water, and teaching marketable skills classes to help out-of-work individuals find sustainable employment.

Offering Men Dignity and Hope. At the end of May, we completed the Men’s Stable Income Project, which lasted 10 months, helping men living in a district on the outskirts of a large city. Many men do not have the access or means to get an education, preventing them from gaining skills needed for lasting jobs. Lack of employment means no income to support their families; it also leads many to fall into alcoholism or other damaging habits that harm their families. Because of your gifts, we introduced 216 men to the project and gave them personal-development training. Of these men, we identified 32 for additional vocational training, and 20 of these found permanent jobs in their field of study. This training helped the men support their families and find new purpose in their lives. Your giving enabled 52 men to hear the gospel, and five prayed to receive Christ. Please pray for the 12 men still seeking jobs in their new field and those who have heard the good news but have not yet responded.

Fanning the Flames of Grace. Earlier this summer, a wildfire devastated an area near us. Your generosity provided livestock to 12 families that lost all their animals in the fire. While the government helped them replace their homes and personal belongings, they needed livestock to support their families. As experienced herdsmen, they told us what animals they required—sheep, goats, or cows. When our partners purchased the animals for these families, they also shared the gospel. Many heard the gospel for the first time in their lives. Others had heard about Christians but misunderstood Christ and His followers. In the end, 139 people heard the full gospel, and 27 prayed to receive Christ. Pray for these new believers to develop discipling relationships with brothers and sisters in the nearest town and continue to learn and grow in their faith.

Living Water to Quench the Soul. This summer, we traveled to two areas to drill water wells. Families often walk two miles or more to get water from a highly polluted well in remote places like these. Each well we drilled was placed in a central location with a pump house built around it for protection from the elements. At every site, your gifts help us provide subsidies for ongoing costs to upkeep the well, which a local family oversees at each location. The Gambat* family agreed to this responsibility for one of the sites and heard the good news for the first time. They happily prayed to accept Christ. In all, 170 people heard the gospel, and 34 became believers. Pray for the Gambat family to be a gospel witness to all who come to collect clean drinking water, so others can also hear about the Living Water. Pray for these people to grow in knowledge and faith!

Thank you for your generosity and prayers. Your sacrificial gifts and intercession are truly transforming lives as we partner together to solve the world’s greatest problem, lostness.

*Name changed.

Praise God that, despite the global pandemic, we can still reach our people group with the good news of the gospel. One worker has built a relationship with a widow who lives in a remote area, caring for her livestock and raising her sons alone. She is the only believer in her immediate family.

Your gifts provided a second layer of insulation for her home, which a local sister helped deliver and install. During these visits, both sons saw the JESUS film and expressed a desire to follow Christ.

The news of the gift and the boys’ decision angered family members. This new sister has faced persecution, a severe illness, and the death of her mother and sister in the past few months.

The worker and local sister have used each of these challenges to serve and encourage this widow and her boys in their newfound faith.

Because of your generosity, a local believing couple took supplies to those most affected by the economic impact of COVID quarantine restrictions. We hoped to serve 50 to 60 families, but God had other plans. He multiplied the loaves and fishes, and, in the final count, 93 families received flour, oil, meat, vitamins, and other essential supplies for this challenging season.

Our local sister creatively shared the gospel in these homes, and many heard about the Bread of Life. Praise the Lord for His provision through your obedience to give to this ministry. Thank you for your faithful and generous support, despite the uncertainty of the past few months.

It takes tents, sleeping bags, and a lot of food for Peter Station* to get out in the remote areas of his East Asian country—the places where the herdsmen live. He throws all his gear in the back of an SUV, drives several days into the wilderness, and camps beside them so he can share the gospel with them. Sometimes they’ll choose to follow Jesus, and Peter will make plans to come back and start discipling them. And then when he drives out there again, there’s nothing but grass. They’re gone.

That’s one of the biggest challenges of reaching the herdsmen, a nomadic people who live off the land and move often with their herds of cattle. But Peter won’t stop—he knows he can’t until there are disciples all over the vast land where they wander. And over time, he is seeing lives transformed. “We’ve been able to see herdsmen come to know Christ, to accept Him,” he said. “We’re able to see baptisms in the middle of the wilderness and people being discipled.”

*Name changed

The end of 2019 has been a busy, but productive! We saw 30 salvations in the last 22 days as volunteers partnered with our team to offer winter assistance to families in need. More than 200 Mongolians have heard the gospel throughout the month! As well, we discipled several believers to dig deeper into their faith.

Currently, we are helping a family modify their home, so the father, who just suffered a stroke, can get in and out of his house to be with the children. We have also helped get appointments a few families to gain access to disability benefits (not an easy task in this country).

Thank you for your prayers and financial gifts to Homes and Hope for distressed families. Your generosity and partnership are expanding the kingdom of God this winter as families receive critical assistance and hear about the One True God who loves them and gave himself for them.