uzbekistan

Speaking Of Slavery…

January 17, 2013, by 1 comment

There’s been a lot of talk about modern-day slavery – or “human trafficking” – lately.

The awesome folks over at Passion have put a lot of time and effort into raising awareness and helping point to resources like EndItMovement.com

When I read that right now – right this minute – there are 27 MILLION slaves in the world… well, my brain just kind of retreats at the thought.

Considering my mortgage and the fact that I have three kids under 5 years old – my net worth is basically zero dollars. Am I just going to drop everything and fly to Thailand and go Jack Bauer in a brothel?

And then I visit a website like www.slaveryfootprint.org, which tells me that based on the size of my house and household and the age of my children and the items I own and the things that I typically eat and buy – based on my fairly “normal” “American” lifestyle…

There are about 100 slaves who contributed to my day-to-day life…

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Massacre In Uzbekistan

July 31, 2012, by 3 comments

In 2005, I packed a bag and moved to the other side of the world for what was supposed to be 2 years.

After 10 1/2 months, I was kicked out of the country, along with the rest of my team.

7 years after the fact, there is a new documentary that explains why:

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What WikiLeaks Reveals About Uzbekistan

December 13, 2010, by 1 comment

If you read this blog much, you know that I spent most of a year in Uzbekistan, and that the situation there is not a good one.

Islam Karimov is a murderous thug who rules through fear and intimidation, and millions of people suffer every day because of him.

Christians are routinely arrested and harassed, and prisoners are treated terribly.

This is an unexagerated reality for anyone who has spent any time there, yet the United States continues to maintain that they are our “partners in trade” and “partners in freedom”.

The recent wikileaks release of diplomatic cables shows that Karimov’s corruption is well-known among those who deal with him.

Check out this article where diplomats compare Karimov to a mafia thug.

Or this one, which includes a section from an actual cable:

Corruption is rampant in the GOU. Tenders and government positions can be fairly easily secured by paying the right amount of money to the appropriate individual, leading to a situation in which unqualified individuals have every incentive to engage in further corrupt activity to pay off the large debts they usually incur making down payments on the jobs.

Or this one, which begins:

The post-Soviet state of Uzbekistan is a nightmarish world of “rampant corruption”, organised crime, forced labour in the cotton fields, and torture, according to the leaked cables.

But the secret dispatches released by WikiLeaks reveal that the US tries to keep President Islam Karimov sweet because he allows a crucial US military supply line to run into Afghanistan, known as the northern distribution network (NDN).

Did you catch that? Basically, Uzbekistan is one step above North Korea, but our government says we need to be nice to them and ignore it all so that we can have a military supply line.

Sigh…

Please pray for this broken country, plagued by an evil ruler and hundreds of years of demonic oppression.

Pray for the thousands of believers who suffer daily for their courage to follow Christ.

Pray for 30,000,000 lost people with no good access to the Gospel of Christ’s saving work.

And pray for God to destroy the work of Karimov’s hands and open doors for a flood of missionaries and aid groups to come bring life to this dark place!

Pray For Persecuted Christians In Uzbekistan

November 12, 2010, by 1 comment

(Those reading from email or an rss feed will need to click through to see the 2-minute video above)

This is very personal to me.

There are somewhere around 30,000 believers in Uzbekistan, which is roughly 0.001% of the population.

I know a handful of them personally. They have been arrested, interrogated, spied on, sabotaged, and end up forced to live on the run, often to other countries.

This video is not an exaggeration or an isolated case.

Openly following Jesus in this context will cost you everything.

Please pray with me for our brothers and sisters in this part of the world.

Please, please, please pray for Osh, Kyrgyzstan

June 21, 2010, by No comments yet

Three weeks ago, Osh, Kyrgyzstan was a very large city with a very large population of Uzbeks, a people group very dear to my heart.

Today, a significant portion of the city lies in ruins. Hundreds are dead, and tens of thousands have fled the city.

Many Uzbeks have gone back to Uzbekistan, where it is much more difficult to reach them with the message of the Gospel.

My dear friends and former teammates were living in Osh. They are safely back in the states, but very uncertain of their future. It is possible that their whole neighborhood has been burnt to the ground.

Please pray with me that God will use this to advance the cause of the Gospel in Central Asia.