www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuohmD4Ajk8

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.

The article I just stumbled over begins:

WHEN her baby died soon after delivery, Gulbahor Zavidova, 28, a poor farmer’s wife, longed to be pregnant again. After months of trying she and her husband visited a doctor who told her she could never have another child because she had been sterilised.

The procedure had been performed immediately after she gave birth, by doctors who did not ask her consent. On learning she could not bear children, her husband left her.

“Not a day passes without me crying,” she said. “I was outraged when I found out what they had done. How could they do such a horrible thing without asking me?”

According to human rights groups, tens of thousands of young women like Zavidova have been sterilised without their consent in the authoritarian former Soviet state of Uzbekistan.

Uzbek sources say the measure was ordered by Islam Karimov, the president, who has ruled with an iron fist for 20 years. The policy is aimed at keeping down the country’s poor population — with 28m people, it is Central Asia’s most densely populated state.

I think something about our demoralized American sense of reality will tempt us to assume this is some kind of over-dramatization or over-simplification. But it isn’t. I saw the corruption of the Uzbek government for just shy of a year while I lived there, and I have no problem believing this.

It’s a dark, hopeless place with a dark, murderous, and thoroughly corrupt government.

Please pray for them with me.

Pastor J.D. lived for a couple of years in a Muslim country in the pacific rim of Asia, and also got his PHD in Islamic studies. “Breaking The Islamic Code” is his attempt at helping us ‘westernized Americans’ better understand Islam, Muslims, and the huge gaps in culture and communication that often exist.

Having lived in a ‘Muslim’ country myself, and hoping to possibly plant a church in a Muslim context some day, I look forward to seeing what he has to say!

This functionality is provided by the fine folks at the Joshua Project. The Joshua Project is dedicated to finding all the people groups in the world, and getting a handle on their status in terms of how they have been influenced by the Gospel. In so doing, they help determine exactly how much work is left to be done in order to complete the Great Commission.

Today’s Un-reached People of the Day are the Tatars of Ukraine.

Based on the best info available, which is from 2002, about 0.01% of the Tatars are Christians. That means that if you woke up as a Tatar this morning — living in a Tatar community and engrossed in the Tatar culture — you would have to know 10,000 other Tatars in order to know one who is a follower of Jesus who could tell you about Him.

“But can’t they just turn on the TV to hear about Jesus?”

-What TV?

“But can’t they just go to the library and read a book about Jesus?”

-Seriously? If someone were literate and if there was a library anywhere near their home and if that library had Bibles translated into the local language and if there was a way to read one of those Bibles without totally freaking everybody out, then maybe…

The Tatar people are dear to my heart because I had the great privilege of spending a lot of time with a couple of them when I lived in Central Asia. I spent hours talking about Jesus and His great love and sacrifice, and I realized that sharing Christ with a cultural Muslim is a lot like trying to tear down a brick wall with a carpenter’s hammer… slow and painful work.

In the end, I had two friends who chose to follow Christ. I enjoyed their hunger to learn all they could about Jesus, while it lasted. My team had to leave abruptly and I wasn’t able to keep contact with them in all the craziness. It’s very possible that they spent some time being detained for even knowing me and my teammates.

I wonder if they think we abandoned them.

I pray for them whenever I think of them. I ask God that they would remain faithful, even in such a dead and hopeless place. I pray that their experience with Him was deeper than the connection it gave them to some Americans. I pray that we will have some great conversations in heaven. Some day.

Please pray with me for the Tatar people. I pray for the followers of Jesus among them to remain faithful and multiply. I pray for those who are lost among them to grow weary of the hopelessness of cultural Islam, and that God would open their eyes to see the beauty of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

And I pray that God would send people to bring the message of the Gospel to them.

Do you believe God has specifically called you to stay in America and live a typical American life?

If not, what are you doing about it?

Small children are forced to pick cotton instead of go to school for weeks at a time during the fall.

The cotton is grown in fields that the government essentially seizes, and then the cotton is sold for the government’s profit to other countries.

I was suprised this weekend to come across this article about how that may be coming to an end:

But, in what has been described as a major breakthrough, a decision by some of the world’s biggest clothing businesses has forced the Uzbeki government in recent weeks to sign International Labour Organisation conventions that commit the country to stop using child labour in its state-sponsored industry.

Retailers that have pulled out of the central Asian state include Tesco, Asda Wal-Mart, Marks & Spencer and Gap.

This would be a huge step forward if it works, which is still way up in the air:

Steve Trent, director of the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), said: “This is a major step forward. Virtually nothing persuaded the government to change course. But the actions of retailers and campaigners are definitely now having an impact. But the key question that remains is whether the Uzbeki government will implement the conventions. They need to allow independent monitoring and work with civil society, which are basic requirements of the conventions they have signed up to and ratified. They are not doing this so the jury is out.”

Nevertheless, I’m encouraged that someone is taking notice of the human rights abuse in Uzbekistan.

I applaud the retailers who are taking a financial hit to stand up for what is right.

Let’s keep praying!

Moves like this are common in Uzbekistan, as the government, composed of murderers and thieves moves closer and closer to the soviet dictatorship that supposedly fell apart after the Cold War.

Here’s the abstract:

In a move that appears designed to give the Uzbek government total control over the legal system, officials in Tashkent are requiring all defense lawyers in Uzbekistan to reapply for licenses to practice law.

Many defense lawyers believe that those who refuse to do the government’s bidding will end up having the license renewal applications rejected. Uzbek judges and prosecutors are already appointed by the executive branch.

Pray for Uzbekistan.

Pray for God to open the eyes of those who are lost.

Pray for God to tear down or reform the corrupt, broken leaderhship.

Pray for God to have mercy.

And thank Him that He allowed you to be born in a better place…

It makes me sad that the Obama administration will probably completely ignore this because they ‘need’ to build an air force base there.

Here’s how the article kicks off:

On its final working day in office, the Bush administration re-designated eight countries as severe violators of religious freedom but waived possible sanctions against Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan, officials said Monday.

The moves were reported to key members of Congress in late January but were not made public until Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s State Department informed the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom about them last week, State officials said.

On Jan. 16, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signed documents labeling Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea and Sudan as “countries of particular concern” for abuses of religious worshippers. The Obama administration took office four days later.

Read the rest…

I just came across yet another article about child labor in Uzbekistan*.

Here’s how it starts:

Despite signing two international treaties and adopting domestic legislation prohibiting the use of child labor, Uzbekistan continued to rely on a “state-orchestrated mass mobilization of children to bring in the 2008 cotton harvest,” a new report has found.

By the end of September, with the pace of cotton collection lagging way behind harvest projections, officials in some areas ordered students as young as first graders into the fields…

I witnessed this first-hand a couple of years ago. The human rights situation in Uzbekistan is terrible.

Please take time to pray for the country. Pray for their wicked president. Pray against all the corruption. Pray for God to remove the strongholds that make that place so terrible for the nationals. Pray for the missionaries there. Pray for the believers there. Pray for God’s kingdom to come…

*I’ve written about this issue before here, here, and here.

Most of my friends know that I spent a year in Uzbekistan, and that I would give a lot to go back.

I posted a bazillion pics from my trip when I first came home, but the server I used for those has become bogged down with spam, and most of the folks who read this blog now didn’t way back when those photos were new to me.

So, I’m slowly porting some of them over to Flickr, complete with explanations and everything.

Not only that, but if you spot a photo you particularly like, I’d love to sell you the full-size version for any price, and I’ll give the proceeds to support many close friends who are working to spread the Kingdom of Jesus in Central Asia.

(For a point of reference, $20 is enough to support one full-time native believer within the country for one month)

Click here to view the photos, and check back for new picks throughout the next several weeks!

Hmmmm… Interesting thought…

While I’m on the topic — while I have some strong political beliefs, I generally steer clear of waving them around too much. But seriously, everyone with a John Kerry sticker on your car — people are already campaigning for the NEXT election. I think it’s time to wrap it up already :0)