Missions Message

Last week our prayer focus gave us a tiny snapshot of India.  This week we will zoom in on the children of India.  According to Operation World, " 70+ million children are child labourers, 10 million are bonded laborers (a form of slavery to pay off family debts), 13 million children are homeless and two million are street children without families.  Female fetuses and often infants are killed and the estimate that there is a deficit of 40 million girls because of these practices.  Over half a million children are child prostitutes."

The following is directly quoted from the CIA's World Factbook: "India is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation; internal forced labor may constitute India's largest trafficking problem; men, women, and children are held in debt bondage and face forced labor working in brick kilns, rice mills, agriculture, and embroidery factories; women and girls are trafficked within the country for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced marriage; children are subjected to forced labor as factory workers, domestic servants, beggars, and agriculture workers, and have been used as armed combatants by some terrorist and insurgent groups; India is also a destination for women and girls from Nepal and Bangladesh trafficked for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation; Indian women are trafficked to the Middle East for commercial sexual exploitation; men and women from Bangladesh and Nepal are trafficked through India for forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation in the Middle East "   

Many of these statistics reflect the desperate poverty and needs Indian families face.  So please pray for:

 

1.  Christian ministries to rise up and address these desperate needs.

2. The gospel will be preached and transform communities and lives so that children would be valued, loved and not subjected to these kinds of horrors.

3. That our hearts would break for these children and that we would know how we can respond whether through prayer, giving or direct ministry.

 

Next Week:  Religions of India

by Simone Martin