Dear Friend of the Persecuted Church—

Pictures are up!  If you would like to see the people and places that our team visited on our recent Middle East survey trip, please click here.

I’d like to tell you today about one of the men that you can see in our pictures from Jordan.  While we were there, he told us a story that he had never told anyone, not even the pastors he worked with.  For security reasons, I could not show you a picture of his face, but you can see his leg on that page—still scarred from the torture he experienced.

Brother W is an Iraqi, and while living there under the regime of Saddam Hussein, he received a letter from Muslim extremists, demanding that he leave his home.  Because he was a Christian, the letter stated, he was not worthy to live in and should leave or he would be killed.

It was not long after receiving this letter that he was caught, bound and blindfolded, and carried away to an unknown location.  In order to extort a ransom, he was brutally tortured.  In fact, the kidnappers called his brother to demand the money, and while on the phone they would use electrocution to torture W, so that his screams would motivate his brother to come up with the money.

The churches were able to raise the money to pay the ransom, so after two and a half days Brother W was thrown out into a street and carried by those that found him to his brother’s house.  Because of this experience, he left and moved to Amman.  His brother left his home as well, and all of their possessions were stolen by the same captors that kidnapped and tortured W.

“My testimony is a small sample of what is going on in today,” he told us.  “There are many cases like this happening, especially facing the Christians who are in Iraq.  Persecution, theft of money, property, also they killed many Christian families.”

Even since the time of Brother W’s story, the violence towards Christians has not abated.  Please pray for these Christians, who are routinely threatened, assaulted, and even tortured or killed for their faith.  They live in circumstances that we cannot even imagine, but our prayers can go so much further than our imaginations—and they make a difference!

Yours for the Body of Christ,

Gabriel J. Waddell
Executive Director

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