The terrible scene will haunt my soul for a long, long time. 

There are some things that once you see, you can never again…not see. The more dramatic or horrific, the more indelible the impression it makes on you. Last week gave me one of those things that I just can’t stop seeing.

Seeing that is, in my mind and in my soul. Abid, our Pakistani connection, sent me a normally short video that unfortunately seemed to run on forever. 

It came with this simple title: School in Pakistan. 

Abid’s intention was to follow up on why primary and secondary schools in Pakistan are so horrific to the children.  It has been this way for generations upon generations. The video showed a male middle-aged teacher sitting almost at ground level in a small, dirty and dusty room. He had a small, short unfinished wooden table in front of him.

The table was just wide enough to allow three small, maybe 5-7 year old boys to sit very close to each other and closely facing the teacher. 

This video shows the boys’ heads, backs and faces being slapped repeatedly with the full-force of a grown man as the teacher’s agitation with the boys grows. The fear that the small boys exhibited was real and heart-wrenching.

The rest of the class in the background cowered in fear, as the cries and whimpers of the three boys rang out. They were slapped and beaten as quickly as the teacher could recoil and inflict his punishment again and again. The video continued for the longest two and a half minutes I’ll ever experience.

The terrible scene will haunt my soul for a long, long time. 

Abid shares that this treatment is normal in schools in Pakistan. It was obvious that the teacher in this video fully knew that he was being recorded. He even looked into the camera and then intensified the abuse, as if to say, “…are you getting this?” 

Abid is told by the students in the school he teaches in, “…you are a nice teacher, you don’t beat us.”  Godless cultures are broken. Children are considered easy targets and receive large doses of this brokenness.  

You may have never heard of the name Iqbal Masih. In the 1980’s, at the age of 4 years old, Iqbal was handed over as payment for a R$600 rupee ($12.00 USD) loan, to be used for labor in a handmade rug manufacturer’s factory in his community outside of Lahore, Pakistan.

Fourteen hours a day this 4 year old boy worked, lashed and tied to the carpet looms with other children of like age. This was to pay back a loan that Iqbal’s father had taken out to care for his family. Six years later, the $12.00 debt still not paid off, Iqbal escaped the forced bonded-labor.

He was recaptured and beaten multiple times.

He escaped again and found his way to a school for child-laborers, and then ultimately led over 3000 other children out of their slave-labor prisons. He was shot and killed at the age of 12 years old because the Rug-mafia was not pleased with his desire to rescue children from the cultural approved, yet illegal abuse.  

We don’t have space this month to share what happens to young and adolescent girls in this culture. It is as bad or worse as what the young boys endured.

From the stories in this month’s newsletter, we are clearly reminded that this world is not our home and it is far more broken than we want to believe. ITMI is committed to helping nationals reach out and help rescue the lost, the needy and the forgotten souls that God so greatly values.  

This last month we were able to help Abid get enrolled in Birmingham Theological Seminary’s online extended biblical education. 

He hopes to add this biblical training to his current degree in mathematics, which, if God provides and makes a way, Abid hopes to start a biblically based school that will allow boys and girls to attend, in order to learn about the hope that God provides, and escape the traumas of their godless and abusive society.  

One unmentioned earlier blessing from this last month, God provided a way for ITMI to bring Project Joseph to far northeast India. Because of its strong Asian and jungle culture, the Indian government treats these people groups as outcasts and substandard.

COVID has caused lockdowns that keep families from eating. Starving families have little to no hope.

ITMI’s contact in this area, Athan Shongzan, united his national ministry team and created a three part plan to feed both Christians, the local unsaved, and a group of children that needed school fees in order to get an education that would allow them to help care for their family members.  

Athan shares, “We pray that our Father will make a way for us to get funds at His good time.”  “Praise God!” “And thank you so much.  We will materialize the mission as planned….”  “Once again, I thank God for ITMI and thank you for your leadership.”

Each of you who has prayed with ITMI, partnered with ITMI and encouraged ITMI are all a part of what God is doing in and through ITMI and our partners around the world. Each of us must know that we all are vital to God’s plan to rescue and redeem the lost and hopeless. Thank you and may God bless you richly.

In His Service,

P.S.  Please pray for my upcoming travels to South Africa for a pastor’s conference with Charl and his team.