Serving our Brothers & Sisters

Level of Need: Greatest

We challenge you to dig deep to restore the lives of our persecuted brothers and sisters. From the simple to the heroic, the mundane to the extraordinary, we are guided by one simple fact: whatever we do for the least of these, His sons and daughters, we do for Jesus.

The Where Most Needed fund provides for exactly that: the greatest needs of the persecuted. When unexpected tragedies arise, or another fund is running low, we call upon the Where Most Needed fund to fill in the gaps. The Where Most Needed fund also supports much of the behind-the-scenes work that makes advocacy, awareness, and assistance for the persecuted possible.

Through your generosity toward this most crucial fund, we will touch thousands of victims in the coming year.

Suggested Gifts for Projects Like:

• $35 – The average cost of an emergency food package for a victim of persecution
• $100 – One day of an overseas trip for our US staff
• $1,500 – The opportunity to bring an overseas victim of persecution to meet with members of Congress as part of our advocacy efforts

Sharing Sacred Scripture

Level of Need: Medium

For millions of Christians around the world, this Bread of Life is impossible to obtain for themselves.

North Korea is one of the most difficult places in the world to distribute Bibles. Therefore, we have to get creative in our efforts to spread the Gospel into this closed nation. One way that we do this is by sending bottles filled with Gospel materials, medicine, and rice by river and sea to wash up on the shores of North Korea. These unexpected deliveries bless the desperately poor of North Korea with two free meals: one temporal and one spiritual.

By supporting our Scripture fund, you will help provide Bibles to believers around the world who cannot access a Bible of their own, as well as Bibles for those who are still hungry for truth.

Suggested Gifts for Projects Like:

• $10 – One USB drive loaded with Bible content, devotional content, and Christian music
• $100 – 20 Bibles to distribute into the hands of persecuted believers
• $1,000 – A monthly bottle launch that sends hundreds of bottles of rice, medicine, and Bibles into North Korea

Afghanistan’s Secret Church

Level of Need: Medium

In Afghanistan, converting to Christianity from Islam is often a death sentence. Local Muslim leaders claim that there are no Christians in the nation. But Jeremiah, a leader of a large, underground church of Muslim-background believers (MBBs), would disagree.

Today, he partners with ICC to lead a rigorous training mission for Afghan pastors. Leading an underground ministry in Afghanistan isn’t easy. Government spies constantly try to infiltrate house churches and Jeremiah himself narrowly escaped death when he missed a meeting where everyone who attended was murdered by extremists. Still, the Lord is moving in Afghanistan, drawing many into His fold. We estimate that there are at least 10,000 underground believers in Afghanistan and that number is growing.

Through your gifts to the Underground Pastors fund, we support church planters like Jeremiah, so that they can focus on injecting life into Afghanistan.

Suggested Gifts for Projects Like:

• $20 – 10 SD cards carrying Christian materials for underground believers in Afghanistan
• $300 – Cost to translate, print, and smuggle one Christian teaching book for underground believers in Afghanistan
• $2,400 – Financial support for a church planter in Afghanistan for one year

Healing Wounds

Level of Need: High

On November 13, 2016, after the Sunday service, the church’s children were playing in the front of Oikumene Church in Indonesia when a bomber attacked. After learning of the attack, we immediately began our emergency response, providing financial support and medical care for the affected children.

Alvaro, a six-year-old boy, suffered severe burns during the attack. Due to the severity of his injuries, Alvaro and his parents would have to fly to and from Malaysia for numerous surgeries. An inflatable balloon was inserted into his head to grow new skin to be later implanted. For Alvaro and his parents, it was torture. “Having to see him go through balloon injection… where he would scream in high pitch and wail, it broke our hearts,” Alvaro’s father said.

Today, new skin has grown and been transplanted to cover his wounds and he has a new lease on life. When we asked little Alvaro what he wants to be in the future, he told us, “I want to be a surgeon, so I can heal somebody.”

By giving to our Kids Care fund, you can help provide crucial medical care to the youngest survivors of violent persecution.

Suggested Gifts for Projects Like:

• $60 – Physical therapy for a bombing survivor
• $300 – Average expense of monthly doctor visits
• $2,400 – Surgery to repair an injured survivor

Suggested Gifts for Projects Like:

• $30 – School supplies for a child in Nigeria for one year
• $150 – Two months of a child’s education in Pakistan
• $3,600 – A year of meals for 115 persecuted children in our Egypt education program

Unlocking the Future

Level of Need: High

Christian children are the unseen victims of persecution. While these children are not always the direct victims, the persecution that their families endure often has grave consequences for their futures. The death of a parent, forced displacement, or even everyday discrimination often causes children to abandon their education, limiting their opportunities for the future.

It is ICC’s privilege to step into persecuted communities all over the world and provide such children with educational support. By supplying them with tuition costs, meals, and school supplies, we are able to give them the opportunity to dream for a better future.

On September 22, 2013, Shayan and his younger brother Sam were orphaned when both of their parents were killed in the bombing of All Saints Church in Pakistan. Since then, ICC has provided them, and many other children affected by the bombing, with a high quality private education, textbooks, uniforms, and transportation to school every day.

Shayan and the rest of the All Saints Church kids are only a few of the children we help. Please consider giving to ICC’s Kids Care fund to support the education of persecuted children around the world.

Imprisoned Pastors’ Families

Level of Need: Medium

In 2017, Pastor Abraham was convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to four years in prison after attempting to share the Gospel with his taxi driver. At the time of his accusation, his wife was pregnant with their first child. Since the family didn’t have a source of income following her husband’s arrest, she depended on the church to meet her needs. In order to assist the family, we provided her with rent payments and day-to-day supplies, including 12 cans of baby formula.

Pastor Abraham’s wife shared, “I really thank ICC for supporting me with this fund. I never expected this! I hope ICC will continue to support me in your prayer that God will strengthen me. No matter [what] happens in my life, my husband and family will always serve God and the lost souls.”

Through our Suffering Wives and Children fund, we have the privilege of supporting vulnerable Christian families during their seasons of deepest need.

Suggested Gifts for Projects Like:

• $30 – School supplies and textbooks for one year
• $600 – Private school and boarding for one year
• $1,100 – Rent assistance for an imprisoned pastor’s family for a year

Wells in Iraq

Level of Need: High

During both conquest and retreat, ISIS destroyed most infrastructure in Iraq’s Christian cities. Their strategy was simple: destroy the Christians’ infrastructure, especially wells, to prevent them from returning. Yet, some Christians have returned, and are bravely rebuilding their lives.

However, these Christians are struggling with access to reliable, clean water. ICC has been digging new wells to solve this problem. We dug one well for a Christian school that provided fresh water for 400 students. They told us, “The children were not doing well psychologically at first. This year, however, they are doing better… At the beginning, we had no water. We couldn’t clean the school, we couldn’t wash. The water helped us clean the school which has improved morale.”

School wells serve 400 students, while neighborhood wells serve 50 people. Please consider joining with us in our effort to restore life back to Iraq’s Christians through ICC’s Community Rebuild fund.

Suggested Gifts for Projects Like:

• $40 – Half of the stones and water needed to drill a well
• $150 – A water pump
• $1,300 – Pipes required to reach underground water

Helping Converts Find New Life

Level of Need: High

Muslim-background believers (MBBs) are among the most persecuted but vibrant Christians in the world. Hated by their society, ostracized, and even attacked by their families and neighbors, they come to Christ risking everything and then persevere – serving, evangelizing, and preaching.

Last fall, Patrick, his wife Makena, and their young children were driven out of their home in Kenya by the local Muslim community after they converted to Christianity. Their house was ransacked and destroyed, and the family was forced to flee due to death threats.

Patrick said, “When we were evicted, we had no other option than making a grass house on a farm where the night cold and wild animals threatened our lives. We cannot count the number of times we cried at night seeing our small boys sleeping on the cold earth floor, hungry and dirty.”

We helped the family relocate to a safer part of the city where they no longer worry about attacks from their neighbors and set him up with a small farm for a sustainable source of income.

We suffer with all persecuted communities, but the MBBs we serve are among the most persecuted in the world. We support them and protect them as their newfound faith grows, but is most vulnerable.

Suggested Gifts for Projects Like:

• $75 – School clothes for one child of a newly relocated MBB
• $350 – One month of emergency rent and utilities following relocation
• $2,000 – Basic furniture following relocation (stove, refrigerator, washing machine, etc.)

Sri Lanka Easter Bombing Victims

Level of Need: High

ISIS has claimed or inspired roughly 150 attacks in 29 countries, from Mosul, Iraq to Paris, France, in just a few short years. ISIS convinced Muslim men to abandon their families, torture, rape, and murder Christians, and sometimes commit suicide in the process. Rooted in an evil ideology, they were fast-moving, cunning, and adaptive. And it terrified the world.

ISIS’s 2019 Easter bombings in Sri Lanka killed approximately 253 people and injured 500 more in churches and hotels, deeply scarring the country’s Christian community. “I was on the opposite side of the back of the church when the blast took place,” Kausalya recalled. “Both of my legs were fractured by the impact of the explosion and my hands were burned.”

Kausalya is facing a very difficult road to recovery. So far, she has undergone three major surgeries on her legs and abdomen. In addition to providing emergency aid to survivors of the Sri Lanka bombings, we will also help these Christians with their long-term recovery. Please join us in restoring the lives of the victims of attacks by ISIS and other Islamic extremist groups.

Suggested Gifts for Projects Like:

• $100 – Food assistance for a persecuted family
• $1,500 – Funeral support following an attack
• $2,500 – Small business assistance to support a family that has lost its breadwinner

Life-Giving Farms Feeding Thousands

Level of Need: Medium

In Nigeria, Christians have suffered horrendously at the hands of their Muslim countrymen over the last 20 years. Boko Haram and Fulani militants have killed more than 50,000 Christians and have forced millions of Christian farmers off their farms.

The attackers burn their crops and their homes, and murder any Christians they can catch. The rest, of course, flee and live as internally displaced persons within Nigeria.

As a result, ICC developed communal farms to feed and provide a living for these farmers. We currently have eight farms growing crops and two more in development. Each farm provides food and a living for hundreds of Christian farmers and their families. Incredibly, this program costs only $30 per person, per year!

By giving to ICC’s Nigeria farm initiative, you will be providing the necessary equipment and raw materials to help persecuted farmers get back on their feet.

Learn more at: www.persecution.org/nigeria-crisis

Suggested Gifts:

• $30 – Farming assistance to provide food and income for one Christian victim for a year
• $250 – Two irrigation pumps for the farms
• $5,000 – Plowing, tilling, and harrowing for one communal farm

Spreading the Gospel Throughout India

Level of Need: Low

When Pastor Arnov received his bicycle from ICC, his fists clutched the handlebars, his feet met the pedals, and a big smile spread across his face. He was thrilled because he knew how much farther he would be able to travel and how many more people he could reach with the Gospel.

Arnov lives to share the Gospel in India, but previously faced one major obstacle. He used expensive and unreliable public buses to travel between villages and then worked on foot within the villages. This severely limited his ability to reach the lost.

When we equip a church planter with a bicycle, they can reach two to three times as many people in any given month. By also equipping them with Bibles to distribute, they will be able to reach out to communities that are hungry for truth.

Equipped with a bicycle and 100 Bibles, each church planter will develop six small churches in the next year alone and 20-30 more churches in just a few more years. If we reach our goal of $200,000, we should see 6,000 new churches in India in 2020. Now, Arnov is able to pedal between all of his village congregations and minister to them in the same day. Please join us in this movement, and give today.

Learn more at: www.persecution.org/bibles-bikes/

Suggested Gifts:

• $25 – 25 New Testaments for a church planter
• $200 – A new bike and 100 New Testaments for a church planter
• $1,000 – Bikes and 500 New Testaments for a team of five church planters

Frontline workers

Level of Need: High

This year, ICC will operate in 30 countries around the world. To do this effectively, we find and train local Christians as our eyes, ears, and feet to serve the persecuted overseas. Without these brave men and women, we couldn’t effectively serve the persecuted Church around the world.

“Serving the persecuted with ICC has been a blessing,” a Frontline Worker from Pakistan explained. “However, it has also been challenging. At times, working on behalf of persecuted Christians puts me in great risk of being identified and targeted by radical Muslims.”

“Being a Frontline Worker for ICC is like becoming the thirteenth disciple of Jesus Christ,” a Frontline Worker from the Islamic world said. “I am fulfilling his commands of feeding the hungry, visiting the prisoner, caring for the sick, and clothing the naked.”

By supporting ICC’s Frontline Workers, you are equipping ICC to carry out the crucial documenting of incidents, providing for victims’ physical and spiritual needs, and behind-the-scenes logistics that make all of our work possible.

Suggested Gifts for Projects Like:

• $50 – Average cost for a Frontline Worker to identify and document victims of persecution
• $500 – Monthly support for a full-time Frontline Worker
• $1,000 – Annual training conference cost for one Frontline Worker

Lessons from the Persecuted

With Christmas just around the corner, there is no better time than now to give to the persecuted Church! All of the profits from my new book, The Last Words of the Martyrs, with a foreword by Francis Chan, will be used to support the families of Christian martyrs.

Sixteen years ago, when I started with ICC, I felt the Lord insistently impressing on me that the persecuted and the martyrs had a vital, life-giving lesson that He wanted me to discover and share with the free Church.

For more than a decade, I watched and listened to the martyrs, but I could only hear their message as a faint whisper.

Over time, I realized that the core of the martyrs’ message was not how they died, but rather how they lived and the lessons they learned along the way.

The whispered message of the martyrs will challenge your understanding of what it means to be a Christian. Your perception of what the Lord is doing with you and where He’s taking you in life will be forever changed.

I have no desire to sell you a book for a few dollars, but I do want to see your heart transformed by hearing the whisper of the martyrs as they call you not to death, but to real life!

To learn more and sign up for the companion devotional series, visit www.lastwordsofthemartyrs.org.

All of the profits from The Last Words of the Martyrs will be used to support the families of Christian martyrs, so please purchase copies today as Christmas gifts for your friends and family.

Jeff King
President
International Christian Concern

Order Your Copy Online Today for $16.99.

Call ICC at 1-800-422-5441 for quantity discounts:

• 2 for $27
• 3 for $35
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