Pakistan: Brick-maker Image Overlooked
During the process of looking through our archived images of Pakistan for another grant proposal we are making, I came across this image that I had totally overlooked. I normally mark images with one, two or three stars in the editing phase. This image had none. Yet, it tells so much about the poor laborers [...]
Pakistan: Life of Persecution
Persecuted by Gary S. Chapman | BOOK INFO The persecuted often suffer in silence, not knowing if anyone or even God cares for them. This book project on the persecuted church in Pakistan is an on-going effort to increase the western church’s understanding of what it means to suffer for the faith. What should our [...]
Ethiopia: Benji Update
From Kevin Turner, SWI.org: “While we were able to keep Benji from prison, it was clearly God’s will that he go back to the refugee camp. His malaria, typhoid and severe malnutrition were treated and he was able to eat many good meals. He went back to the refugee camp, not as a refugee, but [...]
Ethiopia: Benji
Benji endured over three years in Eritrean jails, beaten and tortured to deny his Christian faith. He recently escaped, walking hundreds of kilometers to relative safety in Ethiopia. Benji told us of being locked in a suffocatingly hot metal shipping container in the middle of the desert with only two slices of bread and a [...]
Pakistan: Eyewitness to Violence
A few days before our last trip to Pakistan, we listened to our friend recount, via Skype, the horrors of two attacks on Christian colonies. More than 150 houses were destroyed. At least eight persons were killed. I only have this recording of his words because I was testing a new small recorder I planned [...]
Pakistan: Riding on Faith
(Face darkened for anonymity) Above, “J” wearing ball cap and western clothing. Several times a week, he weaves in and out of traffic on his motorcycle darting between donkey carts, and rickshaw taxis to different villages far beyond the outskirts of his city. In each place, he gathers small groups of Christian believers for Bible [...]
Pakistan: Facing a Giant
“M” (I can’t use his real name) stands dwarfed by this monolithic structure in Islamabad, the largest Mosque in Pakistan. Only 1.6% of the 170 million people living in Pakistan are Christians. As an Islamic-ruled state, discriminating laws against religious minorities are often used to persecute Christians and others. Frequently, the Pakistani government fails to [...]
Pakistan: A Different Osama
I (Vivian) didn’t get to meet 7-year-old Osama, a Muslim student at the elementary school sponsored by SWI, (Strategic World Impact) but the story the principal told us about him makes me wish that I had. It was just too bad our team left the very morning that classes resumed at a school where Muslim [...]
Pakistan: The Shooter
He looks like an ordinary Pakistani, with dark hair, eyes, and skin, but this is no ordinary man. The 25-year-old father of four small children is a hero to 70 women and children whose lives he saved with a shotgun and self-controlled smarts. He stood on his balcony for almost four hours fending off angry, [...]
Pakistan: Voyeuristic Trophy Hunter?
It is so easy to slip from being a sincere photojournalist documentarian into being a voyeuristic trophy hunter. The road to walk, the high road, is very narrow and the slope on either side is very slippery. The muddy incline on one side is called pride: Did I get the shot everyone will slap me [...]
Pakistan: Burned Out
Just back from Pakistan again. We will add more as we process what we have seen and heard. This man stands in what used to be his home and church facility that was looted and burned during a day of violence as thousands of Muslims rampaged through the Christian colony where he lives. (Canon 5D2, [...]
Pakistan: Where Freedom Falters
I can get so comfortable in my home. We are surrounded by peace, beauty, and all the choices freedom can offer. We lack not. We want not. We don’t even crave. I should be satisfied, yet, I am not. My heart cries out that I am a stranger in this land. The faces of the [...]
Pakistan: Multi-media
This is a multi-media piece about persecuted Christians in Pakistan, created in Final Cut Studio Motion. Click on the photo below to launch the project in Vimeo.
Pakistan: Anger and Justice; I Choose Grace
A Muslim woman refuses to open the door to a negotiator that was trying to gain possession of the house for the original Christian owner. A Muslim family had moved into the house when the original occupants had fled, fearing retribution when their two sons were imprisoned on a false 295(c) blasphemy charge. The Christian [...]
Pakistan: Passion
He walks a path that is not easy. Carrying a burning desire to share the Christian message with his fellow countrymen, he moved to the north. Despite the threats of danger from Islamic extremists, he took the risk. The passion that both captivates and enlivens him will not let him live any other way. Amidst [...]
Pakistan: You really have to want to meet!
Worshipers gather on a Sunday, knowing that only a few days before, two pastors had been killed, two churches were burned and 35 homes razed in Karachi. They worship with the power of God’s grace that overcomes the fear that tries to paralyze them. (Second photo) A church member uses a rented gun to protect [...]
Mexico: Simple Beauty
My pulse actually races whenever I know I have somehow captured a little frame, a tiny fraction of beauty. This is no great moment of human triumph or despair. No one will shed a tear or raise high-fives. Yet, I love, enjoy, and relish in the beauty that is created by simple shapes and just [...]
Mexico: Time alone, together
We all need time alone…a time to pull apart from the daily. How much better is time alone, together. My natural tendency is to be a loner, but I am learning to embrace and even desire a more relational lifestyle. We gathered in Mexico to pray, plan and listen, brothers and sisters with common goals [...]