It was Tuesday, December 31, the last day of the year 2019, when Sangmin Lee called me with excitement to report news of his amnesty. Early in 2014 Lee was sentenced to 18 months in prison for refusing, on the basis of his faith, to complete his mandatory military service. Although Lee was freed on Keep Reading…
“We don’t understand why it happened, but we do know that God was with Al through all this time.”
“This is something that we embrace. That we are not to fight with one another, but to live in peace with another.”
“I gave up being in the norm to live together with God.”
“Maybe people think persecution is always negative, but for us we learned how to depend on God while our church was closed.”
Like Paul and Suja Phinehas, featured in a recent story on the main Bearing Witness site, Naomi Tamura’s Christian faith makes her a religious minority. At Mennonite World Conference Assembly 16 in Harrisburg, PA, this past July, Tamura shared with us both the struggle and the opportunity that accompanies Christian faith in Japan. Both the Keep Reading…
Although most of the stories of the Bearing Witness site come from decades, or even centuries, ago, we also highlight current, ongoing stories of costly discipleship through this blog and our Facebook page. In those spaces over the past few months, we’ve featured the stories of two young men—one a Mennonite from South Korea and Keep Reading…
For many years during difficult financial times, aboriginal families in Taiwan would sell their young daughters to the prostitution industry controlled by the underground mafia. Child advocate groups estimated there were 60,000 child prostitutes at the time. Katherine Wu (Wu Fang-fang), a Mennonite pastor in Hualien, Taiwan, became aware of this situation and determined to Keep Reading…
Over the past few weeks, we’ve shared on the blog and on Facebook about Sang-Min Lee, a young Mennonite from South Korea who has refused to fulfill his mandatory military service, as a matter of faith and conscience. On April 30th, Sang-Min was convicted and sentenced to an 18-month prison term. Many people around the Keep Reading…
This story of the Binh Thanh congregation in Ho Chi Minh City (then Saigon) begins in the weeks following the People’s Revolutionary Army’s takeover on April 30, 1975. The following excerpts are taken from: Luke Martin, Nguyen Quang Trung, Nguyen Thanh Tam and Nguyen Thi Tham, “The Mennonite Church in Vietnam,” in Churches Engage Asian Keep Reading…