Hope you are all keeping fine. India has been going through one disaster after the other for sometime now. The latest earthquake has taken more than 20,000 lives already and the toll is said to increase as some people admitted in hospitals are too seriously injured to survive. I have not been fully updated on what is going on there since I am on a business visit to New Zealand right now and I will be back in India only a few weeks from now.

Gujarat (where the earthquake occurred) has seen the death of many christian missionaries a few months back and many churches across the state were destroyed in anti-christian violence that broke out across the country. Since then, this is the second natural disaster to hit Gujarat.. the first which took place close to a year back killed thousands of people. It was a cyclone which hit the coast and wiped out a harbour. Orissa - another state which saw the death of many christians experienced a similar catastrophe a little over a year back when over 200,000 people lost their lives in what is considered the most powerful cyclone of the last century.

I am not sure there is a pattern here but there might be... a period of persecution against christians is followed by a disaster of terrific proportions - the kind that no one can guard against. It might be interesting to note that just a few weeks before the earthquake in Gujarat, an earthquake of a similar scale 5.9 on the richter scale occurred in the state of Kerala. There was hardly any loss of life or property. Kerala, by the way, has a very high ratio of christians in the population. Many of the missionaries killed during the anti-christian attacks across the country came from the state of Kerala.

There are many more examples of a similar nature which have happened in India over the past 10/15 years which come to mind. More than a million people have been wiped out in these disasters over the past decade. The last big earthquake in Latur district of Maharashtra state, took a toll of over 300,000 people. Again, Latur district was notorious for abetting crimes against christians.

But there are good things happening as well. There is a lot of revival going on India - especially among the Catholics with many Catholic groups spear heading the efforts to reach non-christians across India. The charismatic groups are also becoming far more focussed in their efforts. India needs prayer - like every other nation in the world. But there are aspects to India, which makes it unique in its need for prayer. The rising intolerance and the pattern of crime which we see against christians - there is a growing body of evidence to indicate that many of the attacks against christians and christian organizations were orchestrated by the governments in power... all these call for special prayer. But God is good and He has shown that He is firmly in control.

Regards, Prem -----