Displaying items by tag: Christian survival

Shi Minglei remembers the fear when twenty security officers arrested her husband, put a black hood over her head, and interrogated her for thirty hours. Her daughter Aliyah was unable to speak after the incident. On countless occasions she felt pain, fear loneliness and hopelessness as a wife of an imprisoned human rights activist. She received no responses to her requests for information; the authorities had dismissed his lawyer and assigned communist party lawyers to convince him to plead guilty. She was desperate and she prayed like Jesus had prayed in Gethsemane, ‘Father, take this cup from me, but not my will, Your will be done.’ Then Jesus spoke to her heart: ‘I know. I know everything about you.’ Later ChinaAid staff found her and helped her escape with her daughter from China. After living a life of fear and hopelessness she now felt secure, so she changed her name to Hope.

Every aspect of North Korean life is controlled by the state, which believes that there is no higher authority than Kim Jong-un. Christianity threatens this belief and must be crushed. Tens of thousands of Christians are imprisoned in labour camps, yet the church is growing. There are 300,000 courageous believers, many not even telling their children, who live under constant surveillance by authorities looking for anything that might threaten the regime. There are even rewards of a new home or better job for anyone who helps discover Christians. Every citizen must report to a ‘neighbourhood watch’ system any absence from home, or a neighbour neglecting to clean the portrait of Kim which everyone must have on their walls.