Christian ministries in Iraq are working day and night among the displaced Kurdish people of Iraq with an aid mission. The aid mission is providing necessities of displaced people and is attempting to convert them to Christianity. This information is provided by the Christian Aid Mission and is published by Mission Network News of USA. (by Ruth Kramer, on 13th October 2014, https://www.mnnonline.org)
A colonel, serving as a division commander of the Peshmerga and fighting ISIS, is converted to Christianity, according to this report. The Kurdistan Regional Government's armed forces to which the colonel belongs, have helped to slow the incursion of ISIS in its brutal push to establish a caliphate imposing a strict version of Sunni Islam. With the aid of U.S. air strikes, the Peshmerga have also slowly retaken some territory. They are helping to secure the Kurdish capital of Erbil, where a ministry team assisted by Christian Aid Mission is supplying displaced people with food, clothing, beds, and medicine. The colonel met the ministry team members and interacted with them. The colonel was impressed by the help that is being offered. The Peshmerga colonel, whose name is withheld for security reasons, was quick to respond.
"You see the Arabs around you in the Gulf states, which claim to be religious Muslims, have not sent us anything but terrorists," he told the ministry team members. "But you who follow Christ send love and peace and goodness to people every day. Today I am the happiest person! I've had the privilege of making this decision,' and he received a copy of the Bible."
According to the report, the colonel's experience was just one of many taking place in Iraq. In cities of refuge like Erbil for people displaced from their homes in other parts of Iraq, people are turning to Christ at a stunning pace. Tent churches are springing up in the makeshift camps. Under normal circumstances, mission strategies focus on how to proclaim Christ effectively, but the challenge now is keeping pace with the number who would receive Him, the director said. The fervor of missionaries is such that some church leaders and workers for ministry organizations are remaining in Iraq even as the cruel practices of ISIS–beheading Iraqi children who refuse to deny Christ in Qaroqosh and Western journalists elsewhere–gain greater notoriety.
The news also includes a message and a request to more funds for food, water, medicine, and other supplies and promises to utilize the opportunity to demonstrate Christ's love in a tangible way. While the UN and its powerful members are approaching the problem of ISIS in a hesitant and calibrated manner, missionaries are busy in poaching the helpless Islamic denominations by providing them with New Testaments and audio Bibles.
