Dear Friend of Eurasia,
The biggest children’s outreach in Bangladesh is December 16. That day is Victory Day, the national holiday commemorating the end of Bangladesh’s liberation war.
The outreach, called Aji Se Din (which in Bangladesh means “This is the Day”), brings hope to children in the slums.
Twelve-year-old Parvej lives in a slum outside Bangladesh’s capital city. He is eagerly awaiting this December’s outreach.
“I go to the mosque every Friday for prayer,” says Parvej, “but when I went to the Aji Se Din outreach, I found love and hospitality. There is no other program in my community like this. Now I have a picture Bible I use to tell my little brother about Jesus. I can’t wait to go back.”
In 2003, a Bangladeshi Christian couple started Aji Se Din. As they walked the streets of the capital, they passed slum children digging in the dumpsters for food and were gripped with compassion. On December 16 of that year, the couple invited children into their home for a meal and to hear the Christmas message.
The next morning, the couple awoke to knocks on their door: the children were back and wanted to know when next they would receive food and stories about Christmas! Slum children continued to come to the house until it could hold no more, and eventually the couple found a building to host the children.
It has now become a church that serves 600 children twice per week!
Yet Bangladesh has more than 60 million children, most of whom grow up in staunch Muslim families. Bangladesh, and especially its capital, Dhaka, is a hot spot for Muslim extremism and human trafficking. The need to expand the influence of the Aji Se Din outreach is urgent given recent terror attacks in Bangladesh.
Our Assemblies of God personnel on the ground working with the Aji Se Din team emphasize the urgency of the times: “Muslim extremism is on the rise. We don’t know how long this event will be allowed to continue. Also, most of the children who come are vulnerable to human trafficking.”
That is why this year, Aji Se Din is expanding to two cities in Bangladesh on December 16—and they need our help to supply the food and discipleship materials at both sites.
Food and gifts together for one child cost less than
$3. Just $15 feeds 10 children at Aji Se Din as they hear about Jesus their Savior for the first time!
The outreach in the capital is expected to draw 2,000 children, while the outreach in the north is expected to draw over 1,000 children from remote villages.
Will you help provide necessary elements of the year’s biggest outreach to Bangladesh’s children?
Your gift provides food, Christian resources, and a new life for young people like Toma.
Toma is a teenager living in a Muslim family with her parents and four siblings just outside the capital city. As a girl in a fundamental Muslim family, she was not allowed to go anywhere except to the mosque to study the Quran. A friend invited her to go to the children’s church, started from the Aji Se Din event, but she was not allowed and refrained out of fear.
On December 16 two years ago, due to the national holiday, Toma’s parents permitted her to attend the outreach. There at Aji Se Din, Toma heard that Jesus loves her. She had been told that Christians were hostile and evil, but she met with nothing but joy.
Because Toma’s parents did not believe she was staying true to Islam, they forced her to marry—at age 14—and she lost contact with the church. However, her husband soon divorced her, and she was left on her own. The Aji Se Din ministry team found her, welcomed her back, and put her in school. Though she still lives in a Muslim home, she now reads her Bible and prays to Jesus secretly every day.
“We need this kind of program to happen again and again so that Aji Se Din can rescue more people like me,” says Toma.
Will you help the Aji Se Din team reach Bangladesh’s children during their one- day window of opportunity? Your gift of any amount is saving children from trafficking, introducing them to Jesus, and transforming Bangladesh’s future.