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Kyrgyzstan is a former Soviet republic situated in central Asia. It is bordered by China on the east and Pakistan on the south; to the north is the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, and to the west are the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Kyrgyzstan is a mountainous region of about 200,000 square miles. About half of the country's 4.5 million people are ethnic Kirgyz; the rest are a mixture of Russian and about 30 other ethnic groups. Historically, the population is mainly Muslim and animist, with a mixture of Russian Orthodox Christians and a few Mennonites and evangelical Christians; atheism also made inroads during the years of Soviet domination.
Heinrich Voth came from a Mennonite background and had Christian parents. He was baptized in 1968. In the early 1970s, he became a Christian youth leader and began to travel, ministering mainly to people of German and Russian background.
By the mid-1970s, he and some others began quietly distributing tracts in the villages. God also began to build a vision for outreach to the Muslim majority. Some Christians began translating the Bible in Kyrgyz, Kazakh and Uzbek. The draft translations were passed by hand through Estonia to Sweden for editing and then passed back for further work. The Gospel of John, for instance, made this journey four times. By the early 1980s, some Gospels had been translated.
Soon 15,000 Gospels had been given out, but the results were meagre. Voth asked God why this was so, and became convinced that the solution was increased prayer. He began going to the churches asking for prayer for the work. Some Christians seemed unconcerned about the Muslim majority. Others said they had been praying for centuries without results. Yet, in every place, small prayer groups sprang up.
The first missionary couple to Muslims, Andrey and Irene Peters, were sent to the village of Naryn in 1985, but it was four years before the first conversions there. Conversions were also beginning to be seen closer to the established churches. In several cases, people came to Christians asking for prayer for healing, and the prayers were answered. The New Testament in Kazakh, Uzbek and Kyrgyz had been completed by 1987. By 1989, there were two congregations of about 20 Kyrgyz, and a few Kyrgyz converts elsewhere.
The breakthrough came in the 1990s when the recently converted Kyrgyz began witnessing to their own people. Christianity began spreading in all directions, even in villages where no formally commissioned missionary has gone, similar to the way it spread in the Book of Acts. One young man attended church in Bishkek for a few weeks, became a Christian and then disappeared. A year later, he phoned from another town for help. He had gathered a congregation of 30-35, had taught them everything he knew and didn't know what to do next. A woman teacher visited her sister in Bishkek, became a Christian and has now started a church of 10 people in her home town.
A small Bible school has been started in Bishkek, but can't keep up with the need for workers. Children's evangelistic services attract large numbers during school holidays. The churches run a camp program that attracted 5360 children in 1996, most of them from orphanages or non-Christian homes. Due to the shortage of trained workers, they had hoped to scale back to 4000 campers this year, but registrations had surpassed 5500 by early spring.
A massive transformation is taking place in the churches. As a result of increased freedom, most of the Mennonites and German-speaking Christians have emigrated to Germany, and many Russian Christians have emigrated to the US. Their place is being taken by indigenous converts. For instance, the biggest church in the Tallus Valley a few years ago had over 600 members, all German-speaking; now only 8 are left, but the congregation has grown to 1000, almost all of them Kyrgyz. The congregations are now about evenly divided between Russian-speaking and Kyrgyz-speaking, and some congregations use both languages.
This growth has not come without opposition. The Islamic government has refused to recognize the churches and has attempted to shut down some churches by looking for irregularities in finances, childcare or sanitation procedures. In Naryn, a local mafia leader gave the churches a week to give up the Christian faith or face death. The churches prayed. The mafia leader was killed by his associates on Thursday of that week.
Following the collapse of communism, Kyrgyzstan is facing severe economic dislocation. The collective farms have been disbanded, new businesses are not being started, organized crime is growing, government workers are not being paid, unemployment is high, and there is widespread poverty and even hunger. In this context, the Christians are widely respected for their work ethic and their concern for the needy.
The Ray of Hope Mission, formally organzied by Voth in 1989, now supports 43 full-time missionaries. Funding for seven of these comes from MB Missions/Services, and funding for another 11 comes from Logos, a mission agency organized in Germany and Canada.
Standing behind the growth of the church in Kyrgyzstan, Voth says, is prayer. He notes that in addition to Christians in Kyrgyzstan, the work is being supported in prayer by churches in Germany, Finland, Estonia and North America.
JC
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