By Frank R. Suess

During this COVID-19 crisis, most attention has been directed to the problems in our western world, the disruption of supply chains, the lockdowns, and the human and economic damages we face in our developed world. What is often overlooked is the instant reduction of donations, lack of food, medical care and safety for the poor in third-world countries. It is in this context that I am writing to ask you for help.

For the past years, I have supported the efforts of the ,Asian Pacific Children’s Fund (APCF), a privately-funded charitable and Christian-value-based foundation founded and run by my close and life-long friends, Don and Molly McAlvany. I have the honer of serving on the APCF board.

APCF supports a number of orphanages and homes throughout Asia. It runs its affairs on a very tight administrative budget – i.e. hardly any overhead and no compensation whatsoever. Based on Christian values and lots of love, those involved in APCF are making a brave effort to help as much as they can to get children off the streets and into school, in an attempt to protect them from the manifold dangers and suffering they face every day.

Contrary to some of the larger humanitarian organizations that I have encountered over the years, each dollar of support goes to the kids and schools, almost entirely. Based on my involvement and as a member of the Board of APCF, I can vouch for this.

In the video, and then further to article, below, I invite you to take a moment to get an overview of the work done by APCF. The article was written by Don McAlvany and best explains the crisis our Sanctuary Children are facing in India. Any help, no matter big or small, will be most appreciated, especially now that the Coronavirus pandemic has further augmented these challenges.

To donate, please go to ,http://www.helpsanctuary.com or ring +1 866 211 8987.

The Challenge to Christian Children's Homes in India

By Donald S. McAlvany

India has become radically anti-Christian since fundamentalist Hindu Narendra Modi became Prime Minister. He and the fundamentalist Hindu parties that support him have vowed to destroy everything that is Christian in India by 2021. Churches are being burned across India, and pastors and Christians are beaten and sometimes jailed or killed.

Most of the Christian children’s homes (i.e., over 90%) have been forcibly closed over the past two to three years. In just one state in southern India (Tamil Nadu), there are now 200,000 of these “throwaway” children that are in desperate need of safety, housing and care. Extrapolate that over all of India’s states, and you are talking about millions of children newly at risk.

This has thrown millions of children (mostly poor Untouchables) back onto the streets or into impoverished villages, where they are at high risk of sex trafficking, factory slavery, or even the evil body parts trade.

None of this is discussed in the highly managed and controlled global media, and especially the US Establishment media. In fact, for the most part, not even many Christian groups (or churches) in America or around the world understand it or speak out against it.

THE SAD TRUTH – The Indian government does not want to see these children educated or Christianized. As Dalits, they are considered unclean – no better than bugs, and suited only for sweeping streets, cleaning sewers, handling dead bodies as they are brought to their Hindu funerals to be burned, or to serve as prostitutes.

The upper castes (who by-and-large ignore the Untouchables) do not want to see them have a life, an education, or become Christians. Of course, this is all vigorously denied by Modi and the upper caste Brahmins – and ignored by most Indians except for the victims, the Untouchables.

That is a big reason why Modi and his government are shutting down most of the Christian children’s homes in India and casting a million or more of these children to the wind (i.e., into the extremely high risk situations described above). But another reason is that many Hindus are converting to Christianity, and like the Communists in China, the Hindu leaders (who are enriched by the system) are afraid of the competition – just like the religious crowd in Jesus’ day who saw the people turning away from them to Jesus.

This is a part of the rapidly increasing persecution of Christians around the world that this writer has been writing about – in China and other communist countries; in the Muslim countries in the Middle East, Asia, Africa (i.e., Sudan, Nigeria, and over a dozen more countries); and now in the Hindu countries such as India and Nepal.

THE STORY OF SANCTUARY HOME – One of the major children’s homes APCF has helped to support over the years since its inception is Sanctuary Home in southern India. This 32-year-old home is run by an incredible couple – Prayer and Crystal. With 181 children (and four of their own), this dedicated couple has spent over a decade rescuing impoverished children from the high risk of sex trafficking, factory slavery, or the body parts trade, and given them a life, a loving family environment, an education, and a chance at a bright future.

Since 1988, Sanctuary (and its predecessor home) have put 800 children through high school, and over 200 through university – studying nursing, teaching, civil engineering, computer science, business, communications, theology, and more. Many are at the top of their class.

These are impoverished low-caste kids that would have never made it out of grade school without the intervention of Sanctuary. Now they have a life! Prayer and Crystal are very faithfully and sacrificially doing the work of a Mother Theresa or Amy Carmichael (who rescued thousands of young girls from sex trafficking and gave them a home and life at Dohnavur Children’s Home in southern India.

In the video provided below, “NOW WE ARE FREE: FROM HUMAN TRAFFICKING TO HOPE.” you will be able to learn of the heartwarming story of this couple, the Sanctuary Home, the precious children they are saving, and the incredible attack they have been under from powerful evil forces. It will also show a way for Sanctuary to flourish and how you can help. Please view it and share it with family and friends or at your church.

"Now we are free: From human trafficking to hope."

To donate, please go to ,http://www.helpsanctuary.com or ring +1 866 211 8987.

LIVING WITH NON-STOP HARASSMENT – However, throughout much of Sanctuary’s (and its predecessor home’s 32-year existence, it has been under relentless harassment from the anti-Christian government – with a nonstop flow of impossible and often contradictory demands and threats of closure.

Seven separate agencies for several years kept making increasingly impossible demands on Sanctuary Home, and at one point one sympathetic insider in one of those agencies shared that they were paid a bonus when they closed down a Christian children’s home.

This of course comes straight from the top of the Indian government (think Modi). The list of new demands continued to grow – most of them very expensive or downright impossible to comply with. Meanwhile, across the country, hundreds of Christian children’s homes were being shut down. For Prayer and Crystal, no matter how hard they were fighting back, the handwriting was on the wall. It was only a matter of time until they would be shut down.

THAT TRAGIC DAY FINALLY ARRIVED – Then it happened. At 6:00 PM on the evening of March 23, 2018, government agents walked in and informed Prayer and Crystal that their home would be permanently closed by 9:00 AM the next morning and the children dispersed back to their villages, to the streets, or wherever. It was an unbelievable, crushing, devastating, heartbreaking blow for Prayer and Crystal and the children.

As the 181 children reeled in shock at the news that their life at Sanctuary was over, that their education was over, that their safety and freedom from risk of the sex trafficking and other heinous crimes discussed above were over – a flood of tears and despair swept Sanctuary. Many, many hearts were broken that day.

The children began to pack and leave for God-only-knows-where, with their hope for the future, for safety, and a good life that would have been impossible before coming to Sanctuary, now dashed on the rocks. It was a very dark and discouraging time at Sanctuary with a great litter of broken hearts left in the wake. (All of this is discussed in the “Now We Are Free” film.)

FIGHTING BACK: THE REBIRTH OF A DREAM – It is often darkest before the dawn, and that appears to be the case with Sanctuary Home and these discarded (but not forgotten) children.

About 18 months ago, some very wise counsel suggested a rebirth of Sanctuary as a live-in educational institution – in the West we call it a boarding school – usually thought of as for the children of the rich and snobby. But in the India context, with the children being from the poorest of the poor villages, there is no well-to-do family to finance them.

Nevertheless, the legal structure for a boarding school is much simpler in India than for “children’s homes,” and is not governed by the seven agencies that are given bonuses for shutting down Christian children’s homes across the country. Instead, they are governed only by the Department of Education.

That department is much more accommodating as long as its rules – which are more reasonable – are followed. So, in the months that followed the shutdown of Sanctuary, there has been a flurry of activity on the part of Prayer and Crystal and their staff to redefine and start the legal process of Sanctuary becoming a boarding school. There have been many hurdles to cross. In fact, such is the progress that the Sanctuary School project has made that the authorities have now granted Sanctuary’s leadership a new licence enabling 125 children to return with immediate effect.

Construction of the school has been halted temporarily due to the Corona pandemic, but we are hopeful that it will soon restart. The approvals, access road, foundations, basement and all utilities for the school (Sanctuary refers to this as Phase I) have been completed, and the building of the classrooms for school grades 1-8 (Phase II) is well underway. Sanctuary acquired and has long-since paid for adequate land (in the country in remote southern India). Once construction can recommence, we are hopeful that this phase will be completed within four months. Financing for Phase I and Phase II has been secured.

NEW CHALLENGES FACING SANCTUARY – As soon as Phase II is complete, the Sanctuary Team plans to start the construction of the second floor of the school building, which will provide classroom and other support facilities for school grades 9-12. In addition, the Department of Education has stipulated that the home and school staff, and Prayer and Crystal and their children, must be housed outside the walls of the existing Sanctuary Home, requiring additional building structures. The budget for this final phase of construction (Phase III) is $500,000.

Please help to make the seemingly impossible become possible and for 182 children, whose future seemed at peril, to be able to return not only to the family environment they all so cherish, but also to soon become recipients of a first-class education.

To donate, please go to ,http://www.helpsanctuary.com or ring +1 866 211 8987. Thank you.