Thank you for your continued prayers and support.
New Life Ministries has printed many Akha Bibles (please read this article and others for more details). We have just received reports from our mission partners in Thailand and Myanmar regarding the distribution of Akha Bibles.
We thank God for our sponsor who paid for these 10,000 Akha Bibles that we distributed in Thailand. The picture above is from our first distribution in 2019. But this pictures shows the traditional Akha headdress. The name “Akha” means “Far Away from Water,” because the Akha traditionally live on mountain tops, far away from water sources. They say they dig wells on the mountains and this is how they get water.
Below: Map of Chiang Rai Province in Thailand. The two Akha Bible distributions were done in Chiang Rai (the purple district in the middle) and in Mae Chan (the dark blue district) just north of Chiang Rai. You can see that Chiang Rai borders Burma and Laos.
It is believed that there are about a quarter of a million Akha living in China, 220,000 in Myanmar, 120,000 in Laos, 60,000 in Thailand, and 23,000 in Vietnam. There are very few Akha Christians in Laos, but some of our Bibles did reach them this time. The Joshua Project reports that 90% of the Akha in Thailand are Christians, or about 54,000 Christians. If this is true, then the 15,000 full Bibles that we have distributed in Thailand in our two distributions are still not enough. In Myanmar, it is reported that only about 16% (or more than 35,000) Akha people are Christians. Our next Akha Bible distribution will send many Bibles to Myanmar.
There are many efforts today to modernize the Akha writing system, but 90% of the people prefer to keep using the old writing system that has tone marks. They cannot read the new writing systems that do not have tone marks. The Bible they prefer to read was translated by American Missionary Paul Lewis. Until 2019, in the Lewis version, only the New Testament was available to the Akha people. We printed thousands of these New Testaments in the early 2000s. Paul Lewis had retired from South East Asia, but back in America he kept translating the Akha Old Testament. When he finished he put the manuscript on the internet in the hopes that some Akha person would one day find it. About three years after Paul Lewis’ death due to old age, an Akha Pastor named Ajui Liggin (pronounced Ah-Joo Li-jen) found the Old Testament manuscript online. He set up a team to edit it and reformat it, and this is the Bible that we printed and distributed.
Below is one testimony received before the Akha Bibles were distributed in Mae Chan and Chiang Rai, November 3-4, 2022. More testimonies will be shared next month.
My name is “A” and I am 47 years old and I am elder in my church. I was born into a non-Christian family in Myanmar. My whole village was animist worshipping the spirits. And for a while, when I was a teenager, I was the witch doctor leading the ceremonies. People asked me to do services for them for healing. And sometimes a baby would die in the womb, and there were no doctors around. But I could cut into the womb and take out the dead baby and I would bury the baby’s body. But I never really experienced the spirits. But it was a heavy burden doing this all the time.
Even while I was a witch doctor, I thought that one day I would grow up be a Christian and marry a Christian girl. I thought this, because there was a Lahu Christian village close to our village, and they have a worship service and they all dress up very nice, and I wanted to look nice. But I was not allowed to give up being the witch doctor and I was forced to do the sacrifices.
When I was still a teenager my dad was a drug addict, and we wanted to get away from life in Myanmar, so we made plans to move to Thailand.
We first moved to the border town in Myanmar where we had relatives, and this village was a Christian village. It’s here that I first heard the gospel of Jesus. And since I wasn’t in an animist village anymore, I thought it was a good time to leave my old religion and become a Christian.
My education was not good, and I could not read Burmese nor Akha. But in this Christian village they were teaching Akha in the church, and I would stay in the back of the church and listen and learn. After a while my friend gave me a Bible.
So I read the Bible and I tried to learn by myself. And all night I would just hold the Bible and I would sleep with the Bible.
After I became a Christian, things changed for me. I was not an educated person, but because of God, I could read and I could read the Bible and understand from the Bible how to live a good life, and how to live a holy life.
Before coming to Christ, I didn’t know how the young people should live. Like to be sexually pure and not have sex before marriage and don’t use drugs. But when I became a Christian, I learned how to please God and obey God and how to raise children and lead a family and how to live in God’s ways.
I have experience with God answering my prayers. One day the police came to me and detained me. They said they had arrested someone using drugs, and this person told the police that I am the one who sold him the drugs. But I did not sell any drugs. But someone paid the police to bring this false accusation against me.
So the police arrested me and took me to the police station. But I asked them why they arrested me, because I hadn’t done anything wrong. But they said they wanted 50,000 Thai Baht (about US$ 1,700 – which is a huge amount for a person living in a rural village) in order to let him go.
So I said, “Okay, I will pay you 50,000 Thai Baht, but since did you do this, God will judge you!” So one policeman answered, “Okay, I want to see what your God can do.” “So I answered, “God will judge you and He will punish you.” So I paid the 50,000 THB and then I left.
I went back to the village and told people there, and we all agreed to go to the police station and prove that I did not do this. But before we could go, the police came to me in the village and gave me my 50,000 Thai Baht back. And they asked me not to do anything, but to just be done with this issue.
So I believe God saved me from this situation, because I was right with God and I was not guilty of what they charged me with.
I know the Bible’s worth, because the Bible is the book of wisdom and everyone needs the wisdom from the Bible.
When I spoke to the police, I spoke from the Bible. I didn’t speak from my own words. I honor the truth in the Word of God, so everyone needs a Bible so everyone can get wisdom by reading the Bible. So people need Bibles. And people born into a non-Christian village have no opportunity to get a Bible. But I am happy to be able to distribute Bibles now to those that I know who need a Bible. And I am talking to Pastor B about if I can take Bibles back to my original village, Myanmar and share the Gospel.
The Bible is the most precious thing in my life. Nothing else has the worth of the Bible. I don’t have education, I never studied at any institute or Bible school, but the only place where I gain wisdom is from the Bible.
We are truly grateful for these kinds of testimonies and to know once again that the Bibles printed by New Life Ministries are having such a tangible and significant impact on the lives of those who receive them.
Please remember and pray for the Akha people and for our mission partners who are distributing the Bibles on the ground in SE Asia.
New Life Ministries is a non-denominational Christian ministry committed to serving the Lord by printing and sending Bibles and Gospel literature to Japan and the rest of the world, in each people group’s heart language.
Beginning in 1954, under the name New Life League, the ministry reached out to children, provided Gospel literature, and did evangelism through radio broadcast.
Later on, the work shifted more to the collection and printing of Gospel literature as the main focus.
Throughout history, there has always been a call for the supply of Bibles, and New Life Ministries has continued to do all that it can to meet the demand. Our purpose is to see Japan changed for Jesus, and that the whole world be filled with His precious Word.
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