I have been through the depths of poverty and sickness. When people ask me what has kept me going through the troubles that come to all of us, I always reply: "I stood yesterday. I can stand today. And I will not permit myself to think about what might happen tomorrow." I have known want and struggle, poverty and anxiety and despair. I have always had to work beyond the limit of my strength.

As I look back upon my life, I see it as a battlefield strewn with the wrecks of dead dreams and broken hopes and shattered illusions, a battle in which I always fought with the odds tremendously against me, and which has left me scarred and bruised and maimed and old far before my time. Yet I have no pity for myself; no tears to shed over the past and gone sorrows; no envy for the women who have been spared all I have gone through. For I have lived. They only existed. I have drunk the cup of life down to its very dregs. They have only sipped the bubbles on top of it. I know things they will never know. I see things to which they are blind. It is only the women whose eyes have been washed clear with tears who get the broad vision that makes them little sisters to all the world.

I have learned in the great University of Life a philosophy that no woman who has had an easy life ever acquires. I have learned to live each day as it comes and not to borrow trouble by dreading the morrow. It is the dark menace of the picture that makes cowards of us. I put that dread away from me because experience has taught me that when the time comes that I so fear, the strength and wisdom to meet it will be given to me. Shortcomings of modern life doesn't bother me. Little annoyances no longer have the power to affect me. After you have seen times after times your whole edifice of happiness and ever-lasting hope topple and crash in ruins about you, it never matters to you again that a servant forgets to arrange the "Sofreh", or the cook spills the soup.

I have learned not to expect too much of people and of Life, and so I can still get happiness out of the friend who isn't quite true to me or the acquaintance who gossips. Above all, I have acquired a sense of acceptance and humor, because there were so many things over which I had either to cry or laugh. And when a woman can accept and joke over her troubles and misfortunes instead of having hysterics, nothing can ever hurt her much again. I do not regret the hardships I have known, because through them I have touched life at every point I have lived.

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AN UNACCEPTABLE HELPLESSNESS By: Dr. Jumma Khan Marri. One opens The News papers on a daily basis to read the most recent article about the horrible stories of droughts in Balochistan and in the other hands the daily announcements of Punjab governments progress stories openings of new schools hospitals universities and so on, while inside the Balochistan, economic and social bad news multiply with a joint relentlessness. Nonetheless, Government proposes another large tax increases now in the tribal areas while taking away the last piece of bread from the poor people. In spite of the fact that Balochistan is the richest of all Pakistan so called provinces its people are among the poorest in the country because our riches are being stolen from us for the past 55 year and we should get our name written in genesis books of records as the most tolerant nation in the world. If other wise we could take a common stand to stop this practice of looting.

The public education system is in a major crisis, and health systems for Baloch peoples simply do not exist. Pakistan military in mean times asks for billions dollars in their imaginary war preparations with enemy who does not exists, well one might ask India, a sane person understands that at present situation India will never go to war with Pakistan . And the unemployment rates in the Balochistan mount inexorably, as more jobs are lost every day in more estimation almost all Baloch peoples are jobless do not count few thousands who also got some jobs with help of ISI for their own purpose with strings attached. Nevertheless, preparations for an unimaginably costly war with India continue and continue without either public approval or dramatically noticeable disapproval. A generalized indifference which may conceal great over-all fear, ignorance and apprehension.

In Balochistan, the situation appears more peculiar. For almost last five years in Balochistan peoples lost hope on politicians, regional experts, administration officials, journalists who repeatedly clamed that billions are being spent on drought hit areas but all claims were pure lies. Most of this declared money went in the pockets of local authorizes and those who supposed to distribute them.

To today's practically unanimous chorus has been added the authority of the United Nation's Human Development Reports on Balochistan which certified that Baloch dramatically lack behind rest of the Pakistan in all basic elements of human life, education, health system, clean drinking water and electricity, with almost no existence of roads and communication, knowledge, and women's rights, hence no economical activities at all. Everyone says (with some justification, of course) that Balochistan needs more schools and basic education; it should not only be free but compulsory. for all that Balochistan present educational system is a disaster, in effect, a school for religious fanatics and suicide bombers funded not just by crazy imams and their wealthy followers (like Osama Bin Laden) but also by governments who are supposed allies of the United States. The only "good" Baloch are those few people who stand with generals and old mafia type of bureaucrats appear in the media decrying immense development activities are going in Balochistan and shamefully claim modern Baloch culture and society without reservation clearly not even understanding what they mean.

In the end you will find all the development activities were only near their home town or private lands. I recall the lifeless cadences of their sentences for, with nothing positive to say about themselves or their people and language, they simply regurgitate the tired Pakistani formulas for last fifty years like mega projects for Balochistan already flooding the airwaves and pages of print. Many pro paki Baloch politicians say we lack democracy, they say, we haven't challenged radicals enough, we need to do more about driving away the specter of Baloch nationalism and the credo of Baloch separatists .

That is all discredited, ideological rubbish. Only what some Pakistan oriented, and their Pakistani instructors, say about the Baloch and nationalists. The rest isn't realistic or pragmatic enough. "We" need to join modernity, modernity in effect being Western, globalized, free- marketed, democratic -- whatever those words might be taken to mean. I shall tell you that we Baloch not only fell are ourselves second or third grade citizens but we are infect enslaved people we can not move freely in our own lands from western Balochistan to eastern parts or other wise that side imam khumani fedains are ready to arrest and torture as drug traffickers and on Pakistan side we arrested as smugglers and outlaws running from law, this is long practiced scenario between both countries where both side deny Baloch youth education jobs and force them to go out of law here the reason is found to prosecute them with harsh and inhuman laws , if there is any chances for some jobs in your own region where farshis and Punjabis do not go from fear, are sold by the local puppets with huge sums which every Baloch can not afford, I have many such examples in hand when there will be time I will write them for all my readers.

The clash between Baloch nation and occupiers is imminent that ISI, and army generals and their minions are trying to fabricate as a cover for a preemptive oil and territorial hegemony against Baloch is supposed to result in a triumph of democratic nation-building. Never mind the bombs and the lootings of the past which are unmentioned. This drive of the mega projects will throw dust in the watchful eyes of the critics that Balochistan at last is getting what it wanted all time and the Punjabis undeclared goal is to throw out Baloch from their homes and make them minorities to replace them with Punjabis and muhajirs and re-drawn map of the whole region. We are told by the army generals, that Baloch will welcome their new development projects, and perhaps forget entirely about their past sufferings. Perhaps. Meanwhile, the soul-and-body destroying situation in Balochistan worsens all the time.

There seems no force capable of stopping ISI and army, who bellow their defiance to the whole Baloch nation. We forbid, we punish, we ban, we break, and we can destroy. The torrent of unbroken economic violence against an entire people continues. In this entire panorama of desolation, what catches the eye is the utter passivity and helplessness of the Baloch people as a whole. The Pakistani government and its servants issue statement after statement of purpose they speak of progress in Balochistan and use the terrorism as pretext, they move troops and material, they transport tanks and heavy guns around Balochistan, but the Baloch leaders individually and collectively can barely muster a bland refusal at most they say, no, you cannot use military bases in our territory only to reverse themselves a few days later. Why is there such silence and such astounding helplessness? The large and powerful army is about to launch and is unremittingly reiterating its intention to launch a war against the so called out lowed elements in Baloch country, now ruled by a dreadful regime, a war the clear purpose of which is not only to destroy the Baloch nationalists but to re-design the entire region.

The army has made no secret that its plans are to re-draw the map of the whole Balochistan with or without Baloch wishes, perhaps changing the present map of Balochistan and may have other unseen or heard intentions in the process. No one can be shielded from the cataclysm when it comes (if it comes, which is not yet a complete certainty). And yet, there is only long silence followed by a few vague bleats of polite demurral in response. Pakistani government contemptuously plans for our future without consulting us. Do we reserve such racist derision? This is not only unacceptable: it is impossible to believe. How can a region of almost 15 million Baloch wait passively for the blows to fall without attempting a collective roar of resistance and a loud proclamation of an alternative view? Has the Baloch will completely dissolved? Even a prisoner about to be executed usually has some last words to pronounce.

Why is there now no last testimonial to an era of history, to a civilization about to be crushed and transformed utterly, to a society that despite its drawbacks and weaknesses nevertheless goes on functioning? Baloch babies are born every day, children have no schools, men and women have no future and work, and their children have no future and present, yet they play, and laugh and eat, they are sad, they suffer illness and death. There is love and companionship, friendship and excitement. Yes, Baloch are repressed and misruled, terribly misruled, but they manage to go on with the business of living despite everything. This is the fact that both the Baloch leaders and the Pakistani government simply ignore when they fling empty gestures at the so-called "Baloch nation" invented by mediocre Orientalists. But who is now asking the existential questions about our future as a people? The task cannot be left to a cacophony of religious fanatics and submissive, fatalistic sheep. But that seems to be the case.

The Pakistani and Iranian governments -- no, most of the Baloch leaders from top to bottom -- sit back in their seats and just wait as Pakistan postures, lines up, threatens and sends out more soldiers and special ranger troops to deliver the punch. The silence is deafening. Years of sacrifice and struggle, of bones broken in hundreds of prisons and torture chambers from jails to the army camps, families destroyed endless poverty and suffering. Only our huge mountains will not save us. All nationalist slogans for what then? Where is the great Baloch educated rich Diaspora silently discussing Baloch problems between each other today and forgetting tomorrow? This is not a matter of party or ideology or faction: it's a matter of what the great theologian Paul Tillich used to call ultimate seriousness.

Technology, modernization and certainly globalization are not the answer for what threatens us as a people now. We have in our tradition an entire body of secular and national discourse that treats of beginnings and endings, of life and death, of love and anger, of society and history. This is there, but no voice, no individual with great vision and moral authority seems able now to tap into that, and bring it to attention. We are on the eve of a catastrophe that our political, moral and political leaders can only just denounce a little bit while, behind whispers and winks and closed doors, they make plans somehow to ride out the storm. They think of survival, and perhaps of heaven. But who is in charge of the present, the worldly, the land, the water, the air and the lives dependent on each other for existence? No one seems to be in charge.

There is a wonderful colloquial _expression in English that very precisely and ironically catches our unacceptable helplessness, our passivity and inability to help ourselves now when our strength is most needed. The _expression is: will the last person to leave please turn out the lights? We are that close to a kind of upheaval that will leave very little standing and perilously little left even to record, except for the last injunction that begs for extinction. Unfortunately all our Baloch brothers are born generals but among us there is practically no soldiers we are all born leaders but no one to lead. Hasn't the time come for us collectively to demand and try to formulate a genuinely Baloch alternative to the wreckage about to engulf our world? This is not only a trivial matter of economic change, although God knows that we can do with quite a bit of that. Surely it can't be a return to Lahore deceleration, another offer to Pakistan to please accept our existence and let us live in peace, another cringing crawling inaudible plea for mercy. Will no one come out into the light of day to express a vision for our future that isn't based on a script written by Muhammad Ali Jenah and General Perviz Musharaf, those two symbols of vacant power and overweening arrogance? I hope someone is listening.

Christianity. Dear Praying Friends,

Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior.

Much is said these days about the troubles of this country and the problems faced by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Praise the Lord, that despite these circumstances, His servants can be optimistic, filled with joy and hope. Even if conditions become worse, and even if war breaks out, we have opportunities to share His peace, forgiveness and tolerance. If the economy continues to go downhill, then we have the opportunity to introduce His Word through sharing all that we have with others. If someone is talking about sickness and disease, we can testify that He is the one and only physical and spiritual healer. When someone is discouraged, we can share about His satisfaction and joy.

These days it seems like many Muslims are rethinking their faith. People who have been working abroad are coming back disillusioned. They speak abusively about Osama Bin Laden and the other Islamic movements for their violations of world peace and for destroying the brotherhood among nations. What they fail to realize is that these things are not their real problem. The real problem is in not knowing in what direction to go themselves despite these circumstances.

We are grateful that God brought three such men to the Qundeel staff in Balochistan. They had recently returned from the UK. God used His servants to show them a better way and to introduce them to the Prince of Peace. They were each given "JESUS" VCDs and New Testaments in Balochi. One of the three shared that he needed to certify that he had become a Christian in order to secure a visa for returning to the UK. Despite his worldly motivation we need to pray that the Lord would "certify" his heart and that his visa would be for a new Eternal Kingdom, (not just the United Kingdom). We trust that as the Word of God goes out it does not go in vain but will one day bear fruit.

Qundeel has adopted the" Young Singoline Cricket Club." We have been able to provide funds to restore and restart their team. The Lyari town mayor, various city counselors, influential people and more than 50 youth gathered for a cricket equipment distribution ceremony. All who attended appreciated Qundeel’s support and welcomed us as believers too. Mr. Imran Baloch, who belongs to the Zikri sect, is an elected counselor and also a patron of the team. He expressed his thanks for Qundeel and his appreciation for the Christian brothers and sisters who are considerate of the needs and problems of oppressed and poor Baloch. His speech was encouraging and despite the fact that other religious groups were represented there were no problems. The Qundeel staff shared that the Most High provider is God; we are simply extending His provision without conditions. We shared that His Love to us is unconditional; without discrimination of cast, creed and color and that God has taught us to love others the same way.

There have been two "JESUS" video family shows; one in Urdu and other in Balochi. More than 20 men and women have attended these showings.

Prayers requests:

1 - Pray that God will speak to the people that viewed the JESUS film, those who received the New Testament and those we shared with personally.

2 - We have secured a apartment that will serve as Qundeel’s office and Karl’s home. Please pray that God will provide sufficient funds for this and other projects we are involved in.

3 – Praise god with us for those who have begun financially supporting this ministry. Please continue to pray for the balance of our monthly as well as project budget needs.

4 - A Christmas fellowship is being planned. Please pray that this would be able to happen despite the constantly changing political situation in the country

5 - Pray for protection of Christian workers and their families. May God meet their needs and bless their efforts.

Be assured of our gratefulness and unceasing prayer in your behalf!

In His unfailing Love,

Ralph & Karim

(Chairman & Secretary)

URGENT: Balochistan has been tragically affected by a severe drought that has resulted in the death of more than half of the livestock in the province. More than a million tribals are on the move across the desert and arid plains seeking food and water. The government is powerless to cope with such a disaster. The following excerpt appeared in our local newspaper on 6/11:

“They brought us here, but what are we here for?” Vajeg Bibarg, a hawk-nosed man in a white turban, asked despondently.
“Once, we owned hundreds of animals, but now we have only this one sheep and two goats.” He pointed to the skinny survivors of what was once a herd. One of the sheep had a purple cloth draped over its back where much of its wool had fallen out.“Our animals died of hunger, and now our way of life will die too,” Bibarg said. “Either someone must help us or they should just make a big fire and throw us in .
The temperature on this recent afternoon in the valley was 119, a springtime omen of the scorching summer to come.
Bibarg's clan , perhaps 30 peopie in all, had flve tents spread out near a spent river. Many of the men sat down together to speak of their troubles. Their hearty camels, tied up nearby, brayed beneath the punishing sun. A young woman in a colorful tunic entered slowly, someone helping her walk. Her stomach was bloated, and she complained of “a pain like no other pain.” She held a 3-month-old child wrapped in a blanket. His body was frighteningly shriveled, and the family had seemed to accept the inevitability that both the woman and the baby were soon to die.
“I have no milk for my baby,” the woman said. “I have no strength for myself.”
Ahmad Jan, one of the younger men present, said he knew about such hard dying. He had lost his infant son a few weeks back while the family was yet in the desert.
We had no water,” he said. "The boy just shrank away.”

Readers, pray that God's grace may be poured out on these precious people in the extremity of their need.

NOTE: Please view photo of destitute nomads in a sandstorm on Photo page one.
ALSO, PLEASE INTERCEDE FOR THE NEW REQUEST IN THE PRAYER SECTION REGARDING A RECENT BREAKTHROUGH OF THE GOSPEL IN A REMOTE DROUGHT AFFECTED AREA.
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A sturdy, traditionally nomadic people whose orgins trace back to the high plateaus east of the Caspian Sea. The Baloch migrated to the borderlands of Iran, Afghanistan and present-day Baluchistan. In the past centuries, Baloch princes ruled from Kalat over much of southern Afghanistan and S.E. Iran and the Talpur clan ruled from Hyderabad over much of the southern Indus River valley, but these principalities fell under British rule in the mid-19th century and the Baloch were forcibly incorporated into Pakistan in 1947. Due to poverty-stricken conditions in the arid interior of Baluchistan, hundreds of thousands of Baloch have migrated to the urban ghettos of Karachi and additional thousands have settled in the fertile plains of the Sind.

The Baloch inhabit the Baluchistan province of western Pakistan and the Baluchistan & Sistan province of southeastern Iran. Many live along the coast of the Arabian Sea eastwards from the Strait of Hormuz to the city of Karachi. Others inhabit the Nimruz province in the southwestern Afghanistan and approximately 40,000 are found in the Soviet Republic of Turkmenistan near the oasis of Merv. Considerable numbers of Baloch also live in the Sind province of Pakistan, in Oman, the Gulf States and along the coasts of Kenya and Tanzania.

The Baloch are the Lost Sheep of South Asia in many ways. Once a nomadic people, many have now lost their traditional life-style and for economic reasons have been forced to settle in small villages throughout the deserts and mountains of South Asia. Many have had to leave their homes to search for work in other countries, or move to urban areas such as Karachi, where over one million Baloch now reside.

Once a pastoral people, they have lost much of their grazing lands to drought and closed country borders. Their livelihood is still based on agriculture, but many have turned to cottage industries, such as carpet weaving and tailoring, or fishing or manual labor.

Once proud of their independence, they have lost their sense of national pride due to being absorbed by three separate nations. Most of the six million Baloch live in the semi-arid Balochistan province of Pakistan, and adjoining southern Afghanistan and south-eastern Iran. Many live along the coastal areas of the Arabian Sea.

The Baloch are strong, sensitive people and have been known for centuries as great fighters. Unfortunately, much of the warfare has been inter-tribal. Blood feuds have decimated the tribes and economic depravation has resulted in a general loss of stature and health. Widespread drug addiction has enervated many young people. The Baloch are a warm-hearted, friendly people, with high traditional values of loyalty and hospitality.

The Baloch seem to be lost in the sense of basic human rights. Poverty among the Baloch is widespread, causing multiple health problems and poor living conditions. Adult literacy is around 7% and is much lower for women. Schools are not able to reach all the need an education.

The strongest sense of being lost means that the Baloch are an unreached people. They have not heard the truth about Jesus Christ and the salvation that comes through faith in him. The Baloch are 65% Sunni Muslim and another 30% are followers of the Zigri sect of Islam. They practice a blend of Islam and fold religion. They are somewhat open to the Gospel and are curious about Christians and their beliefs.

However, the Baloch live in inaccessible regions where living conditions are harsh and traditional ministries are often not effective or possible. The Word of God simply has not reached most of these people. Christian radio broadcasts have begun and translation work is progressing. Responses to these ministries are encouraging, but so much more waits to be done. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT IRVING@MBSNET.COM