Gospel for Asia (GFA) native missionaries Lokesh, Yesuraj, Kumar, Anil and Ramesh were abducted and wrongfully accused of robbery, 24th July.

(Pictured: Five missionaries - from GFA web site).They were caught in Karnataka, India by anti-Christian elements in the community.

It is believed that their opposers falsely accused them of committing a robbery which had occurred earlier in the day. These kinds of false accusations seem to becoming an increasingly worrying practice, and are being used to harass missionaries in India and Nepal.

One of the missionaries, brother Ramesh managed to escape and relate the urgent news to GFA staff. The other four missionaries suffered beatings, and their Gospel literature was reported to have been torn up by the abductors.

Karnataka, lies in southern India's most spiritually desolate state, and is recorded as having a population of only 1.1 million Christians. Many regions of the state are without even one follower of Jesus.

GFA's vision is to train and send 100,000 native missionaries into the most unreached areas of Asia. Ninety-seven percent of the world's unreached live in the 10/40 Window, a rectangular shaped area on the globe extending from West Africa to East Asia, from 10 degrees north to 40 degrees north of the equator. The darkest of all areas within the 10/40 Window lies within Asia. 500,000 villages in India alone have never heard the Gospel.

GFA considers there to be a great possibility of reaching Asia's multitudes through native missionaries since they have the enormous advantage to bring the gospel into their own countries. Most importantly, they already know the language or can more easily learn the local dialect. Also they do not need to overcome the cultural barriers which overseas missionaries need to struggle with. Moreover, over 85 percent of Asian countries do not allow western missionaries to come and freely preach the Gospel and plant churches.

Over 14,000 native missionaries are currently serving and planting over 10 churches every day and bearing incredible fruits.

Native missionaries still encounter many barriers and difficulties in their mission fields but have been overcoming them greatly through the grace of God. For example, even though native evangelists still receive many threats, nothing can hinder them in their goals of sharing their faith as they have the great commission of sharing the truth with their own people.

"Kindly pray for these brothers," a GFA leader asks, "that no harm will be done to them and that the authorities will come to know the truth."