Please pray for Donh, a Vietnamese believer who was severely beaten by a local police officer in the first week of July 2016. “The cop used his baton and assaulted Donh on his head and on the back of his neck,” says our local partner Cang*, after returning from a visit to Donh’s village.
“The cop came with about 20 young men with clubs and big knives. They pointed at him and came at him, shouted that he follows Jesus, and beat him [until they thought he was dead]. Now Donh has run away and is experiencing frequent headaches [from the beating].” Donh and his wife, who accepted Jesus in June of last year, lived in a village where the locals practiced all kinds of sacrificial ritual ceremonies. Upon coming to faith in Christ, he refused to participate in the rituals, which provoked anger among the villagers.
The local authorities began watching Donh and his family, and learned that every Sunday, he would take his wife and son by motorbike out of the village to a church 60 kilometers away from his home. This discovery solidified their desire to persecute him. “They came to his house more than once, ordering him to deny his faith in the Lord, but he refused,” Cang shares. “And because of this, they destroyed his house, savaged his crops, and kicked him out of the village. But despite being treated like that, he continued not only in keeping his faith, but he spread it to his relatives. Three families related to Donh then became Christian.”
On July 10, 2016, the heads of those 3 families were summoned to the local police station and pressured to give up their faith in Christ. When they refused, the police beat them as well.
