Project Hannah Prayer Points
December 2008

PRAYING FOR WOMEN IN INDIA

Please pray for…

1. Protection and dignity for women and little girls in India where abortion, infanticide, rape, kidnapping, dowry deaths and being sold are common fates. Pray for those who are protesting so that laws will be enforced, criminals will be punished and victims will be helped. “Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked” (Psalm 82:3-4).

2. Project Hannah’s (PH) Women of Hope (WoH) teams in India: Hindi (Rose, Christine, Kantha, Meena, Shikha and Anushree), Oriya (Parisuta, Kalyani, Pratibha, Bijaya, Sanjuprabha, Vijaya, Prasanna and Mrs. James), Tamil (Thangam, Jessica, Mary, Jean, and Esther), Bengali (Indrani, Malaya, Mitali, Ruma, Sandhya, Tanushree, Mamata, Maitree, Punya, Paromita and Ruth), Malayalam (Sisy, Shincy, Beaula, Susy, Shirly), Punjabi (Angelina, Surinder, Ruth, Smriti, Vinita Bhala) and Indian English (Anu, Abhilasha, Rekha, Ashwini, Anushree) as they produce programs to capture the hearts of many in India for Jesus Christ.  Pray also that funds will be available to put WoH in Gujarati on the air.

3. Christians to study God’s Word and to live like Jesus in their daily lives and relationships. Pray that the Holy Spirit would lead them to show God’s love to those around them and to give what knowledge or skills they have to better their communities.
4. The violence to stop in Orissa, India and for the government to protect the Christians, their homes and their churches, schools and orphanages.  Pray for those who have been raped, beaten and burned, and for the families of those who have been killed. A village in Bargarh district (where radios were distributed to PH listeners) was affected and six believers' houses were destroyed.
5. Vinita Shaw as she leads the TWR ministry in India. Pray also for TWR’s staff and their families as they face many challenges in the ministry in India.
6. Organizations which are running relief camps providing food, medicine and clean water to the thousands who lost loved ones, all of their belongings and even their villages which were washed away in the floods this year. Pray for grieving parents who had their children swept from their hands and live with guilt for not being able to hold on to them. Pray that hope will be restored and that they will find it in Christ Jesus.
7. God’s blessings to cover PH’s donors who have given sacrificially so that women around the world can hear the WoH programs that offer hope and encouragement to those who live in difficult circumstances.
8. Wives who say they would rather take their own lives than dishonor their families. Pray that they will understand their value to God and receive hope through Jesus Christ.
9. Ros Atkinson (Australia) and Marli as they train women in India and South Africa to write scripts for the International English WoH programs that are translated into over 45 languages. Pray for PH’s English WoH broadcasts and for listeners who hear them in Papua New Guinea, Fiji, the Caribbean, Liberia, South Africa, Swaziland and other countries in Africa.
10. Listeners from other religious backgrounds. “I am a daughter of a family belonging to a different faith. By listening to your WoH program my life has been greatly influenced. I am anxious to know more about Jesus. I also desire to share the truth with others, and hence I want to be educated further on this. Could you please send me some useful literature? Do uphold my family in your prayers.”
11. Clean water and sanitation efforts set in place during the UN International Year of Sanitation 2008. Today 2.6 billion people live without even basic sanitation. Five thousand children die every day due to infectious diarrhea, which is caused primarily by inadequate sanitation (UN).
12. Illiterate Dalit women who are employed as scavengers to collect garbage and human waste for around $7-$20 a month. Even though India has laws against “manual scavenging,” it is still used (CNN.com).

    13. Young girls who are forced to marry men they don’t know nor desire to marry.

    14. Women in India who are infected with HIV by their husbands who have unprotected sex with prostitutes. Pray that they will receive education about AIDS and how to prevent exposure. There are currently 2.4 million Indians living with HIV/AIDS (World Vision).

    15. Women who cannot read and subsequently learn through oral communication. Radio programming is a valuable tool to these women and their families. Less than ten percent of women in many tribal communities in India can read.

    16. Young women who are offered jobs in other countries but find themselves forced into prostitution. They live a humiliating existence, and fear that their captors will kill family members if they try to escape. “Yet I am poor and needy; may the Lord think of me. You are my help and my deliverer; O my God, do not delay” (Psalm 40:17).

    17. The WoH production teams working on six languages in Central Asia (Central Asian Russian, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Tajik, Turkmen and Uzbek) as they provide programs that will reach isolated women who long to know their Creator and to understand His truths. Pray that funds and/or producers will be provided for other Central Asian/Middle Eastern/North African languages.

    18. The listeners of the Nivacle WoH program in Paraguay. Pray for Irma and the production team (Catalina, Isabel, Margarita, Marcelina and Santa) as they provide this source of encouragement and education to the Nivacle women.

    19. Influential women leaders in government, churches and other ministries throughout the world to courageously stand up for the rights and dignity of women, provide the job skills, education and health care training they need to live productive lives and to better care for their children.

    20. Officials to do more to prevent and to rescue the estimated “45,000 children that go missing in India every year, 11,000 are never found” (BBCNews.com).

    21. Young married women in India who are burned alive, beaten to death or driven to commit suicide by the horrible mistreatment they receive from husbands and in-laws. Pray that the cultural acceptance (even by many women) of this violence won’t be tolerated.

    22. The nearly 40 million widows in India, many of whom are horribly abused and neglected. Some were married off as babies and widowed as children.

    23. Government officials and church leaders to reach out to poor, marginalized women, helping them to provide their children with the necessities of life, as well as freedom to pursue happiness and dignity.

    24. God’s provision and grace for women who have not yet been able to conceive a child. “I have been praying here out of my great anguish and grief....Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him” (1 Samuel 1:16-17).

    25. Those who are seeking answers in their dismal situations. Pray that they will hear of God’s great gift of salvation through Jesus Christ. “For today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11).

    26. Mothers in India to value their children and to demand better care for them. India has 100 million child laborers under the age of 14. Of the 800,000 tribal children under the age of 6 over 8,000 died last year of malnutrition, communicable diseases, low birth weight and premature delivery (BBC News).

    27. Churches to help Christian families deal with the changes they face as more women enter the work force, delay marriage and become more of a part of the decision making process in the family and community.

    28. Women in India to not allow cultural and family pressures to produce sons to lead them to abort their baby girls. According to recent research, 90 percent of the estimated 3.5 million abortions in India each year are to eliminate girls (The Guardian Unlimited).

    29. Authorities in India to reeducate policy makers, media personnel, employers and society as a whole concerning the value of women and baby girls.

    30. Christian young girls in Egypt who are kidnapped, sexually abused and drugged, then manipulated into changing religions and becoming wives to their captors.

    31. PH’s intercessors in over 90 countries as they commit themselves to pray for suffering women around the world. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:16-17).