Despite the earlier Easter terrorist bombings in Sri Lanka, a team of five of us travelled to the country as planned. We were to speak at a church workers’ conference and provide women’s and children’s ministry to local churches connected with the Lanka Evangelical Fellowship of Churches (LEFC). The team comprised Mark and Sue…
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Sri Lanka We thank God for the recent teaching and training programmes in Trincomalee taken by Dr Gareth Crossley, from Derbyshire in England. Dr Crossley’s subjects included Christology, commitment and the sovereignty of God. It was a blessed programme, with many brothers re-kindled, motivated and encouraged to get more involved in preaching…
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Sri Lanka’s painful aftermath On 19 May the President of Sri Lanka declared the 25-year-old civil war between the Sinhalese government forces and LTTE (Tamil Tigers) officially ended. The Tamil Tigers were defeated after a conflict in which more than 80,000 lives were lost and 1.2 million people displaced. Now a major…
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Sri Lanka’s perils by K. Muraleetharan The Lord reigns in Sri Lanka – in spite of the chaos and poverty! Not a single day goes by without violence and abductions, and the churches face all this and other issues. In this article we review some of the problems confronting believers in Sri Lanka and ask…
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26 December 2004 was another Lord’s Day morning and we were gathering for worship. I heard my daughter cry out ‘the sea is coming’. At first I didn’t believe her; until I heard the cries of others and witnessed the sea rushing up to the compound gate. Two or three times it came and…
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Kept by the power of God The civil war continues here in Sri Lanka. Amidst fighting between Tamil Tigers and government forces we are being kept by the power of God. Indiscriminate searches and arrests are the order of the day, along with exploding land mines, claymore mines, grenades (yesterday, two were killed in…
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Sri Lanka has a multi-ethnic society, comprised of Sinhalese, Tamils, Burghers and Malays. Protestant evangelical Christians amount to less than 1% of the total population. Serious ethnic conflict between the (mainly Buddhist) Sinhalese and (mainly Hindu) Tamil communities has continued for the past fifteen years. It has affected all areas of life. The continuing…
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Aboriginal Vedda inhabiting the island were conquered by Sinhalese, who came from north India during the 500’s B.C. In the third century B.C. the island became a major centre of Buddhism. Tamils arrived from south India from 100 B.C. onwards. Conflict between Sinhalese and Tamils resulted in Tamils controlling the northern half of the…
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Physical: An island 25,328 square miles in area, 50 miles south-east of India. Hilly in the south. Adam’s Peak, standing 2243 metres high, is sacred to Buddhists. Population: 18 million. Sinhalese – 74%; Tamils 17%; Moors – 7% (partly descended from Arab seafarers); others – 2%. Population density – 622 persons per square mile.…
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In 1977 I was in Sri Lanka, visiting a Bible college and three Reformed Baptist churches. They worked me hard! I spoke forty-four times in fifteen days, including seven lectures a day for four days at the Bible college, where my task was to teach the prison epistles (Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon) to…
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