DALLAS, TX – The Point of View radio talk show has been recognized as “America’s most popular call-in show” by Christianity Today magazine. The program, broadcasted nationally and hosted by Kerby Anderson, Penna Dexter and Kelly Shackelford, “provides biblical clarity, truth and content to restore a Christian worldview” to our culture.

Gospel for Asia (GFA) founder, K.P. Yohannan, was honored to be an invited guest on the June 8, 2020, Point of View broadcast. He was interviewed by Kerby Anderson. The topic of their conversation was the COVID-19 pandemic in South Asia and its effects in India in particular.

The Crisis

The impact of COVID-19 in India is far greater than most people might imagine. For instance, India has had the third-largest number of new cases of COVID-19 in the world in the three days between Yohannan’s interview and the framing of this article on June 11. India currently ranks fourth among nations with the most cases of COVID despite the late arrival of the pandemic in significant numbers.

Yohannan explained that South Asia’s population of more than 2 billion people is, indeed, endangered by the virus, but that “95 percent of the problem they face is not coronavirus. It is starvation.”

He expressed particular and passionate concern about the hundreds of thousands of children living on the streets of Mumbai. Those children are already hard-pressed to find food on a daily basis. They scavenge and beg for their meager fare. On a normal day, the streets are filled with “an ocean of people.” Handouts from those people are the only hope that most of the children have for survival.

But these are not normal days. The streets are empty during the shutdown of the economy. The shutdown not only prevents the spread of the virus, it also eliminates the primary food source for these impoverished children. Children are sitting on curbsides crying. No one knows how many are dying.

The stress on poverty-ridden families is more than we can measure. Yohannan shared the tragic story of a mother who had thrown her five children in a river because she could no longer bear to watch them starving. She vowed to end her own life as well.

The combination of the pandemic itself and the lockdown has brought untold misery to millions in the cities and remote villages where poverty and disease threaten their survival every day.

The Relief

Gospel for Asia (GFA) has been the hands and feet of relief and comfort with the assistance of more than 1,000 affiliated churches across South Asia.

Anderson had read about one of those churches. The pastor secured permission from the local police to distribute food in one impoverished community. The congregation used a school bus to carry bags of vegetables into the village. Some maintained social distancing by ensuring that recipients remained in painted circles on the ground as they waited for their gift of groceries. Others hung the bags on hooks on the side of the bus. As the villagers took their turn, men from the church replenished the hooks with more sacks of food until the village was fed.

Word of the unique bus ministry spread throughout GFA’s churches. Before long, other churches were borrowing or renting school buses so they could replicate the food drive for the villages in their parishes. They continue to do so as a demonstration of a kind of love that can be found only in Jesus Christ and His faithful followers.

This is the passion that has kept Gospel for Asia (GFA) alive and growing for 40 years. The legacy of those years can be witnessed in GFA’s unique position to provide food and medical supplies across South Asia when others cannot. What is a crisis for millions is an open door for ministry for Gospel for Asia (GFA) and its national workers.

If you would like to learn more about Gospel for Asia’s long-term commitment to provide aid to those affected by COVID-19, read “Bringing Hope and Relief to Starving Masses.” Be sure to read the “Timeline of Relief Events” immediately following that article.

Read more news on KP Yohannan, India and the Coronavirus Outbreak on Missions Box.

GFA’s Statement About Coronavirus