At the end of April, I sent you a letter regarding the delivery of 6,500 food bags to Iranian Believers (read that article here). A need that required $195,000 to accomplish! ($30 per bag) You trusted what I wrote and our ability to purchase, bundle, and deliver the Bags of Hope. I am grateful to you for your confidence. I have delayed writing a follow-up to get fresh information. Over the past 70 days, we personally surveyed the situation on the ground. While there, our man had several close calls but was finally able to return to a place of relative safety and to speak with me about what he saw, experienced, and learned. We will make future operational decisions based on our intelligence network. We always debrief after such operations to adjust and capitalize on new opportunities. There is, however, one thing I want to share with you now that he told me through his tears. He relayed, in graphic detail, how the circumstances of survival are beyond comprehension—and this from a man who has seen and endured it all.

He shared how it is the people who are paying the price for their regime’s wickedness. Those at the top, though hunted, have money to hide, travel, eat, and meet their needs. The citizens do not. The political/military factions have extra houses; when one is bombed, they move to another or confiscate someone else’s. The citizens do not have another house to move to. The leaders have fuel for their cars from government sources; the citizens lost their cars. They have generators for their lights and air conditioners; the citizens live in darkness and heat. They have water to drink, bathe in, and swim in, but the citizens drink from puddles on the ground. I was sent this photo of a brother in Christ whose house was bombed. Another man allows him to sleep in his destroyed van so as not to be on a sidewalk at the mercy of the military. Though it is hot, at night he closes the doors and covers himself with blankets in case someone looks in the van.

Our Lord has blessed us so much. Consider that we were asking for one bag per church family. That’s 6,500 families—in just two cities! We cannot relocate our remaining church members to a safe area as we used to. Oh, that we could. Still, already, more than half the members of our house churches are missing. Some were no doubt casualties of the war, but many were targeted because of their faith. And some have died of starvation while others are on the verge. That is why we need the final Bags of Hope. We are still short 1,081 Bags. And though that seems small compared to 6,500, it is a huge amount to the 1,081 families without adequate food to survive.

Will the situation in Iran get better or worse?

I am not a prophet; all I can do is put my ear to the train tracks to hear if something is approaching—and I hear a lot of rumbling, and it’s getting louder and louder. Consider the following, and you tell me what you think.

In late April, the inflation rate was 67%; it is now nearly 250%. There is a food shortage, a water shortage, perpetual power outages, and over 85,000 have been named and marked for execution. Tens of thousands have already met their fate in public hangings, executions, beheadings, and any torturous killing that you could imagine, inspired by hate and Satan himself. In addition, the unemployment rate, though advertised by the regime at 7.5%, is, according to valid public sources, 34% and rising.

The Bags of Hope you provided were an incredible blessing to Christian families who have lost their jobs. Delivering them, however, was not without cost. As our men traveled from home to home, they would have to pass through random military checkpoints set up by the IRGC.

• The IRGC is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, equivalent to our military, and is divided into five separate services: Army, Navy, Air Force, Basij and Quds.
• The Basij is a paramilitary militia within the IRGC. The name means “Mobilization”. They are responsible for the violent enforcement of Sharia laws; thus, when you read of women being beaten on the street for any immoral offense, like not wearing their hijab correctly, it is done by the Basij. They are also responsible for mobilizing (forcibly conscripting) citizens in the event of an invasion. They have already given machine guns and other weapons to citizens they know to be loyal to the regime. They can turn these on an invading force or their own citizens.
• The Quds Force is a special unit expert in military intelligence and unconventional warfare whose operations are outside of Iranian territory. Quds is the branch that trains, supports/equips/commands, and finances terrorist groups in other countries like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, etc. They also oversee assassinations on foreign soil. The infamous Qasem Soleimani was the Commander of this branch before a drone ended his life.

Over the past three months, it has become increasingly dangerous to leave your own house. Thus, our men had to deliver food to protect our people. At such checkpoints, in just two Iranian cities, twenty-three of our young men were executed on the spot, while others have disappeared. By the grace and mercy of God, they had all delivered their assigned Bags of Hope before being executed. Their crime was being on the street without reason, and some were accused of being Mossad agents. Can you imagine the fear and sadness that has overcome the hearts of our people? House churches can no longer meet; thus, our pastors must travel from home to home, evading checkpoints and roaming groups of soldiers, providing food, treating wounds, and caring for widows and orphans whose numbers increase daily. They can no longer preach and return to their own families; they must be gone for days at a time, having no communication with their wives and children. (There is no phone service or internet.)

We are so deeply grateful to each of you who have prayed, extended a helping hand, and made personal sacrifices to assist our brothers and sisters living in the worst unimaginable conditions. You have borne their burdens, fulfilling the Law of Christ (Galatians 6:2). As I said earlier, we had prayed and asked for funds to deliver 6,500 Bags of Hope, not imagining how desperately HOPE would be needed. However, of the original $195,000 needed, we still lack funding for the remaining 1,081 Bags, leaving 1,081 Christian families without food to survive. Together, we can eliminate the remaining need with $32,430.

We pray you will help us reach this goal quickly, as we do not know how much longer some families can last. In the months to come, though we will certainly need to provide further help, we will try to do so in a trickle rather than a tsunami. (We can and do meet these needs without violating any U.S. laws.)

Thank you for taking time to read this and for your consideration to help. It would be wonderful if we could reach this goal today. Then, using our SAT phones in the region, we could contact our leaders and give them HOPE to pass on to our valiant IRANIAN Followers of Jesus.