Pastor Rajesh Magar leads a small church in the Kath­mandu Valley with his wife Babita, sup­ported by Sanam Maskey.  For the last five years these three have been mission part­ners with Life­point, and through them we are priv­i­leged to bless the church they lead and the mission they under­take to the poor and needy neigh­bour­hood where they live.  We also support their min­istry to needy chil­dren, who are fos­tered in the Magars’ home.

We are priv­i­leged and excited to welcome Sanam to New Zealand over the next few years, as he com­pletes a PhD at Vic Uni­ver­sity.  Sanam’s passion for social uplift in Nepal has us all excited.

Respond­ing to a deep sense of call, Biswanath and Vijaya Chowd­huri founded the Chris­t­ian Dis­ci­ple­ship Centre (CDC) in Bangladesh some 40 years ago.  Aided by a gifted and pas­sion­ate staff team, Brother Pintu has led the min­istry since Vijaya passed away in 2022. CDC’s vision is to train young Bangladeshis to bring the good news to their nation.  Chris­tians are a minor­ity in this largely moslem country.

CDC’s range and reach have grown in response to God’s call.  In addi­tion to the one year diploma for pastors and evan­ge­lists, CDC runs dis­ci­ple­ship courses for major­ity back­ground believ­ers, an increas­ing number of “village schools”, a growing and effec­tive adult lit­er­acy program, some small devel­op­ment projects, and a bur­geon­ing media min­istry making pro­grams for broad­cast in Bengali. Through all this many people are coming to trust in Jesus.

Matt and Liz lead Vine Design, an ultra-cool design and mar­ket­ing min­istry that brings cre­ative flair to mission and aid orga­ni­za­tions with great vision but limited resource.   Their love of mission grew out of five years in Kath­mandu, where Matt worked with the Inter­na­tional Nepal Fel­low­ship (INF), and devel­oped further as Matt did design work for the Loyal Work­shop, Holi­boli and other fan­tas­tic min­istries, while leading our young adults min­istry here at Lifepoint. 

Now, Matt is full-time with Vine Design, with Liz watch­ing over, and Life­point is right behind them.  A fab­u­lous mission part­ner­ship, com­pletely in sync with Life­point’s passion for the mar­gin­al­ized and needy. 

For over 30 years Val Bateup has poured her life into spread­ing the good news about Jesus to Thai chil­dren.  Through her God estab­lished the Good 
News Team (GNT)—a com­mit­ted team of local Thais who reg­u­larly travel through­out Thai­land sharing the gospel in a fun way (mainly in state-run Bud­dhist schools). Quite lit­er­ally hun­dreds of thou­sands of Thai chil­dren have been reached by the Good News Team and its literature.

Some of the ear­li­est con­verts are now leaders in the Thai Church, and some are now leading the Good News Team itself, allow­ing Val to tran­si­tion to a well-earned semi-retire­ment in Whakatane.  Key leaders are Win and Kan­chana, both of them pas­sion­ate, gifted and expe­ri­enced dis­ci­plers of young people (together, they also lead a midweek club and Sunday church for young people).

Life­point’s support aids the Team in many ways.  We bring Win and Kan­chana to New Zealand every couple of years, and send teams to lend cre­ative and spir­i­tual strength.  We’re cur­rently sup­port­ing a promis­ing leader of the next gen­er­a­tion — Bae — as he spends a year at Bible college.