It is easy to walk past a brick kiln and see only bricks. Stacks of them, rows of them, dust over everything. What is harder — and much more honest — is to stop long enough to see the families behind those stacks. Parents who work long hours in hard conditions. Children who have grown up close to work they were never meant to carry so young. And underneath it all, for many families, a debt that follows them home at night and is still waiting in the morning. Debt bondage does not shout. It quietly tells a family who they are and what their future is allowed to be.
Rising Stone Mission was not started to look away from that. We are a small Christian mission in Kasur, led on the ground by Pastor Nemat, and our days are spent among brick-kiln families living under that kind of debt. We pray with parents in their homes, and through prayer we nurture spiritual growth that helps people keep hold of hope. On Sundays we gather for worship and Sunday school, where children sing, hear God’s word, and learn together. We share food where we can, we help children toward education, we arrange medicines for the sick as far as our small means allow, and as far as possible we work to free families from kiln debt. One family’s Rs 300,000 debt was cleared, and that family now lives free, with their children in school. We return to that story often, not to boast, but to remember what changes when a family is truly seen.
The Lord spoke to His people through Isaiah with words that leave no room for comfortable distance: “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.” — Isaiah 1:17
Notice that justice, in this verse, is something to be learned and sought. It does not happen by accident, and it does not happen from far away. To defend the oppressed, you first have to notice them — not as a problem, not as a number, but as neighbours made in God’s image. A father at a kiln is not only a worker. A mother carrying worry for her children is not only poor. They are people God knows by name, and when Scripture calls us to seek justice, it is calling us to let their lives matter to us the way they already matter to Him.
That shapes how we try to work. Freedom for a kiln family is never just a payment, though the debt is real and must be faced honestly. It is also prayer that restores courage, teaching that gives children words for a different future, food that says you have not been forgotten, and care when sickness comes to a home with very little. Justice and mercy belong together. One without the other tells only half the story of what God loves.
We will tell the truth about our scale, as we always do. We are small. Most families we meet are still waiting for freedom, our food and medicines help reach only as far as limited funds allow, and our teaching work is modest. We are doing this work today at a very small scale, and we say so plainly: we say what we do, and we do what we say. With partners beside us, this is the work we will grow — more families defended, more children in school, more debts brought to an end.
Would you pray with us this week for the kiln families of Kasur? Pray that parents under debt would not lose heart, that children would be protected and taught well, and that Pastor Nemat would have wisdom and strength as he stands with families day after day. Pray that none of us would learn the easy habit of looking away.
And if God puts it on your heart to give, or to share this mission with your church, you would be joining something simple and real: a small mission learning to do right, seeking justice with open eyes, and trusting God for the freedom of families who have waited a long time.