My family lived in Savannakhet,Laos (the town) from 1964 to about 1973. It was the summer residence for the king of Laos at the time. It had a big catholic population due to Laos being a part of the French Indochina empire. It had a diverse population of Lao, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian a few left over French and a very few of us Americans. It was a laid back lazy village along the Mekong River. Interesting times for a teenage boy.
From Wikipedia: the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and People's Republic of China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south, and Thailand to the west. Its population was estimated to be around 6.5 million in 2012.
**A third of the population of Laos live below the international poverty line which means living on less than US$1.25 per day.
**Laos is a low income economy with it having one of the lowest annual incomes in the world.
**In 2013, Laos ranked the 138th place (tied with Cambodia) on the Human Development Index (HDI), indicating that Laos currently only has lower medium to low development.
**According to the Global Hunger Index, Laos currently ranks as the 25th hungriest nation in the world out of the list of the 56 nations with the worst hunger situation(s) in the world.
**Laos has had a poor human rights record most particularly dealing with the nation's acts of genocide being committed towards its Hmong population.
WHAT does Laos have for you? It's poor and corrupt and has nothing going for it but its ranking as an A-NUMBER ONE, first class, blue ribbon PIT HOLE.
Another persecution of Catholics is coming.
A sure sign that the Christian faith is growing in the global south nations and spreading praise God!
Keywords added — persecution is such an important topic! He & others are in my prayers.