Speaking hope to believers who face persecution every day

A letter-writing campaign continues this week for Christians in North Korea.

The "Orange Letter Campaign" is meant to comfort and inspire persecuted Christians and their families. The name stems from the orange jumpsuits worn by 21 Coptic Christians martyred by ISIS in 2015. Organizers of the campaign are Tom Doyle, author of Standing In the Fire: Courageous Christians Living In Frightening Times and Killing Christians: Living The Faith Where It's Not Safe To Believe; and Teddy James of EngageMagazine.net.

This is the third year for the Orange Letter Campaign, according to James.

"This year, Tom said, Hey, I'm going to meet some North Korean defectors, some Christians who have escaped from North Korea and I'm going to meet them in South Korea," James explained Tuesday on American Family Radio (AFR). "We said, Well, that's this year's Orange Letter – that's where we're going this year."

Last year, the campaign benefited Christians in Syria. In 2015, letters written to the families of the Coptic Christians killed by ISIS were hand-delivered to the wives.

"It was so touching," Doyle recalled during an interview on AFR. "They just cried that people loved them that much to take time to write to them."

He expects a similar reaction from the North Koreans. "They're going to be over-the-top blessed and encouraged in their faith – and this is going to be the future of the church in North Korea," said Doyle. "They're getting trained. They want to somehow go back. They want to affect North Korea with the gospel."

For more than a decade, North Korea has been considered the worst place on the planet for Christians to live.

"We're estimating 100,000 believers now in the underground church, but 30,000 of them are in prison," Doyle shared. "So can you imagine in the U.S. if about one-third of the body of Christ was in prison for their faith? Now that would be a different church, but that's the reality on the ground in North Korea."

Doyle also plans to work with Voice of the Martyrs to broadcast radio messages into North Korea.

"We're going to tell them that the believers in the West haven't forgotten about them," Doyle continued. "You can imagine, feeling so alone and isolated, but yet they're going to hear on radios that the body of Christ stands with them and is praying for them daily."

The Orange Letter Campaign runs through November 11. Tips on how to write a letter for the campaign are available online.