Uzbekistan (BP)—There was a time when Maksud's* heart raced with each telephone ring. He recalls gripping the receiver and working up his courage to simply say "Allo" (hello). He felt exposed and at risk even behind the locked door of his Uzbekistan home.

Usually, within a heartbeat, a friend's voice on the line cut the tension. Yet Maksud had to steady his own voice to sound casual and normal as he talked into the telephone.

What is normal for a Christian believer living under a government that has grown increasingly paranoid? In the current political climate, anyone who has religious convictions—Christian or Islamic—is often tagged as a threat to the government.

Uzbekistan became an independent nation in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union. Flags and state symbols changed, but the mindset of the ruling elite did not. Immediately after independence, some political controls eased, but soon the nation's freedoms began to erode. In recent years that erosion has increased, and for some believers, state intimidation has now replaced the short-lived freedoms.

"My heart would pump like crazy each time I picked up the phone or answered a knock at the door," Maksud says. "When I knew it was a friend, I would just praise God."

For this believer, the world took a dark turn several years ago when local police took Maksud from his home and began questioning him about his faith.

"There is no law that says you can't be a Christian," he explains, "but the police will say that when a person becomes a Christian, he brings dissension to the family, and this is wrong."

Police held Maksud for a day, questioning him about friends, family, faith and the other Christians in the area.

"They let me go, but for more than three months, there was such fear in my heart," he says.

The police never visited again, and in time Maksud adjusted to his new status of living under state suspicion.

Maksud's story is not unique. Uzbekistan has become one of the most repressive new independent states, according to a 1999 U.S. State Department human rights report.

"Only in Uzbekistan has the state formally criminalized religious dissent," the report says. "Uzbekistan explicitly prohibits any kind of communal activity by such a group, even a Bible study in one of its members' apartments."

Yet, this has not stopped the spread of the Gospel, says Ryan Stewart,* an International Mission Board worker who, along with his wife, Lauren,* lives in Central Asia and works among the Uzbeks of Central Asia.

"Despite the crackdown, there continues to be growth in the church," he says of the situation. "The growth is not in waves like it once was, but this is still an exciting time for the Body of Christ in Uzbekistan."

In the early 1990s, the IMB launched a major initiative to help bring the Gospel to newly created nations in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. This push included a focus on Uzbekistan where nearly 99 percent of Uzbeks are Muslim.

"We were seeing advancement in the early '90s, but between 1995 and 1997 we saw very strong growth for the churches," Stewart says.

Today, Southern Baptists working with the Uzbek church estimate between 4,000 and 5,000 Uzbek Christians worldwide.

"Things slowed down toward the turn of the century, but now we see several different kinds of growth," Stewart adds.

The couple and their team have seen people come to Jesus Christ after literally years of witnessing efforts.

* Names changed for security reasons.