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AFGHANISTAN: India National Inland Mission has sent seventeen gospel teams to Kabul. Plans call for 150,000 Bibles to be printed in the three dominant languages and then distributed by 150 workers.
ARGENTINA: Economic depression has inspired a new kind of crime wave: abductions for small amounts of cash. Buenos Aires has been hit with a wave of so-called express kidnappings. Middle-class victims are held for a few hours while their abductors try to get cash.
AUSTRIA: The Austrian Bible Society has been able to make Scripture portions, New Testaments and Bibles available in forty-nine languages to some of the twenty thousand refugees who enter Austria each year. They spend several years in detention centers while their requests for political asylum are being processed.
CHAD: Border fighting between Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR) broke out because of marauding gangs of Chadian cattle thieves. The former head of CAR’s army fled to Chad after a failed coup attempt.
CHINA: Prison Fellowship Hong Kong is taking steps to begin its ministry in Mainland China. Linked with the government and Nanjing University, the program will train law students to be prison volunteers. COFFEE: Because of a three-year plunge in world coffee prices, poverty, hunger and even starvation stalk some twenty-five million coffee farmers in forty-five countries. Oxfam, the international relief agency, claims farmers in Nicaragua, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Guatemala have suffered the most.
CONGO: Lendu rebels overwhelmed defending militiamen in Nyankunde, Eastern Congo, in early September. Missionaries and villagers fled, citing at least one hundred dead. Attackers ransacked churches, schools and the hospital, destroyed communications equipment and cut the only water pipe. The invaders looted one missionary home five times, but spared the mother and her two boys. Some national missions staff fled into the jungle. Cholera has broken out and survivors face critical food shortages.
CZECH REPUBLIC: August floods devastated ninety-nine villages and caused serious damage in hundreds more, including Prague. Churches and Christian organizations also sustained loss. Thousands remain homeless.
EUROPE: Last spring leaders from across Europe met in Budapest for a consultation called Hope 21. Delegates participated in twenty-six specialties, including one on church planting that drew eighty participants from twenty-two countries.
INDIA: Five new schools of evangelism are scheduled to be opened in India by Evangelism Resources, bringing the total to twenty. In ten years the schools have trained two thousand evangelists and missionaries …Gospel Recordings has launched Project India to record the gospel for 1,200 language groups that know little or nothing of the good news…Non-Hindus worry about the prime minister’s elevation to second command of a man (L.K. Advani) known for his hardline Hindu nationalist reputation. The move is seen as a swing to the right, not likely to be tempered by political allies.
IRAN: According to a 2000 Iranian report, society faces rising drug addiction, prostitution, HIV/AIDS and suicide. Youth are most severely affected; more than half the population is under the age of twenty. Five tons of narcotics are consumed in Tehran daily. In 1999, prostitution increased by 635 percent among high school students. The suicide rate grew 109 percent.
JAPAN: Older Japanese men, unable to woo younger women, are shopping for brides across East Asia, mostly in China. They use the Internet in their searches. Japan has only 1.5 million foreigners among its 126 million people. That Chinese women would opt to marry Japanese men has surprised scholars. Apparently loneliness has overcome ancient animosities.
KENYA: Nairobi boasts fifty mosques and ten Islamic schools offering cheap education to Muslim converts. The schools also provide medical facilities, cultural centers and bookshops. Some observers claim that the churches have lost thousands to Islam. Muslims are jostling for political power to help achieve religious supremacy.
LEBANON: A convocation sponsored by Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding brought together seventy Western Christians and eighty Middle Eastern Christians for four days of worship, fellowship and discussions. Their theme was: “The Church: A Sign of Hope and Healing in the Middle East.”…Virtually decimated by Lebanon’s seventeen-year civil war, Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Beirut has made a strong comeback. Now under Arab leaders, it thrives with students from several Arab states.
MYANMAR: The Army pursues attacks on villagers in predominantly Christian Karen State. Schools and churches have been burned and pastors captured and tortured. Survivors try to make it through Army patrols to safety in Thailand.
NIGERIA: In a breakthrough from the past, eleven Nigerian missionaries joined others from Europe and the US at a five-day “Sharpening Your Interpersonal Skills” workshop in Miango, conducted by the Mobile Member Care Team. Small group interactions were diverse and culturally mixed. Despite cultural differences, the Nigerians agreed the biblical principles applied to them. The team also held a one-day seminar for leaders of Nigerian mission agencies in Jos. It covered the kinds of crises faced by Nigerian missionaries, including riots during which some lost their houses and were attacked by people with machetes.
SWAZILAND: The king bought a $55 million private jet, twice the amount the UN says is needed to feed 250,000 starving Swazis. The country’s 1.1 million people are sixty-percent Christian.
October 18, 2002