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AFGHANISTAN: Western Christians are welcome in Afghanistan on the year anniversary of the fall of the oppressive Taliban regime. On Christmas Day 2001, the country’s new government invited the evangelical aid ministry Shelter Now to help rebuild war-torn Afghanistan. Three of four German Shelter Now workers the Taliban jailed for “preaching Christianity” are back in Afghanistan. Shelter Now is helping rebuild a Kabul hospital, build three hundred houses and manage water projects. Project director and former hostage Georg Taubmann helps coordinate other agencies’ projects….Workers with International Friendship Summits, a nonprofit Memphis, Tennessee-based group, met with workers in Afghanistan’s health and education ministries, who asked for help rebuilding the country. Some ways groups will aid Afghans: training midwives to safely deliver babies, providing supplies for clinics, writing school curriculum, replanting trees, faculty and student exchanges, and training teachers and health workers. At an October “friendship summit” in Memphis, Afghan officials met with community, church and civic leaders to explore needs that Memphis citizens could meet.

ARGENTINA:The bad economy is fueling a crime wave as people are swiping bronze plaques and statues from parks and plazas to sell as scrap metal. Iron and aluminum also have resale value, thus manhole covers and traffic-light parts are also disappearing. Among the casualties are statues of Jesus stolen from churches. More than half of Argentines are living in poverty, and more than one-fifth are jobless.

BRAZIL: President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, elected in October by a landslide, has promised to help the nation’s huge population of poor, homeless children. His first goal is building a “Social Emergency Secretariat” against hunger, housing shortages and health problems facing the poor, who comprise one-third of Brazil’s 176 million people. But even some ardent da Silva backers believe poverty is a problem too big for him to tackle.

COLOMBIA: President Alvaro Uribe, waging a few-holds-barred war to stop armed groups that have seized the country, has declared twenty-seven cities in three departments (states) to be “rehabilitation and consolidation zones” where the military and police hold special powers. To bring back law and order, Colombia’s army is rounding up people in these zones and marking the right arms of those who have no arrest warrants against them and have no neighbors who are accusing them of subversion. Critics say people are arrested unfairly, homes are being searched without reason or warrants, soldiers with digital cameras are going door-to-door. Proponents say that these and other drastic measures are key to restoring order to this lawless land.

CUBA: It is next to impossible to legally bring Bibles into Cuba. The government regularly seizes shipments, reports Compass Direct. The number of foreign Christians bringing Bibles into the country has plummeted since January 1998, when Pope John Paul II visited the island and many people mistakenly assumed that Cuba now has complete religious freedom. The drop in the Bible supply comes as Cuba’s church sees unprecedented growth.

INDIA: More than six thousand church-operated schools in Tamil Nadu state remained closed on October 24 and more than one million Christians fasted and prayed in protest of a bill that prohibits forced or coerced conversion. Despite the effort, the legislative assembly approved the bill after a hostile debate. The “anti-conversion bill” became law in Tamil Nadu a week later.

KENYA: A draft of the constitution set for adoption next year in this East African country contains items troubling to Christians. Drafters of this constitution want to integrate Islamic law, or sharia, and set up clear structure for its administration, including kadhis courts that administer sharia at the district and provincial level. As the draft stands, the chief kadhis judge would have the status and privileges as a regular high court judge. The draft constitution also may allow for abortion and same-sex marriages, both banned under the current constitution. Churches also are planning prayer meetings and rallies for peaceful upcoming elections.

LEBANON: American missionary Bonnie Witherall, 31, was killed by an unknown gunman in Sidon, Lebanon. Witherall was shot at The Christian and Missionary Alliance prenatal clinic where she served Palestinian women.

MEXICO: Once-pervasive persecution in Mexico’s southernmost state of Chiapas is almost a thing of the past. That’s because so many indigenous people have come to faith in Christ, tribal leaders who practice a traditional Mayan/Catholic religion know they can’t expel them all. It’s also because of Pablo Salazar, Mexico’s first evangelical governor, who personally has mediated conflicts between evangelicals and traditionalists. Today, more than four decades after the gospel came to Chiapas, some villages are fifty percent evangelical.

NEPAL: Maoist rebel leaders will continue their six-year revolt if the government does not draft a new constitution that would abolish the monarchy. Among the latest casualties in the civil war that has claimed more than 7,100 lives are 118 who died in November when warring rebels used villagers of Jumla, 360 miles northwest of Kathmandu, as human shields. The rebels seek to impose communism in this Himalayan kingdom. In Kushadevi, just an hour’s drive from Kathmandu, rebels decapitated the village chairman, left his head on a path for all to see, and told villagers that they would not be harmed if they did not thwart the Maoists’ building a power base there.

NIGERIA: State officials in Borno, northern Nigeria, have demolished churches in the capital city, Maiduguri, and plan to destroy more, claiming that the buildings infringe on city development ordinances. Christian leaders say the demolitions aim to prevent churches from getting land and erecting buildings. Muslim officials in Zamfara state seized a Nigerian Catholic Church convent in the state capital, Gusau. The seized convent’s head said that since the introduction of sharia, or Islamic law, Zamfara’s government has trampled on Christians’ rights.

December 30, 2002