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Franklin Graham in Honduras
Samaritan’s Purse, the international relief and evangelism ministry led by Franklin Graham, ended its Hurricane Mitch recovery efforts with a three-day crusade January 25-27 in San Pedro Sula, attended by 160,000 brought in from around the country. Crusade organizers reported that 7,953 responded to Graham’s invitation. Samaritan’s Purse rebuilt almost 5,000 homes damaged or destroyed in the devastating 1998 storm.

German students attending worship
Judging from attendance at university worship services, students in Germany are showing more interest in religion and are not as critical of Christians, reports Idea Evangelical News Agency. The Students’ Mission in Germany (SMD) holds well-attended services, says a spokesman for the group. To counter students’ “very distorted view of Christian life,” SMD launches Bible studies on the basics of faith. The organization, which has chapters in 60 university towns, aims to instill in Christians a responsibility for church and society.

Kazakhstan bows to Christians, activists
Keston News Service reports that Kazakhstan has backed down on its banning of believers from using educational buildings for their activities. The earlier ban had been a mistake, said an education ministry official-who had been behind the ban or the motive for it was not indicated. Christians had protested the government’s bans on visits by religious figures, humanitarian and other aid from religious organizations and renting facilities to religious groups. A missionary in Kazakhstan reports, “More workers have been expelled from Kazakhstan in the last four weeks than in the last 10 years combined. It seems like our time here may be short.” High-profile Christian activity may have led to these expulsions and focused unwanted attention on national Kazak believers-attention that may hinder their spreading the gospel, reports The Bible League. One pastor sees the window of opportunity for ministry there closing in the next eight to 10 years “unless God is merciful upon this nation and people seek his face.”

Church-plants,persecution in Nepal
The Nepal Baptist Church Council has planted some 70 churches and 280 fellowships in 10 years in this Hindu nation. But church persecution is rising. In February, the case against four Christians detained in Rajbiraj, Nepal, since October on trumped-up proselytism charges was dismissed February 11 after prosecution witnesses failed to appear in court, reports Compass Direct. The judge ordered the three Nepali nationals and a Norwegian to be released on February 15.

Desperation in Mongolia
The 1999-2000 winter was Mongolia’s worst in three decades. More than 2,000 families that depend on herding for their livelihood lost all their livestock. The devastating cold continued this winter. But people in this former Communist nation are so open to the gospel that all 10,000 copies of the Bible in Mongolian sold out on the first day. Habitat for Humanity, Joint Christian Services International and World Vision collaborated to build two houses in Ulaan Baatar, the capital, last year. In an October 27 dedication, Habitat presented each family with a certificate, a Bible and the keys to their house. The homes consist of a large living room, a bedroom and a kitchen, reports Mennonite Board of Missions. Most Mongolians are Buddhist or Shamanist. Only .03 percent are Christian.

Zimbabwe church office robbed
Four armed men burst into the synod of United Congregational Church of Southern Africa (UCCSA) in Zimbabwe, took more than $1,800 in cash at gunpoint and ransacked the office. No one was injured, reports the Council for World Mission. “This growing trend of violent crime in the southern African countries is a matter of serious concern to the UCCSA,” says its general secretary Desmond van der Water.

Leprosy still causes suffering
Some 750,000 people around the world have leprosy, but fortunately, it’s on the decline, reports Idea Evangelical News Agency. In 1996, 1 million suffered from this ancient disease. In 1986, 4 million suffered from it, according to the German Leprosy Mission (Esslingen), which says that 600,000 received successful treatment in 1999, but 700,000 new cases were discovered. Leprosy affects 91 countries, and 70 percent of victims live in India. Most of the other victims live in Brazil, Indonesia and Bangladesh.

Jesus Film reaches Argentines
Argentina is a hard place to share the gospel, but in 1999, some 300,000 saw the Jesus Film and 40,000 accepted Christ, reports Campus Crusade’s national director in that South American country.

Reaching India’s poorest and lepers Bihur, India’s poorest and most backward state, is less than 2 percent Christian. The New India Evangelistic Association has a presence in Bihur, where it operates a girls orphanage and elementary school and has church-planting teams. New projects include a Bible training center, an orphanage for 200 children, and a clinic, reports Global Prayer Digest. Bible Pathway Ministries held a collection drive to fill a 20-foot container with food, clothing, medical supplies, used computer equipment, Bibles and study guides. The container is destined for Kota, India, where Hopegiver Ministry will distributed the goods to 20 leper colonies where 15 churches have been planted.

No crime to be gay
When governing bodies in Great Britain’s Caribbean territories wouldn’t do away with laws making homosexuality a crime, the government in London did, reports the Associated Press. To ban homosexual acts in private between consenting adults is against international human rights accords it has signed, British officials claim. Says an Anglican pastor from the Cayman Islands of the move, “This is totally unacceptable to the minds of the Christian community here.”

S. Africa’s gambling woes
The report “The Social Impact of Gambling in South Africa” published by that country’s Human Sciences Resources Council details health and societal problems linked to the vice, including conflict in personal relationships and financial problems from bankruptcy to embezzlement and other crime. Revealed in the report: Around 8 percent of South Africans spend more than a tenth of their paycheck on a single casino visit, and those with lower or no incomes outnumbered gamblers in other income brackets. The country has nine legal casinos and 14 new ones on the way.

World Economic Forum looks at faith
Religious leaders representing Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim faiths closed out the six-day gathering of politicians and businessmen with discussions on world peace and religious leaders’ potential roles as peacemakers. Said the Emir of Qatar in his address on Islam’s potential role in the world, “The world should fear ignorance and poverty rather than religion.”

Child abuse rises in Japan
Child abuse cases reported to Japan’s child protective agencies have increased more than six times what they were in the early 1990s, reports Global Prayer Digest. Competition begins early in Japan. For example, a 2-year-old nursery school student didn’t pass an entrance exam at an elite kindergarten, while her classmate did. A parent of the child who did not pass the exam strangled the child who did. Suicide is up as well. Observers believe the nation’s obsession with education is fueling this rise in social problems. Says a sociologist and educator, “People have this illusion that if you go to a good school, a happy life is waiting for you.” Many can’t cope with the stress of striving to succeed.

Mexico’s Catholics not pushing to end church-state separation
While Mexico has softened its official anti-religion stance and begun to allow outdoor religious events, the archbishop of San Luis Potosí says the church isn’t pushing for special treatment by the government. “We have to act prudently to be present in the new spaces without attempting to gain privileges or impose a single religion,” he said.

JC TV coming to UK-maybe
While Christians and other religious groups can have radio licenses, Britain’s government is weighing whether to allow them to have television broadcasting licenses, reports the British newspaper, the Guardian. Until the advent of satellite and digital broadcasting, only a few such licenses have been available. While authorities say there’s demand for religious programming, at issue is whether such would take advantage of vulnerable viewers, offend viewers with other opinions, or get mired in political controversy. Currently, the government has in place strict regulations on what constitutes religious content that is “appropriate” for broadcast, and groups may not try to convert listeners or solicit donations from them.

Speaking in tongues
Concerned by the prevalence of English and other dominant languages, and the gradual extinction and disuse of the world’s minority languages, in 2000 the United Nations declared February 21 as International Mother Language Day. The UN says the day aims to “encourage linguistic diversity and multilingual education and also to develop fuller awareness about linguistic and cultural traditions throughout the world and to inspire solidarity based on understanding, tolerance and dialogue.” The origins of some 40 civil wars and conflicts around the world today were sparked by long-brewing ethno-linguistic and tribal strife. Cases in point are Myanmar, which has fought rebel Karens for decades, and Laos and Vietnam, which have targeted the Hmong for purges. Both of these ethnic groups have large Christian populations.

Evangelicals fight religion class
Federation of Evangelical Religious Entities of Spain, FEREDE, has voiced its opposition to mandatory Catholic classes in the country’s public schools. FEREDE suggested that the class be substituted with classes on the history and culture of all religions. Reports Latin American Ecumenical News, “Although the application of accords signed by the Catholic Church and the state more than 20 years ago recognize the existence of a religion course, the latter ‘within what has been legally established’ assumes the creation of a Spain with two categories based on Spaniards’ religious affiliation, Catholics and non-Catholics.” Evangelicals charge the state has given the Catholic Church unfair advantage over other faiths.

Africa’s AIDS tragedy
Africa’s HIV epidemic is changing the continent’s demographics. “The year 2000 began with 24 million Africans infected with the virus. In the absence of a medical miracle, nearly all will die before 2010,” reports Hope for Children in Crisis, citing Worldwatch Institute data. Each day, 6,000 Africans die of AIDS and 11,000 become infected. In Botswana, 36 percent of the adult population is HIV-positive. “Without AIDS, Zimbabwe’s life expectancy in 2010 would be 70 years, but with AIDS it is expected to fall to 35. The time from infection until death for adults in Africa is estimated at seven to 10 years.”

Free Serbia
A Serbian government minister under the newly elected regime has promised to remove barriers to religious activity and ensure “full rights and freedoms” for all denominations, the World Evangelical Defender reports. The minister made the statement November 28.

Brazil’s slave descendants strive to overcome plight Until recently, poor blacks whose ancestors fled their masters in Portugal’s colonial era lived secluded lives in Brazil’s jungles. Now Brazil is helping them get legal deeds to their lands and supporting their culture, which is in danger of extinction, reports the New York Times. Their fertile lands, now prime real estate sought by ranchers, mining companies and others, are no longer remote. Brazil is home to 724 quilombos, or black settlements, some 300 years old. The villages remain heavily influenced by West African language and culture. Most call themselves Catholic but their religion includes many aspects found in animistic African practices.

Girls not wanted in India
In Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state, in the past five years 4,000 ultrasound clinics have opened so parents can learn their babies’ sex. Girls are often aborted. In Hindu society, they are a burden because to marry them off requires huge dowries, although the dowry system is illegal in India. Global Prayer Digest reports that every year, 4 million Indian women get abortions. Only one in 1,000 residents of Uttar Pradesh is a Christian.

The ‘good old days’ of Godless Russia?
Aiming to restore Russia to the atheism it celebrated under the Soviet Union, some scientists and human rights activists have set up the Moscow Society of Atheists. Its members seek to stem what they view as a threat from religion and religious influence, especially its main Orthodox Church, reports ENI. The society protests the new Russian anthem’s mention of God because the constitution says Russia is a secular nation. One of the society’s founders, human rights activist Lev Levinson, says, “It is not up to the state to establish whether God exists or not.” Levinson claims that around half of Russians are atheists, and the organization aims to defend their rights.

Former Soviet republics suffer energy crisis
Even before the start of winter, countries in the former Soviet Union were beset by energy woes. Snowstorms cut power to 3,000 towns in Ukraine. Power companies in northern Russia pulled the plug because of $18 billion in late fees, reports the Slavic Gospel Association’s magazine InSight. “People in Russia’s Far East faced freezing homes and schools, also largely due to debt. Children are suffering severe frostbite and potential amputations from low temperatures in their homes,” the magazine reports. “In a land where several regions see temperatures routinely plunge to double-digits below zero during winter, this situation is extremely grave for many needy families. When central heating facilities shut down, residents must struggle to stay warm in any way they can find.”

Bulgarian hacks Website; president offers job
After a young Bulgarian, known only as ‘Kubaka,’ hacked into the president’s Website to protest the country’s prevalent despair and soaring unemployment, President Petar Stoyanov complimented the youth’s skills and promised him a job. Asked why he hacked the site, Kubaka said, “When my parents live in misery and I can’t find a job without proper connections and most of my friends seek their fortunes abroad, what else is left?” A survey showed that 70 percent of Bulgarians approved of Kub-aka’s action, Reuters reports.

Fat and Happy
Fat is the beauty ideal for women in Niger and other African countries, reports the New York Times, which told of the Hangandi festival where women of the Djerma ethnic group vie in a beauty contest to be fattest. They train for the pageant by eating and drinking. The winner wins a prize and more food. Among Nigeria’s Calabari, brides go to pre-nuptial fattening farms. Maradi women take steroids, gulp vitamins and eat animal feed to gain weight. Thinness shows that husbands aren’t caring for their wives, “But if your wife is fleshy, people will say that you are a wealthy and responsible man who takes care of his family,” says one man. “There is a lot of pressure on women to become fat.” A doctor says of the phenomenon, “The world is a funny place. In America, you are rich, you have everything, and the women there want to become so thin as if they had nothing. Here in Africa, we have nothing, the women who buy these products have nothing, but they want to become fat as if they had everything.”

Holy cow
India’s Gujarat state, hit by a devastating earthquake January 26, has a cabinet-level minister in charge of its Cow Protection Department. The Associated Press reported the day before the quake that Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel had ministers agree to each rear a cow at home to raise awareness of the need to take care of cattle during the region’s drought. Some 10 million cows and other livestock were suffering from lack of water. AP reported that Patel wanted his cabinet to keep cows as pets even after the drought ends. Hindus, which make up India’s majority, believe cows are sacred, and they view letting them die as a great sin. Many cows are ownerless and roam as strays. No word on how many cows died in the 7.9-magnitude temblor that claimed at least 20,000 human lives or whether the disaster has affected Gujarat’s cow benevolence project.

April 6, 2001