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Changing Colombia through prayer
Cali, Colombia’s city famed for its drug activity, had only 20,000 believers in 1992. But today the city is home to more than 420 churches and some 200,000 Christians, reports Latin America Mission’s Nick Woodbury. Twice each year since 1995, as many as 50,000 of them gather in the city’s soccer stadium to spend the night in prayer and worship. “It struck me clearly that the two keys to growth and change have been unity and prayer,” Woodbury says of the phenomenon. “The unity is expressed through a very representative and active pastoral association and prayer through the massive prayer vigils.”

Bible League arrives in Poland
The Bible League has set up a new office in Poland, where it plans to provide Scriptures and introduce Bible study courses to bring the Scriptures to Poland’s people. It also aims to increase church plants by offering a two-year training program to teach Polish nationals to start churches. Marek Znidericz, TBL’s Polish ministry director, estimates that 700 of his country’s 900 communities don’t have an evangelical church.

TWR launches Chinese “Seminary on the Air”
Pastors and church leaders in China will be able to attend Bible classes via Trans-World Radio. Most pastors and leaders in China have not received systematic or sustained seminary or Bible school training. Classes, which began March 26, are beamed by shortwave from Guam nightly for 45 minutes Monday through Friday, then repeated the next morning and weekends. “Our burden is to equip pastors and leaders so they can better serve the millions of believers who are in need of good biblical teaching and training,” says a Chinese Christian familiar with the ministry in a TWR press release. The three-year program is based on pastors’ needs as revealed through surveys and talking with church leaders. Seminary on the Air will offer sound biblical and doctrinal foundations so pastors can teach correctly and authoritatively, the press release says. Broadcasts will include systematic theology, apologetics, Christian ethics, pastoral care and counseling, sermon preparation, China church history and church administration. Each week, TWR airs more than 1,500 hours of Christian programs in some 170 languages via satellite, super-power transmitters and local stations. TWR has broadcast to China since 1977 and daily airs more than 20 hours in Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka and Swatow.

VisionQuest Alliance
Greater Europe Mission, OMS International and International Students, Inc., have formed VisionQuest Alliance. Its purpose is “advancing organizational services to enhance ministry” and aims to make missions organizations more effective in ministry. As an alliance, not a merger, its members retain their names and independence. “By cooperating, GEM, OMS and ISI can provide better services to their missionaries at a lower cost than if each agency tried to do everything on its own,” says a VQA press release.

Shoes for Siberia
The heating/energy crisis gripping Russia’s far-eastern region and Siberia is said to be the worst since World War II. Temperatures plunged to 90 below zero in Kemerovo, and energy shortages in Primorsk caused power outages that left thousands shivering, reports Slavic Gospel Association’s magazine InSight. The government urged those living along the Trans-Siberian Railway and in the Altai territory to not leave their homes. SGA partners are shipping warm clothing, boots and shoes to Khabarovsk. A shoe manufacturer has donated thousands of pairs of high-quality footwear to the needy in the former Soviet Union. “The poor economy, widespread unemployment and non-payment of wages has left many families with barely enough to feed themselves,” InSight reports.

Amsterdam 2000 follow-up conferences
The largest-ever international gathering of Christian leaders continues to provide those who attended-and those who didn’t-with resources and encouragement. Videos of all plenary messages at Amsterdam 2000 are being produced in English and 11 other languages. More languages will be ready this year. Also available are hundreds of audio cassettes of plenary messages in many languages, seminar sessions on core aspects of evangelism, and practical workshop meetings. Printed materials are also available. Billy Graham Evangelistic Association International Ministries staff aims to facilitate some 100 national and regional conferences on evangelism in the next 18 months and to influence 100,000 Christian leaders around the world.

They are seeking to reach these leaders by holding three- and four-day conferences for evangelists, pastors and leaders. BGEA may offer resources and materials for these conferences and is making a conference planning guide and training video to help local leaders hold the conferences. Interested leaders may contact BGEA at P.O. Box 462, Minneapolis, Minn., 55440-0462, fax (612)338-0500 or e-mail [email protected]. Anyone with Internet access can look at and print some materials for free, or order taped and other resources, at that site and at www. evangelistnet.com.

Church of England to bless remarriage
After a centuries-long ban, most members of the Church of England want it to allow divorcees to remarry in the church, the Times of London reports. Conservatives worry ending the ban will damage the church’s moral standing. Seven of the eight dioceses supported the change. One diocese was unanimously in favor. The change could take effect next summer.

Latinos embracing Islam
In the United States, Hispanics are the fastest-growing ethnic group, and Islam is the fastest-growing religion, reports the Washington Post. Some 25,000 Latino Muslims live in the U.S., the largest communities of which are in New York City, Southern California and Chicago. These cities have some all-Spanish mosques. In the Western U.S., most Latino Muslims are from Mexico and Central America. In the eastern part of the country, which includes Miami, many converts are from Puerto Rico and Cuba. Converts say they feel more connected to Islam and enjoy a closer-knit, nurturing religious community than their traditional Catholicism. A woman filming a documentary about Latino Muslim converts traveled to South America and the Caribbean and learned that converts saw the Catholic Church as large and impersonal.

Meanwhile, Idea Evangelical News Agency reports that Islam is also on the rise in Germany, growing from 60,000 in 1945 to more than 3 million in 2000. Protestant church membership there has dropped from 43 million to 27 million since 1950, the same membership that the Roman Catholic church has today. More than two-thirds of Germany’s Muslims are practicing, but only 5 percent of Protestants and 18 percent of Catholics. Latinos maintain strong family ties, even when living abroad, and conversions can powerfully influence their kin.

Big mosque in Estonia
What Muslims hail as Northern Europe’s biggest mosque will be the first built in Estonia’s capital and cost between $3 million and $6 million. Estonians are mostly Lutheran and Russian Orthodox. Its few thousand Muslims are mainly immigrants who entered the country while it was part of the former Soviet Union.

Burundis undernourished
In December, 59 children died of malnutrition in a single hospital in Burundi. More than 100,000 people suffer from malnutrition in central and northern Burundi, Reuters reports. Drought, a malaria epidemic and a 7-year civil war have compounded woes there. A Doctors Without Borders staffer calls the situation “catastrophic” and says that the real death toll is higher because many weren’t able to get care. The United Nation’s World Food Program can’t support all 450,000 who need food aid there. Burundi is one of the world’s most densely populated and poorest countries.

Panama proud of Canal, but trouble lurks
A year after the United States handed control of the Panama Canal back to Panama, the country is in an economic slowdown, and many fear it can’t defend its border with Colombia from the rise in guerrilla incursions, reports the Associated Press. Although Panama appears to be operating the canal smoothly, and revenues from tolls rose 1 percent in 2000 over 1999, the country lost thousands of jobs, many of them high-paying, and unemployment is 13 percent. Panama has had no formal army since 1989.

2000 at a glance
At the end of 2000, earth’s population was 6,118,958,932. Of them, 3.8 billion-63 percent-are younger than 34. A global “youth culture” has emerged with similar values, English as a common language and the Internet as their common communication medium.

Kyrgyzstan: New law may tighten control over religious activity
Unnerved by armed incursions by the terrorist Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and with the Taliban active on the Afghan-Tajik border a mere 400 miles southwest of the capital Bishkek, the Kyrgyz authorities are planning to introduce a tough new law on religion as part of their armoury for dealing with the spread of radical Islam to the republic. Keston News Service reports that the text of the latest draft could, however, have negative repercussions for all religious organizations in Kyrgyzstan. The current draft of the proposed religion bill includes several provisions that violate the country’s international human rights commitments, such as compulsory registration of religious bodies, prohibition of unregistered religious activity, lack of an alternative to military service, and tight control over religious activity deemed destructive and that has links abroad.

Christian leadership trainer in Mozambique murdered
Antonio Manuel Chilaule, leader of Southern Mozam-bique’s Timothy Training Institute, was murdered March 11 in a robbery in Maputo. Chilaule, 52, had just returned to his vehicle after participating in a church service when he was accosted by gunmen who demanded keys to the vehicle. Chilaule turned over the keys, but sources speculate that he may have seen his assailants’ faces, so they shot him. An assistant, Mafalda Cossa, who accompanied him, also was mortally wounded and died later in a Maputo hospital. Chilaule was a former worker with Open Doors. “While the murders were not linked directly to Christian persecution, the deaths emphasize the dangers Christian workers face in poor areas where vehicles, including those owned by Christian organizations, are prime targets for theft,” OD says in a press release.

Head Hindu calls for attacks on Christians, missionaries
Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council)president Ashok Singhal has called for Hindus to arm themselves in “self-defense” against missionaries and Christians’ “evil designs,” Christianity Today’s Weblog reports.

“The militant Hindu VHP has been accused of violence in the past, but this is the first time that Weblog knows of that the organizational leadership has been so brazen,” Weblog reports. “And it couldn’t come at a worse time. Tensions are running high as Hindu militant leader Dara Singh stands trial for the murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his sons.” Singh claims to have witnessed the murder, but not set on fire the truck in which the three were sleeping. India’s Christians fear increased persecution. In 1999 in Orissa, the Indian state where the Staines were murdered, a law was passed requiring government approval of all conversions. “At the time Christians warned that officials would regularly delay or deny permission, and that seems to be what is happening,” Weblog reports.

Staines’ widow facing persecution
Although Graham Staines was murdered two years ago, his widow Gladys has continued ministering among lepers and strives to make into reality her husband’s dream of creating a hospital for them, reports Rediff.com. The Global Council of Indian Christians reports that not only is the government not helping her get land for the hospital, but also it’s seeking to repossess the Mayurbhanj Leprosy Home, which was given more than a century ago to care for lepers in the underdeveloped part of the state. ”This behaviour of the state government clearly demonstrates that they are under pressure from the Sangh Parivar to humiliate the poor lady,” says GCIC national convenor Sajan K. George, who said that Hindus are seeking to harass her with hate literature and a campaign to vilify her.

Kuwaiti court nixes women’s rights
The Constitutional Court, Kuwait’s highest, in January threw out a case that sought full political rights for women. Last year the court tossed out on technicalities some cases that protested Kuwait’s ban on women’s voting. Still, women there enjoy the most freedom of any country in the conservative Muslim Gulf Arab region.

Pakistani women gain right to candidacy
In December 31 elections, Pakistani women for the first time won seats on village councils earning about a third of these councils’ seats, reports Inter Press Service, Women are second-class citizens in Pakistan. A third of them don’t have access to basic healthcare, and almost three-quarters of them are illiterate or poorly educated, compared to about half of Pakistan’s men. Non-governmental organizations believe that political power will help rural women especially. Muslim groups opposed the move.

Ladies night in Bogota
The mayor of Colombia’s capital city declared March 9 as a Night Without Men. He imposed a voluntary curfew and encouraged women to go dance the night away, reports the Associated Press. Most male police had the night off while 1,500 female officers patrolled Bogota’s streets. In some neighborhoods, “Women overran the streets, drinking, dancing and screaming at the top of their lungs,” the agency reports. Some women caroused in bars, parks and strip clubs that featured male acts. Mayor Antanas Mockus said that in addition to being a fun night for women, the night aimed to reduce street crime and domestic abuse, which are rampant in Bogota, a city of 7 million. One man who took his wife out to eat told the agency, “It’s a good thing they only did this one night. The city can only take one night of this.”

More poor women
To educate a woman in a developing country lifts her out of poverty and leads to economic growth, writes The Economist magazine. Poverty among the world’s women, however, is on the rise, according to the United Nations. Unlike the developed world, the developing world has few laws that promote equality. In poor countries, working women primarily fill the lowest jobs, often paid half of what a man is paid. Women account for half the world’s refugees, two-thirds of the world’s illiterates, and stand a greater risk of getting AIDS in countries with heavy infection rates, such as in Sub-Saharan Africa. The World Bank’s president says women’s enfranchisement is the single most important issue for effective development.

While women’s life expectancy has risen by two decades in some developing countries, and their status and pay have improved, “In many if not most developing countries, women produce more food than men and bear primary responsibility for feeding, sheltering and educating the young,” The Economist writes. “But lack of education-and lack of access to education-coupled with social customs which treat women as second-class citizens restrict their participation in the economy.” Access to schooling, health care, land and financial resources is still harder for women than men throughout much of Africa, Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Gains in women’s education made the single largest contribution to declines in malnutrition in 63 countries between 1970 and 1995, the magazine writes. “Some researchers reckon that, if female farmers in places like Cameroon or Kenya were afforded the same schooling and other opportunities as male farmers, crop yields would rise by a fifth.”

Women trafficking in China
China’s one-child policy, coupled with its cultural belief that boys are a blessing, means women often abort their daughters. This has led to a shortage of wives, which in turn led to the rise of a market for women who become wives or slaves, reports Fides. Communist Party documents reveal that in 1990, authorities found more than 19,000 women had been sold. Between 1993 and 1996, more than 14,000 women were sold in Shandong province and more than 48,000 in Jiangsu.

Christian women persecuted in Nigeria
Christian leaders in Sokoto, a northern Nigerian state, say that since government leaders adopted Islamic sharia law, Muslim extremists have targeted Christian women for rape and expelled Christians from their homes. Compass Direct reports that government agents have torn down churches, and the threat of more demolitions has made Christians there fearful. Sokoto’s government ignored Christian protests that implementing sharia would lead to discrimination and such attacks. It implemented sharia in May 2000.

April 20, 2001