Lausanne World Pulse – World Pulse Archives – World Pulse Archives

GLOBAL: “Every day this year 30,000 children will lose the fight they are waging for life. Seven million children will perish before reaching their first birthday, and over 10 million will die before the age of five. Of those children winning their fight for survival, 113 million have no access to primary education, 60 percent of them girls. Millions do not complete the five years of schooling needed to develop the basic literacy and math skills that would last them a lifetime.”-Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer, UK.

AUSTRALIA: According to a national survey more than half of the Anglican and Protestant clergy say their training was inadequate. Nearly 80 percent claimed they had trouble coping with stress; 56 percent said they were “borderline to burnout.”… The Warlpiri Aboriginal pulpit Bible, weighing 15 pounds, has been dedicated after 33 years of work by the Bible Society, Wycliffe Bible Translators and the local Aboriginal community. It contains the New Testament and eight Old Testament books and much Aboriginal art. Each of the 400 copies printed costs about $2,500.

BELIZE: Belize City Evangelical Mennonite Church has grown from 50 to 300 in five years, using a cell-based church growth strategy. The church’s 28 cell groups minister to Nigerians, Taiwanese, Garifunas, Hispanics, Creoles, Haitians and Mestizos. The church’s vision calls for 600 cells, a Christian radio station, and sending missionaries to Fulani Muslims in Senegal, West Africa.

BOTSWANA: The HIV/AIDS infection rate is 35.8 percent of adults. The high rate is linked to Botswana’s location and good roads. Truck drivers have sex at various crossroads truck stops. BURKINA FASO: Nine thousand copies of a recently published Children’s Bible in basic French have been distributed.

CANADA: This year’s Missions Fest in Vancouver drew more than 13,000…. Metro Baptist Church, Vancouver, is seeing steady growth among immigrants. Some 240,000 Chinese call Vancouver home. Growth has come mainly through small group Bible studies. People from 30 nations have visited, including Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus.

COLOMBIA: Three years after the devastating earthquake in Armenia that killed 1,000 people, 125 families gathered to celebrate the completion of their new homes in a new community, thanks to help from a number of US and local agencies.

CONGO: As many as 20,000 children roam Kinshasa’s streets, victims of the country’s political, economic and social collapse from the war that began four years ago. Some are as young as two years old, orphaned by war and AIDS, or abandoned by their families. Others are former child soldiers. Government shelters offer some relief…. Twenty thousand “reconciliation tracts” have been produced to help people torn by internal conflicts…. Missionaries continue to total their losses in volcano smitten Goma, where Christians try to rebuild.

COTE D’IVOIRE: A new basic French Bible translation is making a hit among multilingual churches. With a vocabulary limited to 3,500 words, it is easy to read for new literates, school children and the elderly…. One village of the least evangelized Nyarafolo people has been evangelized.

ECUADOR: Women prisoners in Quito are finding hope through weekly ministry visits which have led to conversions to Christ and a weekly Bible study group. Christian high school students help with crafts, refreshments and worship…. Health professionals looked at TB and AIDS in Ecuador at their annual conference at Hospital Vozandes-Quito and estimated 400 tuberculosis cases per 100,000, mostly in remote rural areas.

ETHIOPIA: Sudanese at refugee camps on Ethiopia’s western border attended three women’s conferences. Most were Christians and church leaders.

GERMANY: Duisberg, a city of 500,000, has the highest concentration of Turks of any German city. A former church is being considered for a proposed ministry center to the Turks. Intended as a bridge to the Turkish community, it will offer social activities, training classes and childcare…. After 94 years of meeting in small, private rooms or rented facilities, a mission-planted church-St. Luke’s Church on Kurfuerstenstrasse-has its own building in the center of Berlin. It is open to other churches for conferences and concerts.

GUINEA: Fighting has forced many families from their homes. CAMA Services is providing housing and food. One hundred thousand children may be deprived of their education.

HAITI: With continued political instability comes economic and social chaos. Two-thirds of Haiti’s 7.8 million live in poverty. Half of all adults are illiterate. Less than one-fourth of rural children attend school. Infant and maternal mortality rates rank among the world’s highest. Haiti produces more new cases of HIV/AIDS each year that the US does.

HONG KONG: Restaurants are taking a beating because of the economic downturn. While revenues at all restaurants fell 4 percent in the third quarter last year, that of Chinese restaurants fell 7 percent. Long lines at many traditional teahouses have shrunk. Many teahouses and smaller restaurants have closed. Prices at traditional dim sum restaurants have been slashed.

IRELAND: Sister Briege is Ireland’s world-renowned “healing nun.” Healed of rheumatoid arthritis when she was 18, she says, “I’m just an instrument of Jesus.” Her book, Miracles Do Happen, and her videos sell well. She draws crowds wherever she goes…. Prosperity and drinking march hand in hand in Ireland. Alcohol consumption increased 41 percent, 1989-99. At the same time, it fell in nine European Union countries and rose only 5 percent in three others. Ireland’s rapid economic growth gets the blame for the drinking boom, which also has caused significant increases in alcohol-related crimes.

ISRAEL: The government reported 137,000 Christians among the country’s 6.5 million people, up from 120,000 in 1995. Among the Christians, 115,000 are Arabs, while the remainder are immigrants from Poland, Romania and the former Soviet Union…. A bill aimed primarily at Messianic Christians appears to be dead. The measure would have severely crippled all attempts at any kind of evangelism and missionary activity-even e-mails and letters about Jesus.

JAPAN: Up to 3 million East Asians could get tuberculosis in the next five years, said the World Health Organization in Osaka, blaming lack of money for the problem, which could take 100,000 lives. Worldwide, TB kills 2 million a year. Because it’s thought to be the disease of poor countries, rich countries don’t pay up. . . . Because of a lower than anticipated birthrate, Japan’s population is expected to peak in 2004-05, and not in 2007 as had been predicted. Japan has one of the lowest birthrates of any of the world’s wealthy countries.

KENYA: People in semi-desert areas get help for their gardens from drip irrigation that requires only a five-gallon bucket of water filled twice a day, and lines of drip tape to their seedlings. They also are growing and eating a drought-resistant shrub called the spinach tree…. Moffat Bible College students offer AIDS education programs to help youths live moral, disease free lives. They see changes not only in local students, but also in their teachers…. After decades of very little response, there is now a growing church among the Daasanach people, a nomadic tribe living in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia.

KYRGYZSTAN: The government has invited Christians to help improve the failing public school system. They will teach seminars on Christian ethics to public school teachers. The minister of education wants public schools to offer moral training. Christians have been asked to start 60 pilot schools.

LAOS: The UN has launched a three-year program to feed some 70,000 malnourished Laotian children. More than 2 million of the country’s 5 million live on less than $1 per day. The program is the first ever for Laos and will begin with 35,000 school children.

MALAYSIA: Sixty percent of Malaysia’s 23 million people are Muslims, traditionally ruled by a king, the symbolic head of Islam since the early 15th Century. King Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah, who died last November, had assumed the throne in 1999. Under Malaysia’s constitutional monarchy, the king’s duties are largely ceremonial. The sultans of Malaysia’s nine states choose the king by secret ballot.

MALDIVES: Islam and witchcraft pervade this country. One of the least evangelized in the world, it has banned Christian literature and mission work.

MEXICO: To meet various social problems caused by the drug business, an evangelical council has been organized in Copper Canyon, Chihuahua, with a four-pronged program: meeting physical needs, presenting the gospel, teaching literacy and offering job training. People who turn to Christ often suffer for their faith.

MOZAMBIQUE: A new community well has been completed in Boquissa, bringing water to 1,000 people. Two years ago severe floods destroyed most area wells.

MYANMAR: Myanmar again is the world’s top opium producer because of a sharp drop in Afghan production. Opium is used to make heroin. . . . Sixty-nine percent of Myanmar’s people are Bamar, or Burman. Ninety-five percent Buddhist, they migrated from southwest China over a century ago. Despite evangelization efforts from both inside and outside the country, less than 1000 Bamar are Christians.

NEPAL: Communist rebels killed 129 police, soldiers and civilians 375 miles northwest of Kathmandu. It was the deadliest strike of their six-year-old insurrection. . . . Caught in the crossfire between the Maoists and the army are the Christians of Topariya village in far western Nepal. . . . Building on last winter’s first national Himalayan pastors’ and leaders’ conference, more than 300 gathered to study and pray at the regional East Nepal meeting in Biratnagar. This was a first for senior leaders from various associations. Several pastors walked three to five days to attend.

NORTH KOREA: Christians have donated more than $5 million worth of food, medicine, clothes and other aid, especially for children, orphans and hospital patients.

POLAND: The unemployment rate is 17.4 percent and climbing, the highest since the fall of communism in 1989. In some places the rate tops 40 percent. Hardest hit are 18-to 24-year-olds. Poland’s once booming economy has slowed to a crawl…. Traditional farmers face an uphill battle against the European Union’s agricultural schemes. Poland wants to join the EU by 2004. Of Poland’s 2 million farms, 1.6 million are tiny family plots.

ROMANIA: A new Christian center for street children and homeless people has been opened in Cluj. Staffed by professionals and volunteers, the center ministers to drug-addicted youths, thieves and prostitutes. Homeless adults are helped with drug and alcohol recovery programs. Church volunteers offer Bible study and counseling.

SENEGAL: Churches and mission agencies have formed the Wolof Consultation to foster cooperation in ministries. Church-planting efforts among the Wolofs have produced little fruit. One of the consulta-tion’s first efforts will be Christian songs in Wolof cultural style…. About half of Senegal’s 9.5 million are Wolofs. The country has about a half million Christians among 8.7 million Muslims. (See story on p. 4.)

SOUTHEAST ASIA: Work is hard to find and prices are rising among Southeast Asia’s 500 million people. Exports of steel, textiles and electronic components are way below what is needed to generate enough jobs and income to satisfy demands for consumer products. The region is held hostage to global export cycles. Slower growth leaves more and more people out of work. Even Singapore suffers from a bad recession. Indonesia’s poverty rate has jumped from 17 to 23 percent. Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines are caught in the same trap. Hard hit farmers travel to towns and cities looking for part-time work.

SOUTH KOREA: The AMI Satellite Broadcasting System plans to use the World-Space network to broadcast evangelistic programs in Korean and national and local tribal languages throughout Asia and the Middle East. The WorldSpace network uses three satellites and AMI has been licensed to use AsiaStar…. Far East Broadcasting Company’s two new Korean stations are aimed at the people of Pohang and Ulsan, both with high concentrations of non-Christians…. More than 1,000 attended last fall’s first international theology conference sponsored by the Korea Evangelical Theological Society. It was held at the new $10 million Memorial Hall of Sung Kyul Christian University.

TAIWAN: The government has established a task force to deal with the increasing number of suicides. The number jumped from 1,847 in 1996 to 2,360 in 2000. Rising unemployment, social changes, and the 1999 earthquake are blamed.

THAILAND: Shan evangelists have found a response among children, who come to their meetings despite parental opposition. Six adults join the children for weekly worship. The Shan people number only 60,000 among Thailand’s 61.3 million.

TIBET: China has started a new effort to win the allegiance of Tibetans by promoting economic development and integration. Of Tibet’s 2.6 million, 80 percent are rural herders and farmers and 20 percent are officials and urban workers. Education is woefully lacking. Only 44 percent get as far as junior high school. Tibetans resent the influx of Chinese shops and services. While they need economic help, they worry that China’s plans will undermine their culture.

VENEZUELA: At The Lighthouse Ranch, 25 miles outside Caracas, street kids receive food and housing and tutoring so they can go back to school. Prior to being admitted to the ranch, boys picked up on the streets and in prisons are counseled and evaluated. Most of them stay at the ranch until they are 18.

March 22, 2002