Islamic-led government forces led a bombing attack on a Christian school in Southern Sudan last week. A number of students and their parents were injured, but there were no fatalities reported. According to witnesses, six bombing runs took place over the grounds of the Christian Liberty Academy. Many Christian activists are calling for total U-S sanctions against Sudan as a result of the bombing and the continued persecution of black Christians in that area.
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Meanwhile, missionaries are asking people to pray that they’ll be able to overcome barriers in Spain in their effort to lead the country to Christ. Jack Lendel is with Operation Mobilization. He describes some of the obstacles. “There’s historical, there’s cultural, maybe religious barriers that keep people away from the Gospel. And, the evangelical church, to start with, is very small and just considered a sect.” According to Lendel, people are coming to Christ, but in small numbers. He says Christians need to pray for their work in southwestern Spain. “We have targeted 10 towns. We now have teams working in four of those towns in church planting. Recently we’ve seen some growth in one town where we’ve worked for eight years and suddenly we have a group of 12 now of these who have come through and decided that they want to meet together. So, that’s very encouraging. We can just pray that we’ll see that growth, that we’ll persevere. We want to see more Americans join us.”
Topping today’s news, President Clinton’s visit to India wrapped up with more talks and a visit through Pakistan. But the apparent anti-American sentiment rampant in the countries may hurt evangelistic outreach. One indigenous mission group is watching how the events will effect them. For security purposes, we’ve kept the group nameless and changed the name of our source to Jim. “Certainly, anti-colonialism is involved, but also, the BJP Party wants to make Hinduism the national religion there. Consequently, those that are tied with the West and with Christianity (is how they look at it) they very much then, are against them.” Jim says the request for prayer is more than a cliché. “For the missionaries, prayer is an absolute reality. The spiritual battles are very, very strong. Quite a few of the Indian Christians have been hurt by Hindu militants. For several months, we were very, very low key on any outreaches that would be considered evangelistic. We’re just a little more careful in how we do it.”
Meanwhile, malaria is at epidemic proportions in Mozambique as the flooding continues in that African country. That’s the word from International Aid’s Sonny Enriquez who just returned from a fact-finding mission there. Enriquez says the situation isn’t getting any better. “Before I left the number of people in the relief camps were about 300,000 plus. Today, the report is that is has gone up to 400,000. There’s a major, major threat of malaria epidemic. The kind of malaria that they have in the country is deadly. Once you have it, within 10 days, you’re dead.” Enriquez says the evangelical church is involved. “We are partnering right now with an association of evangelical churches in Mozambique. I am very encouraged by what I’ve seen as far as their active involvement in all aspects of relief work.” Because of that many are coming to Christ.
The recent Luis Palau evangelistic crusade in Monterrey, is considered one of the great successes by the organization. The area is Mexico’s fourth largest city, and at least 7,000 people indicated they committed their lives to Jesus Christ. LPEA’s Jim Williams says this was a breakthrough for them. “It is the first time to be on Televisa. They estimated that we had a million people watching in the Monterrey area every night. The people at Televisa said that they had never seen anything like it. This was the best unity we’ve seen in many years. There’s a good strong church there and they have already started to follow-up the converts.” Williams says this was encouraging to the churches because of the unprecedented response to the call of the Gospel. “One of the things that we would like people to pray is that the local churches would take advantage of the wide open door that the Lord has provided, and that this type of evangelism would continue.”
Elsewhere, new opportunities have opened up which will allow the Bible League to expand their ministry in Hungary and Macedonia. The Hungarian government expressed concern over the moral decline of their youth and are now requiring them to study the teachings of Jesus and the Bible in their public schools. The Bible League is partnering with Campus Crusade for Christ to help carry out this requirement with Bible studies, discipleship and evangelical Scripture placement.
We begin today in Russia where final opinion polls predict an outright win for Acting President Vladimir Putin in Sunday’s presidential election. Russian Ministries’ Peter Deyneka agrees. However, Deyneka says it’s unclear what that means for religious freedom there. “Even western government leaders are not sure who Putin really is and what his future aims are. Although Putin is a former KGB Director, Putin has made some reassuring promises about respecting the freedoms of all believers. But, at the same time he has cracked down severely on media freedom and he says said that reform should be carried out under tough control.” Deyneka says Russian Ministries is prepared if religious freedom is curtailed. “Regardless of what follows the election, the future of the evangelization of Russia is now more possible that ever because thousands of new Russian Christian leaders are being trained.”
Next, as relief efforts continue into Mozambique, there’s a threat of still more flooding in the area. SIM International’s Ron Frazee says they are helping with the current emergency, but they’re also looking ahead. “Now comes the hard work of long-term rebuilding and community redevelopment. We like to give our help through the local church so that people being helped see the help coming from God, and so it’s just natural then, to be able to share the Gospel with them.” Frazee adds that support is needed in a variety of ways during the crisis-from supplies to manpower, and most importantly, he says: “Pray for the Christians, that they’ll be strong in their faith, that they’ll be ready and willing to share their faith with people around them who have no hope…and just be able to give a word in season, because this is when people’s lives are disrupted.”
Nearly seven-thousand people came to Christ in Monterrey, Mexico last week as a result of evangelistic meetings with Luis Palau. According to agency spokesman Jim Williams, more than 97-thousand people attended the stadium rallies, making it one of the 10 best crusades in Palau’s history. Williams also says nearly five million people heard the Gospel on television. Televisa, Mexico’s top network, televised Palau’s live call-in program. Officials say many came to Christ as a result.
Meanwhile, the headlines are filled with stories about debt-from national to consumer debt, the concept of owing someone is not unusual. What’s disconcerting is how quickly that gets out of hand when priorities are off. Re-aligning priorities under God is what’s behind the ministry of New Focus National. Jenny Forner says they’re about ready to begin training, but training whom? “New Focus really helps churches and the people that they’re helping, because it gives them the infrastructure to be always open to people who have needs…and then, for the people that it’s helping, it not only helps them to receive something from the church, it also gives them a way to be able to give back.” One woman, whom we’ll call Judy, tells us how New Focus encouraged her family with the love of Christ. “No one wants to admit that they’ve gotten to a point where they need this kind of help. This program gave us hope when we didn’t see a way out…and this program brought us out and showed us what true Christianity is really about.”
