“It’s Hezbollah who dragged the whole nation of Lebanon into a war with Israel,” says Camille Melki with Heart for Lebanon. “The Lebanese people did not choose that, do not want that. In fact, we long for a lasting peace for the entire region.”

(Photo courtesy of Heart for Lebanon)

A month into the renewed war, Melki says the Lebanese government and army’s response has left a serious leadership vacuum, “which means that Hezbollah has a free rein in those areas, and Israel has a free rein to retaliate and attack Hezbollah in those areas.”

Yet beauty remains. Last weekend on Palm Sunday, children carried olive and palm branches down church aisles, singing “Hosanna, Hosanna!”

“You know, that word ‘God save us’ has a whole different meaning for us in times of war,” says Melki. 

The UN Refugee Agency reports that around 14% of Lebanon’s territory is now under Israeli evacuation threats. About one in five people in Lebanon have been displaced, according to a report from NPR.

Melki says Heart for Lebanon is now serving 7,200 families with aid and care. 

“Our team had to add 2,600 new families to our beneficiary list. This is a 45% increase,” he says. “This is a lot to take. We need wisdom. We need protection, and we need the prayer of perseverance, as we ourselves are faced with security threats and difficulties maneuvering aid from one place to the other. We are always trying to reach out to the families who are on the move.”

Heart for Lebanon’s focus on holistic, relational, and unconditional ministry allows believers to reach and engage refugees in relationship.
(Photo courtesy of Heart for Lebanon)

Heart for Lebanon has given this Holy Week the title “Hope In the Resurrection.” Pray that their Good Friday and Easter services will bless many and point them to Jesus. 

“Our hope is found in Christ resurrected, the victorious over death,” says Melki. “I hope that gives us a reminder that eternal peace is only given to us through Jesus Christ.”

Pray also for the Heart for Lebanon team for the long road ahead. 

“We look at the moment where we will be all together in heaven, worshiping the Lamb. But in the meantime, we stand in solidarity with one another,” says Melki. 

Header photo courtesy of Heart for Lebanon. 

Lana Silk of Transform Iran describes the reality facing children in the country, including those caught up in the protests.

“The children are caught up in it. Children as young as 10, 11, and 12 have been part of the protests [and] have been arrested and killed. I’ve heard reports of girls as young as 12 being raped in custody. The government is indiscriminate.”

(Photo courtesy of Transform Iran)

Silk says children in Iran are dealing with multi-layered trauma, and need Jesus more than ever.

“Children are…very aware that they have no future in this country and have grown up sooner than you would normally want your 10-, 11-, 12-year-old to grow up and are aware that this is a necessary fight to secure their own future.”

Transform Iran is discipling believers in the Iranian underground Church. Christian children in Iran have been forced to live double lives under the oppressive Islamist regime.

“They have to profess Islam at school, recite the Quran, hide their faith, and then come home and have a Christian life,” Silk explains. “So that is very, very taxing for children when they’ve got to constantly remember who they can say what to, and try to muddle through and remember what’s true and what’s right.”

As you continue to pray for Iran, Silk asks believers to remember the youngest generation.

“I want us to remember the children and to be praying specifically for them…. This is the future of Iran. [Pray] that there will be stability in the future of Iran.

“Jesus does appear to people in dreams and visions in Iran! Let that be the children – that these children have encounters that they can talk about when they’re older and say, ‘Oh my goodness. While it was all happening, I remember that man in white that came to me in my dreams,’ and for that generation to be redeemed.”

Learn more about Transform Iran’s ministry at transformiran.com.

Header photo courtesy of Transform Iran.

“How do we minister to the next generation as they live through pretty intense stuff? One of the ways, I believe, is to give them the seeds of hope in Jesus Christ,” says Denise Godwin of IMM. “There’s an opportunity when people are young to shift their perspective, and there’s another opportunity to really minister to them in the area of hope.”

IMM partners with missionaries, national churches, and media outlets to produce a wide variety of media in almost 70 languages. While they have created children’s programs in the past, they are now working to develop and sustain a permanent department within their ministry that would be solely devoted to creating children’s resources.

“We really want this to be an ongoing ministry through media to children in different parts of the world, which means we need to sustain that with both people and funds,” says Godwin. “It’s a lot of work, and we are so excited to get to serve the next generation and help them know Jesus.”

IMM’s plan is to produce a 2-D and 3-D animated series of Bible-based stories, with 15-minute episodes that can be dubbed into multiple languages, helping to reach children through captivating storytelling, vibrant characters, and immersive narratives. Existing IMM children’s programs like Boulevard des Enfants and World of Jonathan Singh have had millions of views over three decades. The ministry currently has two children stories in production, one of which is Red—a story that helps teach kids they can have hope in challenging circumstances, even when they feel alone.

“So much tragedy is out there, but God redeems things,” says Godwin. “He redeems people, and he uses them.”

Pray on behalf of believers in regions of war and conflict, on behalf of IMM’s media partners, and that God would send IMM more animators and other mission-minded workers to help make this project a reality. You can learn more about the project at imm.edu/for-children.

Header photo courtesy of International Media Ministries. 

“People are losing a lot of hope in their countries’ education future, so they tend to give up,” El-Mounayer says. 

SAT-7 staff point kids to Christ while standing in their shoes, as many ministry team members have personal experience with displacement or refugee status. El-Mounayer recalls her own experience growing up in Lebanon:

“I was not a refugee, but I was displaced many times, and all I wanted was for somebody to tell me there is hope.” 

Praise God that the hope of Christ knows no bounds! Please pray that it will reach MENA’s young people before the increasingly radicalized messaging of their cultural environment takes hold. If the Gospel is not preached, El-Mounayer says we lose. 

“We lose this generation that is becoming so confused between the message of extreme hate and the message of extreme love,” she points out. 

Primarily through social media platforms, SAT-7 ministry team members routinely take questions from young people about the love and forgiveness of God. 

“They ask us, ‘Love? God is love?’ They ask us, ‘Forgiveness? We should forgive people who hurt us?’ And we’re very honest when we answer that it’s really not easy – especially in the Middle East when there are many enemies around. But people feel and respect this honesty,” she says. 

After connecting with youth via social messaging apps, the ministry’s next step is to connect them with a viewer support team. 

“They try to connect with the people. They try to answer their questions. They try to pray with them. And then at the end, when we feel it’s safe – specifically their safety – we connect them to a local church or underground church,” El-Mounayer says. 

Please pray for much spiritual fruit from SAT-7’s ministry to children. Learn more about their work here. 

“We are on our knees praying because we really believe that it’s not our work at the end,” El-Mounayer says. “It’s the work of the Holy Spirit.” 

Courtesy of Ahmed Akacha via Pexels. Featured image courtesy of Oussama Ben Slama via Pexels.

Header photo: Courtesy of Oussama Ben Slama via Pexels.

“One aspect is, depending on your estimate, over a million men and women that have been killed or seriously injured [on both sides of the war]. That translates to maybe millions of families that no longer have a father,” says Mock. “It’s brutal to look at what this war has done to so many young lives, leaving the families broken and fractured.”

Photo courtesy of Slavic Gospel Association

Children and adults carry invisible scars, the war within the war. 

“They’re going to be dealing with the horrifying sights and sounds that this war for four years has brought into their hearts and lives,” says Mock. “This trauma means that any political process for peace really is irrelevant when it comes to peace within the heart.” 

Although the United States has tried to broker a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine, Mock says the fundamental differences between the two nations are land, authority, and control. 

“And also security guarantees,” he adds, “because they know an American president is a president for a limited time. So any peace agreement that they have may be transient or temporary.”

Please pray — but not only in the way you might think. 

“I am not going to ask you to pray for peace in Ukraine,” says Mock. “I’m going to ask you to pray for peace in the hearts of many Ukrainian families and many Russian families.” 

How the Ukrainian church is moving 

As peace talks concerning Russia and Ukraine continue to flash across daily headlines, Mock says the real question is this: “Both on the Ukrainian side and on the Russian side, will people caught up in the torment of this war turn to Christ and His saving grace?”

Relief and pastoral training are two of the ways that SGA helps Ukrainian Christians serve in this spiritual battle. Mock says compassion ministry builds bridges. 

“It is not about just having a warehouse full of compassion items that we’re distributing to people and feeling good about the distribution,” Mock explains. 

“It is equipping local churches to reach the people in their own community, or people who are fleeing to their community, that people would find lasting peace through the gospel of Jesus Christ.” 

You can help support this work by giving to SGA’s Ukraine Relief fund. In the past four years, SGA has helped churches provide more than 27 million meals, at least 500 generators, and thousands of blankets, heaters, medicines, and more. They estimate over 2.6 million people have heard the gospel who wouldn’t have otherwise.

SGA church partners prepare meals for displaced people from the Kursk region. (Photo courtesy of Slavic Gospel Association)

Pastoral training is another critical need, so that when Ukrainians connect with a church, they will hear true, biblical teaching that helps them grow their faith. Mock says many pastors have fled Ukraine. Others have been conscripted into the army.

“They forecast as many as the need of 1,000 pastors in the next 10 years,” he says. “So SGA, in 19 locations across Ukraine, we’re taking the training to them, working through pastors and teachers in Ukraine, as well as some Americans coming over to teach. We’re trying to train up as many young people as possible.”

Learn more about supporting pastoral training with SGA here at their website.

Header photo of Kyiv park (Photo courtesy of Nadiia Yahaha via Pexels).

But that data only counts those registered with the UN. The real number is undoubtedly much higher — and every one of these children, women, and men needs so much more than just food and shelter. 

“They are coming just to find hope in our country, and they fear the future. So we have to give them hope and comfort,” says Marihan with Kasr El-Dobara Evangelical Church (KDEC) in Egypt. “That’s why we are expanding our ministry to reach out to them and give them hope and a future.”

School in Cairo, Egypt (Stock photo courtesy of Primrose Murahwi via Unsplash)

After two years of hard work,  KDEC is ready to open a new education center for around 80 children in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt. 

“It was a long journey of success and failing and frustration,” Marihan says of the process. “It wasn’t easy at all. Sometimes we were learning new things, because it’s our first time to establish an education center for refugees.”

But God opened the way, bringing both government permission as well as a local partnering church that can legally staff the center.

The center will meet a critical need. For Palestinian refugees in Sinai, for example, Marihan says, “they cannot go anywhere else in the country, and they cannot use the local school.”

Showing the love of Christ to families opens the way to share His message. Please join in praying for the ministry of this new center to dozens of refugee families. Ask God to keep the door open for this way to serve. 

“Pray for protection — protection for the people who serve with us. And even pray for the local church there who will be responsible for the education center,” says Marihan. “Pray for the teachers. Pray for the people who will receive the message.”

Header photo courtesy of KDEC.

Christian World Outreach’s (CWO) Greg Yoder says, “There’s been over 600 that have died, and there’s still a lot of missing people. With flooding, that’s always an issue because people are buried and that kind of thing.”

(Photo courtesy of CWO)

Roads and bridges are washed out, cutting off whole villages. Tragedy struck a CWO partner church when one family couldn’t access a hospital, and their infant daughter died from a medical emergency.

CWO is ministering to grieving families and meeting needs where they can. Yoder says, “Probably we’re going to need to do food assistance because flooding has caused damage to their farms, and we’ve already heard that prices are rising for food.”

Amidst the crisis, the season of Christmas presents an opportunity for CWO to bring relief and hope to children impacted by flooding.

“During this time of year, Christmas, we’ll give them a Christmas gift,” says Yoder. “It’ll have things that they can use, like notebooks, pens, and pencils. Those that don’t have shoes, we’ll give them shoes [and] things they need along with a food package. That’s, again, just an opportunity to share with these children, which actually ministers to the families.”

Pray with CWO for families in Sri Lanka.

“A lot of those children are Buddhist or Hindu, and so it opens the door to share Christ with them, and we just pray that God will open their eyes to the truth.”

You can also tangibly support CWO’s Gospel ministry in Sri Lanka.

Header photo courtesy of CWO.

“These armed groups are infiltrating schools, communities and manipulating kids as well as their families – their moms and dads – with promises of money, with future opportunity, protection and a better life, which is simply untrue. The numbers really are staggering. Last year alone, Columbia recorded 600 cases of child recruitment. And that is such a low number compared with reality. Many humanitarian groups are estimating that the number is closer to 1000s of children.”

Displaced and Vulnerable

The violence has displaced many of the families AMG serves in Soacha and Cali. This pushes them into deep poverty and which makes them more vulnerable to armed groups. Additionally, these groups are increasingly targeting kids in public schools and major cities rather than solely relying on their previous technique of kidnappings.

(Photo is a representative stock image courtesy of Alejandro Jovica via Pexels.)

“Boys are recruited as fighters or as couriers, and girls are frequently subjected to sexual violence,” Dennett says. “We’ve heard of armed groups even using kids as human shields in altercations. Just that happened weeks ago in Guaviare, where nineteen people had been killed in a military operation. Among those nineteen were seven children.”

Child Development Centers with AMG

AMG runs a child development center in Cacau, Colombia where children can be physically safe from the violence while they learn, are mentored, and cared for spiritually. The staff there has been able to work with local churches to help protect kids.

“In another case, we had a 16-year-old boy was sent to Soacha because armed groups were targeting him directly. Though he was too old for sponsorship in AMG, he found a place to belong, to heal, to grow spiritually at our center and be mentored.”

(Photo is courtesy of AMG International.)

Just like they have for that boy, AMG has offered countless children a place to thrive despite violence and pain. Dennet notes that their staff operates in difficult places and dangerous circumstances. However, God is at work!

“We’re offering security and safety, education, hot meals, spiritual formation and a lot of love – a place for these children to belong. And for many of these children, these centers are the difference between being targeted by the groups and being safe and protected. Really the difference between despair and hope.”

Please pray for these children. If you’d like to help support AMG financially, click here.

Header photo is courtesy of AMG International.

“We are a discipleship-centered, family-rooted, and missional church, passionate about seeing lives transformed by the power of the gospel,” says Yara, the partnerships team leader at Resurrection Church.

(Photo courtesy of Resurrection Church in Lebanon)

It’s been a year of continued regional conflict and uncertainty for Lebanon. But Yara says the difficulties will never change Resurrection Church’s sense of God’s purpose for them.

“We believe that the Church exists to be present where there is pain, to care for those who are hurting, marginalized, weak, poor, without discrimination and always with the heart of pointing people to Jesus,” she says. 

“Due to the ongoing crises, the walls people had built started to shatter. They’re more open to share their hearts, their pain. They’re asking questions [that] are deep about the gospel, about life in general, searching for peace and hope.” 

That’s why bringing joy to people this time of year, as well as introducing them to Christ, was a top priority for Resurrection Church’s plans. Instead of merely hosting events, they invited people on a journey with three stops along the way. 

“It starts with a Christmas theatrical play for all age groups, where many people encounter the story of Jesus for the very first time,” says Yara.

Christmas village 2025 (Photo courtesy of Resurrection Church in Lebanon)

“From there, we carry new people and families into our Christmas Village, which we all know is a space for joy, community, connecting with these people, making families and children feel welcomed and seen.”

The final step is the church’s Christmas service, where people will be welcomed in and invited to take the next step with God.

“The vision is very simple behind this, but also intentional,” says Yara. “It is to gently carry these people from their first encounter with the Christmas story and the gospel into His church as a final stop.”

Please join in prayer for spiritual breakthroughs in people’s lives this week.

December 2025 Christmas village (Photo courtesy of Resurrection Church in Lebanon)

“Pray that the hearts would stay open in every step of the way, every step of the journey, that God would draw people forward along this journey and transform lives through it,” says Yara.

Lebanon is one of, if not the most, open countries in the Middle East for sharing the hope of Christ, says Yara. Because of that, Resurrection Church often has believers arriving at their doors, having fled from persecution in different Arab countries.

“We truly believe that God has positioned Lebanon for such a time as this — not just as a refuge, but as a place where disciples are formed and we are able to lead people to the light of Christ,” says Yara.

Header photo courtesy of Resurrection Church in Beirut, Lebanon. 

“It’s unclear how involved the government negotiations were,” says Greg Kelley with Unknown Nations, “but there was definitely some pressure that was put on these kidnappers.” 

Kelley says the November 21 abduction is “an example of constant disruption of the gospel, because we regularly get calls [from indigenous missionary partners]where we have to emergency evacuate or pull people from one place to another.”

(Stock photo from Lagos, Nigeria courtesy of Doug Linstedt via Unsplash)

Despite the release of these 100 kidnapped children, the big-picture pattern in Nigeria remains the same. Groups like Boko Haram and Fulani militants attack and abduct people at will. They often target Christians, who are considered soft targets. The government’s response to enforcing justice is lackluster.

The situation takes on further seriousness this Christmas, as memories of mass killings return. Two years ago on Christmas Eve, nearly 300 Christians across Plateau State were murdered.

Believers expect adversity this year, too. “That’s their life. That’s all they know,” Kelley says. “And they will not stop worshiping Jesus because of it [the danger].” 

Pray for God’s strength for Nigerian Christians and His mercy over their lives this Christmas. Pray for their enemies by name.

“In northern Nigeria, there are dozens of different people groups or nations — including the Fulani, the Hausa, and the Kanuri, that are all 99% Muslim,” says Kelley. “When Jesus said ‘Pray to the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers,’ we can inject the names Kanuri, Fulani and Hausa into that prayer, because those are the places and the nations that need laborers.”

Header photo courtesy of Moses Adeyemi via Unsplash.