That’s why Summer Bible Camps with Slavic Gospel Association (SGA) offer something increasingly rare: peace.

(Photo courtesy of SGA)

“Many of these children grow up hearing near-nightly air raid sirens. They are often without a father who’s either fighting on the front line or the economic conditions are such that the dad is needing to work somewhere else to make money for the family,” says SGA’s Eric Mock.

SGA-supported Ukrainian churches host these summer camps for children, and create a refuge from the realities of war.

The camps take many forms. Some resemble a neighborhood Vacation Bible School in a central building complex or apartment square. Others look more like traditional summer camps out in nature.

But Mock says this outreach goes far beyond a temporary escape.

“These camps then – more than just being islands of peace – are the islands of peace that pass all understanding, for these kids hear a message of hope. They encounter people who show them grace and love and patience and joy, and they encounter something different than the world has provided them.”

(Photo courtesy of Valentin Lupashko/Slavic Gospel Association)

As children and families experience Christian community, they also encounter the Gospel in action.

Mock shares, “Children and their families who have suffered from the ravages of war, who have known only difficulty and trials, are now brought into an environment that seems filled with light! [They go] from the darkness of this world to the light of the Gospel. They not only hear the Gospel message, but see the Gospel message.”

Please pray for Ukrainian children attending summer camps this year and for the churches sharing Christ’s hope amid the hardships of war. Ask God to draw families to faith and raise up a new generation of believers who will shine His light in their communities.

You can support SGA’s Ukraine ministry here!

Header photo courtesy of SGA.

At the same time, Edwin Abnous with Heart4Iran says reports about Iran’s political leadership are conflicting.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian (Photo courtesy of Khamenei.ir, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=150832367)

“Iran International reported that Iranian President Pezeshkian has sent his resignation to Mojtaba Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, but there is no way to verify this.

“It seems like there is an anonymous source sharing this information with Iran International, and we do not know who this source is. After that, a few Western media outlets also picked it up and repeated it, but as of now, no one has been able to independently verify it.”

Yet, there is one encouraging development.

“It seems like the internet is back on again,” says Abnous. “However, there is also severe restrictions for Iranian users. They need to use VPN to get into the outside world, but WhatsApp and Telegram and social media platform connections and messaging systems are picking up again, and we’re receiving some contacts, and that is good news.”

Restored internet communication, even to some extent, means more than exchanging messages. It means believers can better share Gospel hope with Iranians.

(Photo courtesy of Heart4Iran)

Abnous explains, “It is very important for the ministry like Heart4Iran to be able to have this two-way communication and connection with the people inside the country, because that is where discipleship is happening.”

For believers watching events unfold, Abnous encourages keeping sight of the people behind the headlines. While governments negotiate, exchange threats, and trade accusations, millions of Iranians continue searching for hope, truth, and lasting peace.

Pray for stability in the region, protection for civilians caught in conflict, and open doors for Gospel ministry. Ask God to strengthen Iranian believers and draw many people to Himself through the ongoing outreach and discipleship efforts taking place despite restrictions.

Learn more about Heart4Iran and its ministry to people in Iran at heart4iran.com.

Header photo: Tehran, Iran (Photo courtesy of Mohammad Amirahmadi/Unsplash)

“It’s a very significant day. It’s a day of pride for Haiti’s people,” says Kate Michel with Radio-TV 4VEH, a partner of TWR. “It’s usually celebrated with parades and marching bands and people dressed in Haitian national costumes.” 

The team at Radio-TV 4VEH (The Evangelistic Voice of Haiti) provided live coverage of the Flag Day parade in Cap-Haitien. (Glimpse the recorded coverage here to get a taste of what it was like!)

Haitian women at a market in Port-au-Prince, Haiti (Stock photo courtesy of Heather Suggitt via Unsplash)

But the backdrop of Haiti’s Flag Day 2026 remains sober, amid the country’s ongoing security concerns. 

Last week, Haiti’s prime minister, Alix Didier Fils-Aime, announced yet another delay in the country’s election timeline. He said August 2026 elections are not possible, suggesting the end of 2026 instead, with the idea of a new president taking office on February 7, 2027. 

Michel says delayed elections are nothing new to Haitians. “In general, people are looking for change and hopeful for change, but skeptical about the change that is promised,” she says. “I think most people are of the attitude, ‘Wait and see. We want this to work. We’re hopeful, but we need to see the proof.’”

Into this mix of hope and hard realities, 4VEH serves Haitians right where they are at. Its broadcasts include gospel programs, Bible readings, farming resources, sports coverage, and more. 

Michel says that this summer, 4VEH is preparing special coverage of Haiti’s soccer team, which qualified for the FIFA World Cup. 

“Haitians are sports fanatics, especially of football or soccer,” says Michel. “We want to be able to reach Haiti’s people who are sports fans, but may not yet be Jesus fans. It’s a way to serve Haiti’s people and provide some great content for them, which will include some gospel messages as well.”

Please pray for equipment issues to be resolved before the World Cup. Pray also for God’s blessing over 4VEH’s summer youth programs, beginning in June. 

Then, praise God! Over the Easter weekend, Michel says 160,000 people watched The Jesus Film on 4VEH’s online platforms. One viewer asked a poignant question that Michel says gets at the heart of religion in Haiti: “Can you be saved while you’re observing the law?”

“People understand about God, but it’s based on works. It’s based on the things that you need to do for salvation or the things that you need to do to appease the voodoo spirits,” she explains. “We’re able to say Jesus offers us salvation freely. We’re able to come to Him exactly as we are, and He accepts us and will forgive us. That’s great news in Haiti.”

Above all, keep praying for Haiti. 

“It’s a very complex country, with very deep, significant needs for Haiti’s people,” says Michel. “Keep praying that God will bring peace and stability, and that people will have hope in the Lord, despite what’s going on around them.”

Header photo courtesy of Radio-TV 4VEH.

The United Nations reports that, from the first quarter of 2026, at least 1,642 Haitians have been killed and 745 injured.

For Christian World Outreach’s partner churches in rural Haiti, the crisis is bringing new faces through their doors.

Haitian community (Photo courtesy of Heather Suggitt via Unsplash)

CWO’s Greg Yoder says, “They are still seeing people coming – fleeing from the places where the gangs have taken over. They’re seeing people come to the Lord, people becoming members of the churches and joining those fellowships.”

The violence follows years of instability after Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in 2021. Despite international security efforts, gangs continue tightening their grip on Port-au-Prince while expanding into surrounding areas.

Yoder says the movement of civilians out of the capital has not stopped.

“I think it’s just been a continual exodus, trying to find relief from not being able to either sell in the marketplace [or] just live a peaceful life,” he says. “People are still trying to get away from that gang violence.”

Aspects of CWO’s ministry has been disrupted by the unrest. “We had to shut down our Feminine Training Center in Mirebalais because the gangs came and took over that town,” Yoder explains.

Churches in Haiti are all about music … and the CWO churches are no different. Choirs, musical instruments and songs of praise make these churches come alive! (Photo, caption courtesy of CWO)

Meanwhile, churches outside the capital are growing as displaced Haitians arrive searching for safety and hope.

“I think anytime there’s either a natural disaster or…in Haiti, the gang issue, people are looking for some place to put their hope,” Yoder says.

“When the churches can reach out to these people [and] help them in their need, that opens the door to sharing the Gospel and that God is our hope.”

That growth also brings pressure. Some smaller towns are struggling to absorb new arrivals.

Yoder shares, “People left with nothing but what they had on them, and so they left everything behind. They have to start over, and the Haitian people are generous!”

CWO is helping partner churches with relief funds and leadership training for pastors carrying the weight of overwhelmed communities.

Please pray for peace in Haiti, protection for vulnerable families, and endurance for church leaders serving on the spiritual front lines of the crisis.

Learn more about CWO’s Haiti ministry here.

Header photo from 2020 of a suburb of Port-au-Prince. (Photo courtesy of Reynaldo Mirault via Unsplash)

Pastor Kostia Tsivin with Beit Hallel Congregation says several new arrivals today are immigrating to escape rising antisemitism in the West. When they get to Israel, many come with very little.

(Photo courtesy of Beit Hallel Congregation)

“Of course, it’s a very difficult period of time because a lot of people left everything – houses, businesses, families,” says Tsivin.

“They need to begin from the very beginning, from zero…. It’s a different culture, it’s a different country, everything is different.”

Messianic believers at Beit Hallel Congregation are serving immigrants with food, clothing, and even bomb shelter supplies like mattresses and pillows.

Tsivin says, “We help to organize and manage bomb shelters so that they will be more ‘cozy’ – if we can use such a word for a bomb shelter – because sometimes we have three or four sirens during the night. Of course, you just sleep in the bomb shelter because you can’t go back and forth from your apartment to the bomb shelter. You just sleep there. So you need a lot of stuff there.”

Relief supplies distributed by Beit Hallel Congregation. (Photo courtesy of Beit Hallel Congregation)

Although immigrants in Israel face many new challenges, Tsivin says they’re also hearing Gospel hope.

“We have a lot of people, mothers with kids, and it’s difficult for them to go to a shop because you never know when the siren will be and where you will hide…. So we try to help and provide them with food and help with this,” he says.

“We just do whatever we can do right now…and of course, we encourage people. We pray for them. We encourage them with the Word of God.”

You can support Gospel ministry with Beit Hallel Congregation at beithallel-israel.org.

Header photo courtesy of Beit Hallel Congregation.

Dee Peterson is the director of discipleship at Prisoners For Christ. She believes that some of the strongest emotions surrounding incarceration have to do with forgiveness: Some inmates feel there is none left for them. 

“When the human soul is feeling that they can never be different, they cannot be restored, that who they are at that moment, that that’s it, that is how they will always feel, that’s who they will always be… That is just a dire hopelessness,” she says.

(Stock photo courtesy of Harry Shelton via Unsplash)

According to the United States Department of Justice, the number of suicides in state and federal prisons increased 83 percent between 2001 and 2019, totaling 4,500 people. Each one of those men and women could have found life in Jesus — the only way to truly reckon with their pasts and face their futures with hope. 

Prisoners For Christ enters this battle for hope not only with in-person ministry to inmates. The staff and volunteers in their literature department mail out more than 4,000 Bibles and biblical resources to reach prisoners each month.

It’s work that’s worth the fight. One inmate wrote back to PFC saying he had decided to end his own life but then had picked up one of their special-edition Bibles. 

“I wanted to see what the Bible says about suicide,” he later wrote to PFC. “I couldn’t find anything, so I started just flipping through the pages. I stopped at the addiction and trauma section, and my attention was directed toward the end of it, where it said, ‘No matter how unloved and worthless you feel, God loves you and values you highly. God has good plans for your restoration. God has the power to transform any life. I am rooting for you. Blessings, Sister Dee.’

“Sister Dee and Prisoners For Christ were used by God today to save my life,” he wrote. 

“Talk about impact,” Peterson says. “We were blown away by it and encouraged and just so grateful to God that He uses our ministry.”

If you know a prisoner, connect with PFC today. Prison chaplains or family members of inmates can request biblical materials to be sent to their loved ones. These resources include booklets, books, devotionals, Bibles, Bible studies, and even a special newspaper called Yard Out, created by inmates for inmates.

(Image courtesy of Prisoners for Christ)

If you want to help more inmates find hope in Christ, consider financially standing with Prisoners For Christ to cover the cost of postage and new biblical resources.

“[Prison ministry] transforms people at their lowest point in life. To be a part of that is a huge privilege, and it’s important,” says Peterson. “And that’s not just one life. That has the potential to affect generations of families. That’s a mom or dad who leaves prison or jail a changed person.”

Learn more about PFC’s work in the United States and around the world here. 

“We know that the Lord is working. We can’t even fathom everything that He is doing, but we know He is good and He transforms lives,” says Peterson. “No one is beyond that forgiveness and redemption. No one.”

Header photo courtesy of Hasan Almasi via Unsplash.

“I really believe this is one we’re going to be able to provide for a lot of people,” says Helen Williams. “In here, [the author] says, ‘Hopelessness is a universal problem.’”

The booklet covers a variety of topics and does not need to be read cover-to-cover. Readers can easily consult the table of contents and choose a section based on their current need. Ultimately, Williams notes, the booklet points not to an earthly hope, but to an eternal one.

“God is the God of hope, and he wants us to abound in hope.”

The booklet is currently available in English, and World Missionary Press is working to finish a Spanish translation within the next few months. They’ve also sent copies to each of their national coordinators and are waiting on requests for other translations.

“We did an initial printing, and that’s gone very quickly,” says Williams. “So we are doing a major printing, again, and when that’s available, then we’ll have a lot of inventory.”

Those interested can request a copy at wmpress.org/order/ or read it online at wmpress.org/read-booklet/.

You can also help cover the costs of printing this booklet by partnering with World Missionary Press. Learn more at wmpress.org/give/.

Header photo courtesy of World Missionary Press.

“In ten minutes, we had like 100 strikes,” says Nuna with Triumphant Mercy Lebanon, referring to a report from the Israeli military. “[The strikes] are so violent and strong.”

Nuna says the increased Israeli military response came because Israel can now focus on a single military front. 

“But also they have intelligence on where the people who are involved in any military activity against Israel are located,” she adds. “All these military people are trying to find refuge in places that have nothing to do with the conflict” — places such as civilian apartment buildings.

(Stock photo courtesy of Etienne Boulanger via Unsplash)

The fact that Hezbollah members are positioning themselves among civilians adds a challenging layer to Lebanon’s strife: It is dangerous for others to help the displaced. Many of the more than 1 million people displaced since Hezbollah fired on Israel on March 2 are Shia Muslims, the same branch of Islam that Hezbollah springs from. This causes others to fear that the family or individual at their door could be affiliated with Hezbollah and might put them at risk of collateral damage if Israel conducts a strike.

The Iran ceasefire has also started an exodus homeward. 

“Because of the ceasefire in Iran, we had so many trying to go back to the south, or to areas in the south,” says Nuna, describing traffic jams in Beirut on Wednesday. “Now with the strikes, it’s a very difficult time, because people are thinking of leaving. Some of them are on the road. Some of them have somebody in one of the regions that were targeted on the way back.”

Communication lines have also been disrupted. Yesterday, someone at a Triumphant Mercy Lebanon center said they could not reach their son and daughter by phone. 

“The emotional trauma is very high, especially when you’re not able to communicate,” says Nuna. 

What will it take for peace?

Any ceasefire for Lebanon must address the root issue of the conflict with Israel: the disarmament of Hezbollah. Otherwise, Nuna says,  “It will just lead to another round of hostilities in a few months, in a few years.”

“Let’s finish completely. Let’s remove the weapons of Hezbollah,” she says. “I don’t want people to die, but I want this dealt with so that Lebanon will be with one government, one police, one military, one just one entity, and not have all these militias inside that are another government within our own government.”

Please pray for Triumphant Mercy staff as they continue sharing the hope of Jesus while under heavy strain themselves.

(Photo courtesy of Triumphant Mercy Lebanon)

“Everybody’s on high alert. It’s like, ‘Do you want to close the center early? Do you want to let everybody go early?’ And at the same time, it’s not safe to let them go early because we don’t know, so [we should] keep them inside,” says Nuna. 

The hope of Jesus is the foundation of the work Triumphant Mercy Lebanon does. (More on that here.)

“How can we even give an encouraging word, or a word of hope of a future, if we didn’t have the gospel? Without the gospel, I can tell you, we are nothing,” says Nuna. 

Ask God to mercifully allow change to come to Lebanon quickly rather than through prolonged conflict. Nuna asks for this based on Jesus’ words in Matthew 24 and Mark 13. In those passages, Jesus teaches about the signs of the end of the world and the calamities that will occur in those times. 

“Pray that the time would be shortened, because otherwise nobody can sustain it,” she says. “This is what I’m praying, that what God wants to do in this country — the way God wants to cleanse the country, or revive the country — will be done quickly. The time and the extension of time is so tiring and draining and emotionally hard.”

Header photo of Beirut, Lebanon courtesy of Michael Starkie via Unsplash.

“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. 

“There’s a great sense of ‘Not this again’ here in Lebanon, because we’re living the same style of war as we did in the fall of 2024, where we have airstrikes every night,” says Pierre Houssney with Horizons International.

People on the streets of Lebanon in fall 2024. (Photo courtesy of Horizons International via Facebook)

Last week, Lebanon appealed to European leaders and the United States to intervene diplomatically as it seeks a solution with Israel, who is bent on neutralizing Hezbollah. More than 800,000 people have been displaced since the latest Israel-Hezbollah hostilities began on March 2, 2026. Schools, streets, and other public spaces across Lebanon have become shelters. 

“The infrastructure that we have available to help those people is really limited,” says Houssney. 

In the chaos, Horizons has a pulse on the real-time needs of 130 partner evangelical churches across Lebanon. With donor support, they are equipping these churches with food, bedding, and more to serve families in need. This opens the way to share the hope of Christ.

“The good side of people losing hope in the things of this world is that they often open their eyes and put their hope in the things of eternity,” says Houssney. 

Yet in the bigger picture of the Middle East conflicts, Houssney is concerned that narratives in politics and media are drawing Christians into division and even hatred for those considered enemies.

“What I’m seeing in the world is one side cheers when bombs go one way, and another side cheers when bombs go the other way,” he says. “When bombs fly in any direction, when people die, whether they are military or civilian, poor or rich, brown or white or whatever color or nationality they are, God’s image is in those people. And His heart is burdened and really angered when that image is marred. So I think it’s a time for a heart check, so that we can align our hearts with God.”

(Photo courtesy of Horizons International)

Please pray for Lebanon, Israel, Iran, and all those caught in or watching the Middle East conflicts unfold. Then, with God’s help, enter your community as a peacemaker. 

“I would encourage every [reader] to be looking at the community that they’re in — talking to the people that are around them and encouraging them toward not taking a side in the political matters, but starting to take a side in the spiritual war,” says Houssney. “Taking a stance on the side of love,  the side of forgiveness, the side of praying for those who persecute you, blessing those who curse you — you know, really loving your enemy. That’s the side that Jesus is on.”

Header photo courtesy of Nathan McBride via Unsplash.