Christian captives set free after week behind bars

ERITREA - The Eritrean government has released 30 elderly Christian women who were arrested and detained without charges last week, according to a Christian ministry.

The women are members of the unregistered Faith Mission Church. WND reported last week on their arrests.

International Christian Concern’s Jonathan Racho said the release is a victory for Christians worldwide.

“Eritrean officials have been reluctant to listen to international pressure, but when there is news coverage, when there is pressure, when people call and pray, and put pressure on the government, this incident shows that some prisoners will be released,” Racho said.

He said, however, even with this victory, many Eritrean Christians are still being held.

“There are more than 3,000 Christians behind bars in Eritrean prisons and the conditions are still very bad. As soon as a Christian is arrested, some are taken to underground dungeons, some to Army barracks and some are held in shipping containers,” Racho said.

(Sources: WorldNet Daily, Christian Post, International Christian Concern)

Oral Roberts passes at 91 in California

TULSA - Many in the world are mourning the passing of pastor, healer, innovator and religious icon Oral Roberts, who died Tuesday (December 15, 2009) in Newport Beach, California at the age of 91 from complications of pneumonia a day after he was hospitalized following a fall at his home in California.

“Oral Roberts was the greatest man of God I’ve ever known,” said Oral’s son, Richard Roberts. “A modern-day apostle of the healing ministry, an author, educator, evangelist, prophet, and innovator, he was the only man of his generation to build a worldwide ministry, an accredited university, and a medical school.”

Evangelist Billy Graham issued a statement stating,  “Oral Roberts was a man of God, and a great friend in ministry.  I loved him as a brother.  We had many quiet conversations over the years.  I invited Oral to speak at one of our early international conferences on evangelism held in Berlin in the 1960’s.  Oral was preceded in death by his wonderful wife Evelyn, who I also knew and loved.  She was a woman of God, and a powerful prayer warrior.  Just three weeks ago, I was privileged to talk to Oral over the telephone.  During the short conversation, he said to me that he was near the end of his life’s journey.  I look forward to the day that I will see Oral and Evelyn Roberts again in Heaven–our eternal home.”

Roberts established Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association (OREA), a Pentecostal ministry, which in turn founded Oral Roberts University in 1963 which Roberts served as the school’s president until 1993 and trustee until his death.  GuideStar reports OREA “produces 52 weekly television and radio programs, and 260 daily television programs to help spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the United States and throughout the world. These programs reach an estimated 800,000 people per week.”

In May 2009, the Oklahoma Legislature honored Roberts with a resolution honoring his life. He spoke to lawmakers of his mission and his legacy.  “I’ll soon be going home to my heavenly father,” Roberts said on this occasion. “I look forward to that with great peace and joy. Leaving behind my legacy to bless people.”

Born on January 24, 1918, the fifth and youngest child of Reverend Ellis Melvin Roberts and Claudia Priscilla Irwin, Roberts grew up in southern Oklahoma. After finishing high school, Roberts studied for two years each at Oklahoma Baptist University and Phillips University. In 1938 he married a preacher’s daughter, Evelyn Lutman Fahnestock.  Leaving college before completing his degree, Roberts became an itinerant preacher, taking over his father’s ministry and expanding it to millions of people in tent revivals, healing the sick and saving troubled lives.  Eventually, the tents gave way to airwaves — broadcasting on radio and television.

In the early 60s, he broke even more ground, building Oral Roberts University in South Tulsa and later built the City of Faith Medical and Research Cente, intended to merge prayer and medicine in the healing process.

Two Roberts children are still living — son Richard, a well-known evangelist and former president of Oral Roberts University (ORU), and daughter Roberta Potts, an attorney.  Oral Roberts was preceded in death by his wife of 66 years, Evelyn, on May 4, 2005, ,and two of his children, Rebecca in 1977 and Ronald in 1982.

Memorial Service will be held at the ORU Mabee Center, in Tulsa Oklahoma on Monday, December 21, 2009 at 2:00PM.

(Sources:  Oral Roberts Evangelistic Assn, Oral Roberts University, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Oral Roberts Minstries, Oklahoma news outlets, Wikipedia)

Billions of kids at risk, Christians can help

ORLANDO FL ― According to the United Nations, there are 1.2 billion children at risk throughout the world. Some children are living on the streets of major cities. Some are hungry because they have no food. Others are forced into child labor. Others are orphaned by HIV/AIDS, drug use, violent crime or natural disasters.

Pioneers, a church planting ministry, wants to encourage national churches to do something to help. But they can’t do it alone. That’s why their children-at-risk advocate Tami Snowden developed a program called Red Card.

“The Red Card program,” says Snowden, “is a curriculum — it is a class — designed for families to take together. Number one, it is to raise awareness of what’s happening. Two, to mobilize a prayer effort, and three, to provide actual steps that can make a difference.”

Snowden says many Christians want to help but are overwhelmed by the statistics. That why this program was developed: “to help members of the church not be so overwhelmed and be able to make a difference in the lives of children at risk.”

According to Snowden, “They hear stories. They’re touched. They want to help, but they feel like they are one person, and what can one person do for 1.2 billion children at risk?”

Red Card is an eight-week, Scripture-based interactive program featuring video, hand- on activities, and a journal to help your family document your journey through the program. The program deals with poverty, orphans, street children, child labor, children of war, and other issues that are family friendly. It doesn’t deal with the sex trade problem.

Pioneers has church planting teams all over the world who are working in areas where there are large numbers of children at risk. Snowden says as families understand the issues, they can have a direct impact on evangelism. “We desire that the family hook up with the mission agency, or missionary on the ground, working with orphan children, working with street children, and they are bring the Gospel of Christ to these children.”

While the program is developed by Pioneers, Snowden says they’re promoting other ministries, too. “What Red Card is set up to do is to be pretty neutral. We are not here to promote Pioneers agenda, necessarily. We have some Pioneers opportunities in here, but we have set this up to be a network for quality organizations.”

If you’d like to be a part of the Red Card program, go to http://www.RedCardKids.org.

(Source: Missionary Network News)

Faith Comes By Hearing helps For Haiti With Love spread the Word

HAITI ― It all depends on who you know–or in this case, who knows you.

Recently, a contributor to For Haiti With Love heard about the Faith Comes By Hearing project known as “Every Church, Every Village.” This project provides audio Bible Proclaimers for churches to take on missions trips.

“Churches who do this project can contact us and get free Proclaimers; these are solar-powered, hand-crank audio Bibles that have the whole New Testament on them,” says Jon Wilke of Faith Comes By Hearing. “They can get these Proclaimers and take them on their short-term missions trips.”

With this in mind, the For Haiti With Love contributor connected the two groups, providing For Haiti with Proclaimers to share the Gospel.

The Proclaimers can be plugged in, battery operated, solar powered or hand cranked, so they are fairly easy to maintain. For Haiti’s Eva DeHart says they’ve been running on solar power in Haiti, and they’ve been working beautifully.

“Our security guys at the front gate absolutely love them, so it plays all of the time,” says DeHart, “which means that everyone coming for the food program is listening to Scripture, everyone who’s coming in waiting for the clinic is listening to Scripture, and I think the security guys are memorizing Scripture by now.” The Proclaimers are also being used in an orphanage Bible study on a regular basis.

The audio Bibles have been particularly helpful in Haiti because many of the people For Haiti With Love serves struggle with illiteracy.

“A lot of the people that are coming to the clinic particularly do not know how to read,” says DeHart. “So even if they had a Bible, they couldn’t read the Scriptures themselves. So this is a special gift to them.”

About Haiti

• Population: 10,003,000
• Unreached: 200
• People Groups: 9
• Unreached Groups: 1
• Primary Language: French
• Primary Religion: Christianity
• Evangelical: 22.2%

(Source: Mission News Network)

American missionary falls victim to Al Qaeda

MAURITANIA – A land of striking beauty with sand dunes lined against the sky, bedouins riding camels in the countryside, and flying beetles that look like they come straight from the abyss of the Apocalypse, Mauritania is a land of extremes — extreme beauty, extreme hospitality, and lately, extreme religion.  As the world mourned the death of Michael Jackson, another man went not so quietly into the night, though largely unnoticed by mainstream media.

On Tuesday, June 23^rd 2009, an American Christian worker named Chris Leggett was gunned down by Al Qaeda for the alleged “crime” of trying to convert Muslims to Christianity.  The 39-year old native of Cleveland, Tennessee not only taught computer science in a low-class neighborhood in the capital city of Nouakchott, he also, according to the Cleveland Daily Banner, worked with the prison systems to train and equip women and young boys to re-enter society, directed a training center providing training in computer skills, sewing, and literacy, and oversaw a micro-loan program which fostered the growth of hundreds of small businesses.

Although the miniscule media coverage has been fairly straightforward,  too many seemed to think that Leggett was somehow “asking for it” because of the nature of his work in a Muslim land, as if Chris Leggett somehow deserved to die because of his passion for sharing his faith.

One commenter on the Huffington Post blog site wrote, “Well, you know, it is their country. You go walking around with arrogant disregard of their laws, you better be prepared to pay the consequences. Non-story.”  Another commenter replied, “I agree. It doesn’t take much intelligence for non-military Americans to keep out of these countries. You not only go there at your own risk – you ask for it.”

Hundreds of millions of Muslims live in countries that deny them the right to choose their religion.  How does anyone know how many of the worlds’ roughly 1.2 billion Muslims,would chose Islam, Christianity or even atheism?

As a matter of fact, there are hundreds of secret believers in Mauritania right now.  Many of them have been abducted, tortured in horrific ways, and forced to name their fellow believers—while the Mauritanian government looks the other way.

According to many persecution watchdogs, the persecution of Christians in Mauritania is particularly ferocious, but the same story can be found in countless other countries like Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Syria, and Pakistan.  The fact is that roughly a billion people live under governments that don’t allow them the freedom to obey their conscience in choosing their religious beliefs.  The right to choose one’s religion is the most basic of human rights.

How to evangelize 40,000 students?

Congo-Kinshasa — Churches in the Democratic Republic of the Congo run 145 grade schools serving 40,000 students.  Only about 10-20 percent of the students come from Christian homes, and the government actually requires that schools provide religious instruction.

“This is just a great harvest field,” said Sam Vinton of Grace Ministries International. “We feel that our focus is going to continue in this area for quite a while with the number of students we have.”

GMI is sending out teams trained by OneHope to help evangelize students and communities. The teams do outreach in the schools, distribute tracts with teams of local Christians, and show The GodMan film in the evenings. So far, 700 students have made professions of faith, 847 people have professed faith in response to the tract distribution, and 1,683 have professed faith in response to The GodMan.

“Of course, the biggest prayer now in my mind is, what kind of follow-up materials need to be prepared, and training individuals who will follow up with all these students, along with the pastors and people in our churches,” Vinton said.

Logistically, the outreach is challenging. Many villages cannot be reached on bicycles or motorcycles. It’s not easy to obtain literature that clearly communicates biblical truth for 40,000 students in the Congo.

“We don’t have enough booklets to carry on that program, so that’s what we’re trying to develop,” Vinton said. They need ” literature that can be put into the hands of the new converts, regarding prayer and Bible study and their Christian life. Those type of teachings are very foundational. I would say that’s what we really have to make sure we’re providing, and so it just opens up a great responsibility to us…and a great challenge, but I think an exciting challenge.”

Many of the teachers at the Christian schools are currently unpaid and live on the support of parents in the community.  Since people are the most receptive the Gospel between the ages of 4 and 14 years old, Vinton says it’s crucial for Christian ministries to reach that age group.

“Pray that the Lord will make this a reality that results in many, many of these young people coming to the Lord. They are the future of our ministries.”

(Source: Mission Network News)