Pray that Sunday Agang from Nigeria, who heads the NetACT project to produce a textbook on African public theology, will be able to get visas for Angola and for Kenya to make valuable contributions to the meetings Fraser has organised for the end of June.

 Fraser now has visas for his trip to Angola and Kenya, but is still experiencing problems with his scheduled flights to Angola.  He is also concerned that he will pitch his training material at the right level and avoid cross-cultural confusion.  (He has to have his materials in Portuguese for Angola and in English for Kenya.)

 The men in Drakenstein Maximum who took part in the Restorative Justice process are having follow-up sessions and need greater understanding, honesty and courage to change.

 Ruth finishes exams on Friday. Pray that we’ll be able to clarify her next step before Dawn returns to South Africa. Pray for relationships and the partings that are so much a part of life overseas.

Talita Kum

Adrian Poppa, the Director of Talita Kum, has been busy preparing a detailed application for EU funding which is critical to the ongoing development of Talita Kum from its present 2 houses to the projected 4. 

The 4 houses, when completed, will serve children all the way through primary and secondary school and begin to give the young people life skills as well as homework help with their formal education before they leave school.

Talita Kum is also dedicated to making sure that children who don’t make it to being part of the intellectual elite are also valued for who they are.

 

Daniel Centre

Balazs, the Director of the Daniel Centre, visited Evanton this week to submit and discuss his report for the Blythswood Trustees, hoping to demonstrate that the Daniel Centre is value for the money it receives.   

The Centre has just interviewed three new candidates for admission and two of the applicants look very positive.  The third young man has some attitude problems which could make him more of a disruptive presence, so decisions have to be made.

Another young man (Istvan) who has been in the Centre for 6 months is still jobless and was sent home from his latest job trial after 2 days for being too slow.

Voice of the Martyrs, 16 May 2019

Pastor Abraham Ben Moses has been released from prison this month after spending two years behind bars for blasphemy in Indonesia.

Pastor Abraham was first arrested in December 2017 after a YouTube video of him surfaced teaching about the differences between the Bible and the Koran. The video was seen as offensive.

As an ex-professor of Islamic studies, Pastor Abraham knows Islam better than most, but he found hope when he converted to Christianity in 2005 after he read the Bible.

Raised a Muslim, he studied religious comparison before teaching Islam at university and raised his family with a devout Muslim faith.

After he received Christ, Pastor Abraham was radically changed and began preaching and evangelising almost immediately.

While in prison, he continued to minister to prisoners, saw around 60 people come to Christ and trained some to be Christian teachers.

Christians freed by court in Nepal

 

Barnabas Fund, 22 May 2019

 

Four Christians were released from custody on 29 April after a court hearing in Nepal, six days after they were accused of trying to “lure conversions” to Christianity.

 

The two Nepali men and one Indian national had been working with a US woman to train local pastors in the Dang district in midwestern Nepal.

 

 

The four faced charges under the new “anti-conversion” law, according to a Barnabas Fund source, but were released after the court hearing, in a case victory celebrated by local Christian leaders.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide, 7 May 2019

 

Last Tuesday was Children’s Day in Mexico. As part of our Faith and a Future campaign, we brought Alma to Mexico City to share her story.  Alma, like so many, has missed out on her education because of religious discrimination.

 

Alma met with government and embassy officials and even attended a special breakfast with the Mexican President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. 

 

During a very emotional meeting, Tania Ramírez Hernández, of the National Council to Prevent Discrimination told Alma: “We owe you an apology, this country owes you an apology… We have certainly failed in the process, but we are here to protect you, so that your trajectory in life is what you want it to be.”

 

Please join us in praying that the meetings, which were the first of their kind to tackle this issue in Mexico, would be an important first step towards ensuring that no child misses out on a fair education because of their faith.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide, May 25, 2019 

 

In October 2018, Eritrea was elected to serve on the UN Human Rights Council, despite having one of the worst human rights records in the world.  12% of the country’s population have fled.

 

Six prominent Christian leaders have been imprisoned incommunicado for over a decade and represent only a tiny proportion of Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Muslims detained in the country.

 

The Christian leaders included the president of the 120 Full Gospel churches, a lecturer in Mathematics who is Chair of the Eritrean Evangelical Alliance, and the country’s only psychiatrist.

 

In July 2018, 48 people filmed listening to an Ethiopian evangelist were arrested although some of them were not believers but simply passers-by.

 

Etritrea is currently working hard to end the mandate of the UN’s Special Rapporteur who is responsible for recording human rights abuses in the country.

Continue to pray for Dawn, still in England, as she has come down with a heavy cold.

 

Give thanks for Fraser’s successful trip to the Ivory Coast – he is now working out practical ways to assist the French-speaking colleges there.

 

His next trip is to Angola to teach through an interpreter for the last week of June, and then to Kenya for the first two weeks of July.  He is working on visa applications.  The Angolan one is the more complicated.

 

Fraser includes a report from a South African theology lecturer who has taught at Nile Theological College in Southern Sudan through the NetACT lecturer exchange.

 

South Sudan is rated the number one “fragile” state in Africa – at civil war for 3 years with 400,000 dead.

 

Though a peace was signed in September 2018, ethnic violence could break out at any time.

 

The South African lecturer saw the 60-70 students – tired, hopeless, often sick and in dire poverty – being touched by Jesus and finding hope, the women in particular inspired by having a woman teach and minister to them.

Talita Kum

 

Adrian Poppa, the Director of Talita Kum, spoke to us on Thursday evening, 9^th May, sharing his vision for the importance of education for Romanian children, enabling them to think their way through the voices competing for their attention in the public square.

 

Talita Kum is also dedicated to making sure that children who don’t make it to being part of the intellectual elite are also valued for who they are.

 

Daniel Centre

 

Most of the care work takes place during the evenings and at the weekends.  This places more social, and even marital, pressure on the reduced staff.    

 

Balazs will be interacting with a group of 30 young Irish people visiting Romania and hopes their own vision for mission will be strengthened.

 

He is still preparing his report for the Blythswood Trustees to demonstrate that the Daniel Centre is value for the money it receives which he presents in Evanton at the end of May.

Voice of the Martyrs, 9 May 2019

 

A Three-Self Church preacher was disappointed when the sermon that he had sent to the local authorities for approval was denied because the sermon was substandard: too much religion and not enough communist ideology.

 

Two major concerns were indicated: the statement that “God made heaven and earth, and created everything”, and that the quotes from the Bible were given without the inclusion of any traditional Chinese culture aspects.

 

The censorship of sermons is a common occurrence in today’s China. The clergy of the government-approved churches are required to submit for authorities’ review everything they plan to say to their congregations.

 

The government wants all sermons to praise the goodness of leaders and include topics like the evolution of the Communist Party’s faultless leadership and kindness as the reason for the good life of China’s citizens.

 

“The Chinese Communist Party is forcing us to tell lies and go against the Lord’s words.”

 

About 100 million Christians live in China, but only 30 million are affiliated with the government-authorised Three-Self Patriotic Movement. The remaining 70 million worship in unapproved house churches.

“DEEP STATE” OF ISLAMISTS STILL IN SUDAN

 

Barnabas Fund, 7 May 2019

 

The barbarous rule of dictator Omar al-Bashir might be over, but whether Sudan will continue to be run by Islamist extremists hangs in the balance.

 

The al-Bashir government had apparently tried to eradicate Christians from Sudan. It deported Christians to South Sudan and forced them to live as despised second-class citizens under Islamic sharia law.

 

But Islamist regime insiders close to al-Bashir remain in the shadows, determined to maintain their grip on power.

 

These Islamist insiders make up what is being described in media reports as a “deep state” of shadowy authority figures that retain power and influence.

 

Military control may allow this “deep state” to eventually seize power in a countercoup as Islamist influence is strong in the upper echelons of the armed forces.

 

It will be difficult for independent individuals or groups with experience and strength to deal with these dangers.

 

The time may be ripe for Western democracies to help Sudan through diplomacy and also funding, but will these powers grasp this historic opportunity to do so?