Morning Star News, June 28, 2024 (excerpts)

An evangelist who had received death threats from Muslim extremists was killed after leading Muslims and others to Christ on June17 in eastern Uganda, sources said.

The body of evangelist Richard Malinga was found in the evening in Butebo District after he had texted his pastor that he was surrounded by Muslims, sources said. He was 36.

A Baptist church in Pallisa District had sent him to visit homes with the gospel, his pastor said. He left his hometown in Pallisa District the morning of June 17 to share about Christ in Butebo District, and several people put their faith in Christ, including some radical Muslims, said his church’s senior pastor.

“The evening of June 17, I received a short message from Malinga of being surrounded by the Muslims,” said the pastor, whose name is withheld for security reasons. “I wrote back to him several times, but there was no response.”

Malinga had been receiving threatening messages from Muslim extremists, the pastor said.

An area resident found Malinga’s body.

“I heard a loud wailing at around 7:30 p.m. on the main road,” said the resident on condition of anonymity. “We found the victim in a pool of blood, dead and tied with ropes.”

Police began a manhunt the next day.  The attack was the latest of many instances of persecution of Christians in Uganda that Morning Star News has documented.

Barnabas Aid, June 27, 2024

Renewed prayers are needed for kidnapped Nigerian pastor Paul Musa after he was shown being held at gunpoint in a new video posted online by his captors, the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram.

Pastor Paul, 59, and his wife Ruth, 50, were abducted in March 2023 from their home in northern Borno State.

The new 15-second video, believed to have been posted over the weekend of 22/23 June, shows the pastor wearing an orange jumpsuit and kneeling in front of a masked gunman.

The pastor does not refer to his wife by name in the video, but he states that unless Boko Haram’s demands are met by the end of the week then “this will be for our lives”.

In May 2024 the terrorist group posted a video of the couple in which Pastor Paul called on the government and the Christian Association of Nigeria for help in securing their release.

The pastor was shown questioning why he and his wife were still in captivity when Muslims kidnapped at around the same time had been freed.

Many pastors are among the Christians who are often kidnapped by Islamists in northern and Middle Belt Nigeria. Islamist terrorists waging an ongoing campaign of anti-Christian violence are estimated to have killed 45,000 believers since 2009.

Joshua Project, July 1^st, 2024

The Mappila attribute their Islamic conversion to the work of an Arab missionary. These Muslim communities resulted from the unions of Arab sailors and merchants with local women. Mappila people live in both India’s southwestern Kerala state and the Laccadive Islands just to the west of that state. They speak Malayalam, the language of Kerala.

Muslim communities strongly discourage their people from following Jesus Christ unless believers reach their leaders first. There needs to be persons of peace among Mappila leaders.

Kerala is about 20 percent Christian, and they have strong mission agencies like India Gospel Outreach. Believers who already speak Malayalam could be sent to the Mappila.

May this people group praise Him and tell others of His mighty deeds.

Pray that Mappila believers would be sensitive as they share what Jesus can do for a community. Pray for networks of believing families and fellowships that will throw the doors open for others to follow Jesus. Pray for the Lord to bless families among the Mappila people with his presence and mercy. Pray for Bible-believing fellowships and churches among the Mappila people.

The Voice of the Martyrs, June 6, 2024 (excerpts)

Kaew placed her trust in Christ through the prayers of her parents, who became Christians after her marriage. Her husband and his parents, as well as their village, opposed her decision to follow Christ and tried repeatedly to make her recant. On December 30, 2023, Kaew’s husband and other villagers berated and beat her until she passed out. When she regained consciousness, she was given one more chance to recant, but she insisted on following Christ.

In anger, her husband threw her out of the house. Heartbroken, she took their 7-year-old son and returned to her parents’ home with very little besides the clothes they wore. Kaew’s husband has since divorced her. Because her parents are also suffering persecution for their faith, including destruction of crops and damage to their property, they are struggling to support Kaew and her son.

The Communist government, in conjunction with Buddhist monks, persecutes Christians, with the exception of the government-controlled Lao Evangelical Church. Poverty, lack of infrastructure and mountainous terrain make evangelistic outreach challenging. Thanks to bold evangelists, churches continue to grow even as they experience ongoing persecution.

Most believers are persecuted by family members or village authorities concerned that Christians offend the spirits, and the central government restricts Christian activity.

Morning Star News, June 7, 2024 (excerpts)

Pastor Josemon Pathrose spent nearly all of February in jail and finally got his confiscated vehicle back after four months. The harassment and criminal charges he’s endured at the hands of Hindu extremists are not uncommon in India.

Pastor Pathrose and another Christian were driving back to their base in Madhya Pradesh state from Uttar Pradesh state on Feb. 3 when they stopped in Jalaun District, to visit a family who had attended his online meeting.

As they were having tea, members of two Hindu extremist groups barged in, alleging the 55-year-old pastor was visiting to fraudulently convert people. Police soon arrived and arrested Pastor Pathrose and his companion.  They seized his vehicle, Bibles and literature and took them and three other Christians to the police station, he said.

“They slapped us as they questioned us,” Pastor Pathrose told Morning Star News. “They called me the leader of the ‘conversion racket’ and beat me more than my friend.”

Officers asked them how much money they offered for each conversion to Christianity, how many people had they converted, where they got foreign funds for conversions, how many places had they evangelized, and “Who else is in your gang,” among other questions, the pastor said.

Also arrested was the adult son of the host family and his friend, the pastor said.

Release International, June 27, 2024 (excerpts)

53 Algerian Christians, almost all pastors, have been arrested and prosecuted in the past five years simply for living out their faith. 5 have already spent months behind bars, but the majority have prison sentences hanging over them pending appeal at the Supreme Court.

A veneer of due legal process through interminable waits for Supreme Court appeal hearings thinly disguises the fact that Christians are being arrested, tried, convicted and then sentenced to imprisonment and fined in contravention of the freedom of worship and other civil liberties enshrined in their constitution.

Their places of worship are being shut down, with 43 out of the 44 member churches of the Protestant Association of Algeria (EPA) having been closed since 2018, for holding ‘unauthorised worship’ despite the EPA having registered as an official denomination in 1994.

As a result, Christians are constitutionally free to practise their faith, but outlawed from sharing it; are members of a legally registered church, whose places of worship are all closed.

This is a direct response to the phenomenal church growth seen in Algeria in one generation: Christians numbered from the tens in the mid-1980s to the tens of thousands by 2016.

Barnabas Aid, May 30, 2024

Please pray for the families of Christian missionaries Davy and Natalie Lloyd and Jude Montis, who were killed in a gang ambush in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince on 23 May.

Davy Lloyd, 23, and his wife Natalie, 21, a missionary couple from the US, worked for the Christian organisation Missions in Haiti, which was founded by Davy’s parents in 2000.

The couple were shot dead alongside Jude Montis, a Haitian national who had worked for the missionary organisation for 20 years.

The missionaries were attacked when they were leaving church with a group of children.

Three trucks full of gang members ambushed them and robbed them, leaving them tied up.

The missionaries escaped to a house connected to their mission to take cover, as more gang members arrived. The gang members shot at the house, killing all three Christians.

Haiti is currently in the midst of surging violence and insecurity, as rival armed gangs control more than 80% of Port-au-Prince.

Approximately 362,000 Haitians have been displaced by the violence and insecurity, and in the first three months of 2024 alone, more than 1,500 people have been killed by gang violence.