Rhoda lives in some of the most remote areas of Kenya. During the dry season, “kaskazi” monsoons or hot northeast winds from the Persian Gulf make the normally arid savannahs a veritable dust bowl.
This year has already been one of incredible blessings, a time to witness the Holy Spirit’s movement. So far in 2019, we are equipping churches in 23 countries and engaged in 52 overall.
World Challenge is based in beautiful Colorado Springs, in the shadows of the Rockies. Almost every time I or my team members hit the hiking paths around our sunny—or frequently snowy—city, we are bound to encounter intrepid bicyclists aggressively challenging the same mountain trails.
World Challenge’s partner churches in Lithuania have a motto in their city outreaches to widows and those trapped in inner-city poverty: Food kitchen ministries must not stop with feeding people.
Eating will temporarily satisfy a physiological human need, but people who come to the church kitchen should get much more.
“My husband abandoned me and our two children,” one woman in Burundi shared with a World Challenge partner. “He’s a ‘pastor’ and now on his third wife.”
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is wrestling with freedom from the Russian Orthodox Church—which has often been an accessory to Russian political leaders—and trying to transfer its authority to a new archbishop.
“Shitala” in Sanskrit means “the one who cools,” and among the Hindu gods, she is believed to cure people of skin diseases and fevers, particularly children. Her day of worship comes right after Holi, the festival of love where people are called to forgive others and repair broken relationships.
When Rachana was a baby, her feet were unusually large. Her parents examined them then shrugged. They had no money to take her to a doctor, so like many Cambodian parents, they simply made do as best they could.
How many of you remember the Kony2012 video?
It was a call to action, a cry for us to stop the human rights violations and atrocities that the Lord’s Resistance Army was inflicting on central Africa. In a few days, the video garnered millions of views.
The border of Cambodia has known decades of conflict as French colonialists, the kingdom of Siam and the Khmer Rouge swept the whole region like a deadly blaze.
Throughout it all, many people clung to their traditional religion as the last bastion of their culture: Buddhism mixed with ancestor worship and animistic spirits.