Rana* arrived at a conference held by World Challenge’s partners, and she sat and wept the entire time. Concerned, members of the team approached her and asked her what had happened. Tearfully, Rana explained that her husband had died only eight months earlier.
“This verse has been on my mind the last few days,” one of our partners in Ukraine named Nina said in the wake of Russia’s first attacks.
Joshua was very young, probably not yet a teenager, when he was abandoned to live on the streets of Kenya’s capital city. Sadly, that’s not uncommon. It’s estimated that there are as many as 300,000 kids living on the streets in Nairobi and other big cities across the country. Those kids lead difficult lives. Consistent meals are hard to come by, and fights and violence are very common.
For many young girls in parts of Kenya, the questions of who and when they marry is not up to them. A legal battle against child marriage has been fought for decades in Kenya. Underage marriage was banned in 1990 and was more heavily criminalized by a law passed in 2014, but that has done little to stop the practice.
Scriptures often discuss celebration, and God actually instituted several holidays for his people to rest and worship him. The art of celebration is a regular practice in the Old Testament, and it is echoed in the future wedding feast of the Lamb discussed in Revelation.
A few nations in Southeast Asia have had some of the world’s strictest Coronavirus lockdowns, which has made ministry very difficult for the past two years; but as we’ve seen worldwide, God has in no way been limited by the lockdowns or other restrictions.
