Mission Network News

For women who have been waiting to do something exciting for the kingdom, Cathey Anderson knows just how you feel. And she's reserving a spot just for you.

Last September, Anderson, with Operation Mobilization, caught a vision to bring together ordinary women from all over the world to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa. The women's goal would be to bring awareness and funding to combat oppression, exploitation and global trafficking.

Zambia is one of the 30 poorest countries in the world. According to SOS Children, over 30 percent of its children under the age of 15 are orphans, and half a million young children live on the nation's streets.

The street children go particularly overlooked. Most suffer from various diseases and are treated with suspicion and disgust as they try to help load buses.

"These young men have pretty much been shunned by society there, just because most of them have some kind of addiction," explains Greg Yoder, vice president of Christian World Outreach. "They live on the streets. They live in the poorest parts of town."

Nations that are mostly Muslim can be difficult to reach. Blasphemy laws can keep Christians from speaking the truth in Algeria or Pakistan. Threat of persecution and imprisonment make believers cautious.

In the 95 percent Muslim country of Senegal, believers have taken a unique approach to avoid conflict while still getting the gospel across.

David Bies with Biblica says because of the nation's devotion to Islam: "It's difficult for us to make a mass evangelism to call people. That's why we use a sport outreach, sport evangelism. When you have one soccer ball, you go outside in the street, and in one minute you can get more than 100 kids around you."

Kent Muhling prays with a disaster victim in Japan.

It's been nearly three months since Japan was torn apart by an earthquake and tsunami. The billions of dollars in damage sent the country into a deeper recession as many jobs were lost, businesses were left crippled—and in some cases destroyed— by the disaster. While it was bad news for the economy, the tragedy has given the church a boost.

Joe Handley is President of Asian Access, a ministry that supports the local church in Japan. He's in Fukushima, Japan, now getting a good look at what God is doing through the church post-earthquake. Handley says of all the relief groups he's seeing in the region, the greatest response has come from "Japanese churches from all over the country—Okinawa, Tokyo, Hiroshima. It's just unbelievable the amount of love Japanese churches have mobilized to reach out and help clean up at this time."

American Evangelist Sammy Tippit thought he grew up in a family without any spiritual ties. After he came to Christ, he was kicked out of the house. What Tippit didn't know was that his father had run away from biblical instruction taught to him by his parents.

The evangelist says he doesn't remember his father ever talking about his grandparents. In searching out his roots, "I discovered a rich heritage that I [didn't know about]. And when I discovered it, one of the moving things I found was that my grandmother—whom I had never met because she died before I was born—was a godly, praying woman."

Photo courtesy of KOMUNews.

The Joplin, Mo., tornado may have caused up to $3 billion worth of damage and destroyed roughly 25 percent of the buildings in the city.

The National Weather Service records indicate that the Joplin tornado is the deadliest in U.S. history. They also note that tornadoes have killed 482 people in the United States this year.

The Christian Reformed World Relief Committee is assessing needs along with federal and local disaster agencies to help devastated families and determine priorities in the hard-hit town of 50,000 residents. Bill Adams, of CRWRC-Disaster Response Services, says, “It's not just Joplin. There are other communities also in this area of Kansas and Missouri that have been pretty much completely destroyed.”

Translating the Bible into the heart language of people around the world is vital to seeing the Great Commission completed. With the advent of technology, the process of completing a translation project is considerably shorter. However, it could get even shorter if translators receive training in English. That's right, English.

President of Wycliffe Associates Bruce Smith says, "English is the trade language of Bible translation. That's basically the easy way to describe it."