Missions Insider
Exclusive Stories from the Mission Field
October 1, 2020
Syria is an economic disaster after nine years of civil war and the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the crisis has hobbled a native ministry as well – even as workers have seen more people come to Christ.
Economic chaos amid the pandemic has forced a native ministry to scale back its number of local missionaries while ratcheting up the intensity of its crisis response.
“As we are able, our leaders continue to distribute food and clothing to those that lack,” the ministry leader said. “Our target criteria: any person that is in need.”
September 24, 2020
Filled with sorrow that his wife had left him, a young man in Laos was walking through Buddhist temple grounds when he felt something like a small bird hit him in the chest.
A strange strength came over him, and relatives said that later he became violent and unable to communicate coherently.
His parents and other villagers were unable to calm or communicate with him; they built a cage and locked him inside.
September 17, 2020
The village chief and other key community leaders near a town on Brazil’s Amazon River told a native missionary to leave.
By the time other native missionaries visited the village months later, the leader of a ministry based in Brazil said, nearly every inhabitant was addicted to alcohol.
“The community was taken over by the power of darkness; the spirit of suicide took over the young and old,” he said.
September 10, 2020
Local missionaries gave out food and medicines and prayed with victims immediately after the Aug. 4 explosion in the bustling Gemmayzeh neighborhood of the port of Beirut that killed at least 180 people and injured more than 6,000.
Tens of thousands of people were injured or lost homes and loved ones, and the effects of the blast are expected to be felt for months, if not years.
“Before the explosion, the people had nothing,” the leader of a native ministry said. “Now they have less than nothing.”
September 3, 2020
A widow in Egypt was in tears when she called a local ministry leader with word that she had lost her job as a housecleaner due to a coronavirus lockdown.
She was supporting seven family members, including a daughter with two infants who was separated from her drug-addicted husband and a married son with two children who had lost his job and home due to the pandemic.
“She was crying while telling us that she had to sell her kitchen appliances in order to meet some of their basic needs,” the leader said.
August 27, 2020
The year began with the death under suspicious circumstances of a local missionary.
Before that, the director of a native ministry in the Philippines was stunned by the sudden death of a 43-year-old pastor he had known since childhood.
In March he and his wife lost their adult daughter to cancer. The challenges of COVID-19 lay before him as he learned to press onward in faith.
Exclusive stories from the mission field
