Missions Insider
Exclusive Stories from the Mission Field
September 12, 2019
Witchcraft was a way of life for an ethnic Mixtec father of six in a Mexican village who lost his two youngest children to mysterious illnesses.
Villagers who relied on his potions and rituals in their yearning to acquire fortune or favor believed that Roberto’s two young sons must have died in a war of spells between him and another specialist in witchcraft – and that his rival’s spell also doomed his other children to die.
It took a long, long time for Roberto to realize his perpetual drunken stupor would not take away the pain.
September 5, 2019
Villagers in the Philippines had waited in vain for foreign aid organizations to fulfill their promises to bring free medical clinics to treat their first-degree burns, pneumonia, respiratory infections and other ills.
Then a stranger from their own country showed up.
“He was attired in a traditional manner,” a ministry director said of the native missionary. “With blackened teeth strengthened by chewing betel nut, he smiled and disclosed that he came all the way from a tribal village together with his wife, children and grandchildren.”
August 29, 2019
In the countries of North Africa where only a scant few have heard the gospel, Muslims are taught that Christians worship three gods including the Virgin Mary, and they routinely hear that the Bible is riddled with major textual corruptions. While the Bible alone has been known to lead some people to faith in Christ, amid the region’s miasma of misinformation a personal connection is critical; one question leads to another, and nothing short of face-to-face answers will do. Following up with those who contact their website, native missionaries travel to different regions of the country – increasingly, with results forbidden by the surrounding society.
August 15, 2019
A young Christian woman in the Philippines whose speech impediment kept her in the shadows was devastated when her baby died before his first birthday. At any church service or gathering in an undisclosed town on the island of Mindanao, Maria Dominguez stayed back in a corner. In the past year she tried recovering from the trauma of losing her child by selling snacks in her neighborhood, a native ministry leader said. “Unfortunately, she did not have enough capital to finance her business,” he said.
July 25, 2019
Refugees from Syria are so desperate for help they usually don’t see beyond their own needs, but native missionaries in Turkey recently noticed something different in them. When a native ministry’s food truck arrives at a given refugee settlement, usually the predominantly Muslim refugees from Syria crowd around it and clamor for distribution to begin. On a recent distribution, however, several Muslim women went not to the truck, but straight to the director. “I said, ‘Go around to the back of the truck, that’s where the food will come from,’” he said.
July 11, 2019
In northwest Vietnam, a new Christian was telling a fellow villager about Christ recently when a man came up and struck him with a machete. Most Christians, knowing such hostilities could erupt from hard-liners, are careful to speak of Christ much more privately.
Exclusive stories from the mission field
