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There is a sense of emergency in the Central African Republic (CAR) where security has dramatically deteriorated across the country: President Faustin-Archange Touadéra failed to establish his authority beyond the capital, Bangui, 18 months after his election.

Gunmen are at crossroads in broad daylight, in a neighbourhood near the international airport. At night, gunshots can still be heard in the capital. In the capital, businesses and schools are working fairly well. In one of the epicentres of the violence, PK5, a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood, markets and shops have re-opened (CAR is 76% nominally Christian, 14% nominally Muslim).

Hannah Cho* tells her story of faith in God despite horrendous persecution.

After the Korean war, public religion was discouraged. The local church was turned into a school and Hannah remembers that her Christian mother prayed at home while the family kept watch for informants.

The Sudanese Church of Christ (SCOC) challenged a government decision in late August to impose an unelected leadership committee on the church, which only came to light when church leaders were arrested.

The Ministry of Guidance and Religious Endowments, which oversees religious affairs in Sudan, appointed an alternative Executive Committee of the SCOC, led by Mr Angelo Alzaki, to manage church affairs. Eight senior SCOC leaders were arrested and charged with trespassing on the church headquarters and refusing to hand over control of the church to Mr Alzaki. They were released on bail later that day.

In August, a team led by Bob Lunt completed and published a Wichí–Spanish language dictionary to complement the Wichí Bible translation, which was first published in 2002.

The Wichí language, spoken by up to 50,000 people in parts of Argentina and Bolivia, is the most common language of the Mataco-Mataguayan language family.

A question to start: Is our God still working in China?

The short answer is Yes! It is however important to fully understand the current attitude and freedom permitted by the Chinese authorities regarding religious practice. China’s policy on religion states that ‘the Chinese people are free to choose and express their religious beliefs as well as demonstrate their religious status’.

The relationship between church and society in Australia has always been ambiguous.

In the earliest years of European settlement following the establishment of Sydney in 1788, a fundamental divide existed between the free settlers and colonial officials on the one hand, who tended to be Anglican, and the large numbers of convicts, often Irish Catholics, who were predictably anti-authority and resentful.

Thirteen years ago, my ‘gap year’ brought me to Tasmania. Now by God’s providence, wisdom and humour I find myself living and ministering to the university community (with the University Fellowship of Christians) in Hobart, along with my wife and two children.

There are close to 14,000 students on campus in Hobart but the University Fellowship has historically represented about 0.5% of that number. Our ministry is one of evangelism and training leaders. It is an exciting but arduous and slow mission field. Or at least it has been until this year…

When OM Field Leader Youssef and his wife Hie-Tee moved to his native Algeria in 1988 to establish an OM ministry, a revival among the Kabyle people was already sweeping the northern region. ‘Before 1981, there were very few believers,’ Youssef said. Today, he knows of believers in every one of the 2,400 Kabyle cities, villages and towns.

In July 1981, the early Kabyle church, 40 to 50 believers, started a two-year process of praying and fasting, memorising 365 verses about fear. A new Kabyle radio ministry broadcast sermons and teaching across the region, and a church in Ouadiha, led by an Algerian-Swiss couple, began a wide literature distribution campaign in villages and showed the Jesus film in local cafés.

A team of Bible translators in Kurdistan, northern Iraq, working against the backdrop of civil unrest and religious persecution, have completed the first-ever translation of the whole Bible into the Central Kurdish Sorani language and launched it in April.

For eight years, mission partners have worked alongside indigenous Kurds and other foreign nationals drafting text, checking names, terminology and style, and finally checking both the Old and New Testaments so that they could be published together for the first time as the complete Bible.

Did you hear about the Scotsman, the Englishman and the three Irishmen?

Well, no one is more amazed than them that, over the past nine years, around a million people in Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan and now Congo have looked at Jesus in Mark’s Gospel using Christianity Explored (CE ). As with all gospel growth, it is the story of God at work in and through his people.

Some things will never change in New Zealand. The spectacular scenery in the South Island, so graphically captured in the Lord of the Rings trilogy of films, will remain for the benefit of future generations, as will the more subtle but equally appealing beauty of the country’s North Island.

Similarly, but less desirable, the country’s location on the Pacific Ring of Fire, prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, will remain for posterity.

For the first half of the 20th century, Latin America was an almost exclusively Catholic continent. Though the gospel had been preached in Latin countries for decades, the local evangelical church hadn’t grown significantly. In 1970, only 4% of the population identified as evangelical and the continent was still considered a mission field. But this was about to change.

Operation Mobilisation started with an outreach of a few young students in Mexico, but the focus soon shifted towards Europe, the Muslim World and India. MV Logos, OM’s first ship, was already in service in those parts of the world when the prospect of a second ship opened the possibility for OM to return to Latin America in an impactful way.

Local churches in Dunkirk helped to evacuate terrified migrants on 10 April as a devastating fire spread through their camp in northern France.

La Linière camp in Grande-Synthe, just outside Dunkirk, housed an estimated 1,500 migrants, including a handful of Christian converts, but was reduced to ‘a heap of ashes’, a local official said. Afghan migrants reportedly began to set fire to the chipboard cabins in which the migrants lived and the fires quickly spread. Riot police intervened.

It’s been over five months since a pioneering US missionary was kidnapped in Niger.

Jeff Woodke, who worked for Jeunesse en Mission Entraide et Developpement, a branch of the US-based Youth With a Mission, was abducted by unknown assailants in October, from the town of Abalak in northern Niger.