The longest running conflict in the Americas may now have a chance of peace. Historic progress was made recently as Colombia's president and the leader of the FARC rebel group set a six-month deadline to sign a peace deal. This civil conflict has lasted over five decades: some of the harrowing consequences are:- 220,000 dead and 5 million internally displaced. Colombia has long been held captive by violence, revenge, and corruption. Thousands die every year from drug-related crimes. Bogotá has one of the highest numbers of street children in Latin America and Colombia has one of the highest numbers of internally displaced people. Dozens of pastors and priests are killed every year. The deal between the government and FARC clears the path for a final peace deal settlement to be signed within months. Also, Prayercast reports that the Church is growing - even within the worst prisons, confirming that in the darkest of places the light shines the brightest.

The United States is sending 300 troops along with surveillance drones to Cameroon to bolster a West African effort to counter the Nigerian militant Islamist group, Boko Haram. An advance force of 90 military personnel began deploying to Cameroon on Monday with the consent of the Yaounde government. The troops will conduct airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations in the region. US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the troops would provide intelligence to a multi-national task force composed of troops from Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, Chad and Benin. On Sunday, two female suicide bombers killed nine people in Cameroon's Far North region, employing a tactic increasingly favoured by Boko Haram. US soldiers would deploy initially to northern Cameroon, near the Nigerian border.

Detention centres were set up on Christmas Island, Manus Island and Nauru Island for processing asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, China and Vietnam. A recent report revealed that suicide attempts and hunger strikes were common, and children were vulnerable to mental health episodes and growing more depressed the longer they were held. (Source: International Health and Medical Services). Children suffer especially acutely, from bed wetting, nightmares, ongoing effects of trauma and torture in previous countries, as well as ‘situational crisis’ from their current detention. On 15 October there was a renewed call for a guardian for children in immigration detention by two of the country's top welfare and overseas aid groups, saying the Australian Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, has failed in his duty of care. Earlier this week, thousands of doctors at Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital refused to discharge asylum-seeking children back into the care of immigration detention centre operators. See also: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/sep/17/extended-detention-worsening-depression-on-nauru-and-manus-island

This coming weekend more than 160 leaders of prayer ministries and networks across the USA will gather in Colorado Springs for a prayer initiative on national security, ‘Seeking God’s Face for the Deliverance and Destiny of America’. It will be a time of all-out intercession for the nation that seems to have lost its course in so many ways due to increasing social wickedness coupled with weak and corrupt government leadership. It is time to pray! One prayer leader wrote to say he sensed that it would be a ‘battle for the soul of America’. This initiative is preceded by the National Day of Prayer Leadership Summit, at the same place.  Many of their co-ordinators and other intercessors from around the country will gather. The two events are in tandem and the intercessors’ prayer is that the Lord will bring greater unity to the prayer movement by all of them being in His presence together.