Canada: Alberta wildfire and a call to prayer
20 May 2016
Officials are rethinking their plans to let people return to Fort McMurray after the fires gained new life this week and destroyed a 665-room oilsands work-camp north of the city. Oilsands facilities and work-camps north of Fort McMurray were ordered to evacuate. Nineteen work-camps and as many as 8,000 people were affected by the new evacuation order. Oilsands facilities are used for processing bitumen. They have separate teams of firefighters and are surrounded by gravel to keep the fire out. Canada’s prayer network ‘Ears to hear’ has called for a forty-day prayer focus on Alberta, from 16 May to 24 June. They are focusing prayer from across Canada, praying for the people who lost everything in Fort McMurray; for rains for the fire and the rain of the Spirit; and for the Church to awaken and experience wholehearted turning so that blessing will come. See:
Brazil: disaster or opportunity?
20 May 2016
Crowds have taken to the streets of Brazil in recent months. Fed up with corruption and the realities of a declining economy, many called for President Rousseff's removal. This week her presidency was officially suspended. The country stands in the midst of a political crisis and severe economic recession, but the issues are far deeper. Brazil is the second highest consumer of illegal drugs globally, and has the highest rate of firearm homicides. There are seven million child labourers and 600,000 girls in prostitution. However, Brazil also has one of the largest evangelical populations in the world, with large and growing movements of prayer and missions. The mounting political and economic crisis contrasts with the reality of the growing and influential Brazilian Church.
Venezuela: public health emergency
20 May 2016
‘The death of a baby is our daily bread,’ said a Caracas surgeon, referring to Venezuela’s collapsing hospitals. The economic crisis has exploded into a public health emergency, claiming the lives of untold victims. The unravelling has become so severe that the President has imposed a state of emergency and raised fears of a government collapse. In hospital wards there are no gloves or soap, and cancer medicines are only found on the black market. There is so little electricity that the government works just two days a week. At a hospital in Mérida there is no water to wash blood from operating tables, and doctors clean their hands with bottles of seltzer water. It is criminal that a country with such large oil reserves allows people to die for lack of antibiotics. The food shortage, due to a variety of government-imposed problems, is so severe that the opposition party is organising street protests to demonstrate the people’s needs. They need food, and the government is not getting it out fast enough. See:
Pakistan: Muslim threats, and forced marriage
20 May 2016
In a Punjab village, 28-year-old Imran Masih has been accused of keeping a ‘blasphemous’ video clip on his cell phone. He is an illiterate man with no knowledge of the internet. Local Islamists have issued a fatwa (Islamic death edict) against Masih, and have told the 300 villagers that they must either produce Masih, leave the area, convert to Islam, or be killed. Police thwarted an attempt to burn down all their homes. Elsewhere in Pakistan Maryam Mushtaq, a 24-year-old Christian woman, was abducted by Muslims and forced to convert to Islam and marry one of her kidnappers. Maryam’s mother (who lost her husband to cancer in 2013) reported her daughter’s kidnapping to police, but nothing has been done yet. A hearing will be held about Maryam’s case, but justice is unsure: unfair treatment of Christians by Pakistani officials is a frequent occurrence. See also:
In a week when the UK has hosted a conference around ending corruption in high places across the nations, International Justice Mission UK reports, ‘On 28 April 2016, over six years after the initial crime, a police officer was found guilty of manslaughter for violently killing an innocent citizen. IJM Kenya supported the public prosecutor (working with the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions) to represent the family of the deceased. There were a number of setbacks in bringing the case to trial, including the first judge disqualifying himself. After years of perseverance, IJM Kenya celebrates this ground-breaking conviction and hopes it sends a message that those in power will be held accountable in court if they abuse that power.’ The sentencing for this manslaughter conviction will take place on 18 May.
China frees imprisoned pastor
13 May 2016
Christians have been praying for protection and justice for Chinese Christians who have taken a stand against the government’s forced demolition of Christian crosses and churches. Last week the authorities released a pastor who had been imprisoned for eight months for speaking out frequently against this ongoing persecution of Christians in the country. Some suggested that Zhang Chongzhu might have also been singled out for meeting a US diplomat in Shanghai last year. We can praise God for this breakthrough and continue to pray and ask God to bring about a complete end to the Communist party’s targeting of places of worship with building code bureaucracy.
Germany: Christian refugees abused
13 May 2016
Open Doors workers in the country claim that believers, many of them Muslim converts, are sometimes a tiny minority and so are easy targets for insults, being punched, spat at and sexually assaulted. After surveying 231 people earlier this year, Open Doors Germany said Muslim security staff and translators joined in targeting Christians, some of whom reported being too scared to wear a cross or carry a Bible in public. Thomas Muller from Open Doors Germany said that grouping Christians together in the camps and hostels and having more staff from minority groups (Christians and Yazidis) might afford them greater protection. He said, ‘Someone shows a ten-second beheading video and then says, “You're next”.’ Christians who had hoped to be able to live their lives in freedom said, 'We came to Germany and found there is no difference from our home countries at all.’
Rome: plot to attack Vatican and Israeli embassy
13 May 2016
Last Thursday Italian police thwarted an alleged plot by Moroccan nationals to attack the Vatican and the Israeli embassy in Rome. Four people were arrested. Three men and three women, one an Italian, escaped to Iraq and Syria. The transcript of a wire-tapped phone conversation between three of the suspects indicated their link with Islamic State. They discussed possible attacks on the Vatican and the Israeli embassy in Rome. After the attacks in France and Belgium, Italy and neighbouring countries have tightened security resulting in the arrest of people suspected of having a predisposition towards IS ideology or planning assaults. Last month police detained a 22-year-old Somali asylum-seeker working as an imam, suspected of planning an attack in Rome. One line of the transcript read as ‘I swear I will be the first to attack them in this Italy of crusaders, I swear I'll attack it in the Vatican, God willing.’