Children beaten after a football match turned violent, a woman accused of witchcraft and murdered, a person killed while traveling from one village to another — these are just a few of the stories of Haitians suffering under gang violence.

Death or attack feel unpredictable in the country, leaving many anxious to survive.

Though gangs were partially pushed from Port-au-Prince, their violence has spread to the outskirts and rural areas. Roseline DeHart from For Haiti With Love said, “Lives are getting harder every day. Things are very hard right now in Haiti, and Haiti needs help from its neighbors.”

Aerial view of Port-au-Prince (Photo courtesy of Matteo Favre via Pexels)

Since July, more than 1,200 people have been killed in gang attacks, self-defense retaliation, and army operations. Over 700 were wounded. On top of that, sexual abuse and kidnappings are widespread. Victims of the gangs are often chosen at random, including children.

DeHart added, “We need other countries to realize that Haiti needs help, to come and help Haiti.”

For Haiti With Love continue their work of Gospel in Haiti, helping those displaced, local communities, children, and more. They are also preparing a Christmas celebration for hundreds of kids with hot meals, toys, and the Gospel.

DeHart says, “We want to help as many as we can, but so many people have moved into the Cap-Haïtien area, and there are street kids everywhere. It’s become overwhelming, and we’re doing the best we can with what we have.”

Among their ministries is a free burn clinic. After patients are treated and reach for their wallets, staff tell them Jesus has already paid the cost. DeHart explained, “That’s when they break out crying and want to know who this Jesus is. And then we tell them about Jesus!”

The overwhelming need for help opens doors for prayer and giving. Find your place in the story: join the spiritual battle for the people of Haiti, and if you want to help in practical ways, visit the For Haiti With Love website.

Man standing on the mountain, Haiti (Photo courtesy of Kelly via Pexels).

On August 24, Ukraine marked 34 years of independence. These years have been a gradual rebuilding of national identity, language, and culture. Freedom came not only politically, but also spiritually, as the church — long persecuted under the USSR — was finally free. Vladimir Lenin’s famous line, “Religion is opium for the people,” had been the guiding philosophy behind decades of oppression.

When the Iron Curtain fell in 1991, the church could finally spread its wings.

Eric Mock from Slavic Gospel Association says, “Ukraine, for the most part, was the Bible Belt of all the former Soviet Union countries [after 1991]. So, they were not only growing in their own country, but they were sending missionaries all over the world. And so, the church was thriving.”

Ukrainian couple reunites during war (photo courtesy of Dmitry Zvolskiy via Pexels)

The Ukrainian church, like the nation itself, entered a season of transformation. The collective trauma of persecution took time to heal, but the spread of the Gospel and sound teaching brought freedom to individuals and communities alike.

When war struck — first in 2014, then in 2022 — the churches reshaped their ministry to meet the need. “They did not flee,” says Mock, “but actually pushed towards the battle lines because people were needing hope.”

Slavic Gospel Association stood alongside Ukrainian Baptist churches. “[SGA] helped equip them with resources so they could minister to the people who had all hope ripped away from them, refugees or internally displaced people,” adds Mock.

Through practical aid and immediate relief, churches also shared the news that overshadowed every piece of bad news people could hear that day: the Gospel.

“So in the midst of fighting for their independence, people were finding their independence in Christ,” he adds.

(Photo courtesy of Slavic Gospel Association)

Mock recalls asking one pastor in Chernihiv why he stayed. The pastor replied, “My people are here, therefore I will not go.” This kind of courage reflects biblical “love to one’s neighbor”, that shaped the role of many Ukrainian churches both before and after acquiring independence. Visit the Slavic Gospel Association to learn more stories like this!

“As the Ukrainian people celebrate their Independence Day, Ukrainian believers — and all believers — can celebrate their independence from the shackles of this world, looking forward with hope and being united in the hardest of times by the hope we have in Jesus, knowing the best is yet to come,” he adds.

Pray for the churches to find their place in Ukraine’s modern history and to be a beacon of hope for those desperate for good news.

Photo courtesy of Anastasiia Krutota via Unsplash.

God is at work in Native communities! Every summer, On Eagles’ Wings — a division of Hutchcraft Ministries — organizes Summer of Hope outreaches to reservations.

Doug Hutchcraft from Hutchcraft Ministries shares, “There have been six [outreaches] this summer. Like the other communities we visited, this is a community screaming for hope, [there’s] the hope crisis.”

On Eagles’ Wings equips Native American believers to bring the hope of Christ to their communities.
(Screenshot)

The On Eagles’ Wings team, dressed in green shirts declaring “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul” (Hebrews 6:19), aims to bring that hope.

Outreaches bring powerful testimonies! One new Native believer, Carrie, had just given her heart to Christ.

“She immediately, when she’s done praying, goes and runs to her group of friends a few yards away, saying, ‘You need this too. You need this Jesus.’” Like the biblical account of the Samaritan woman at the well, Carrie became a rescuer of her people within moments of giving her life to Jesus.

The ministry goes by invitation. “Once we get invited, we will go physically meet with the people there that are the inviters. [We] make sure that there is sufficient follow-up and people to disciple and bring these new believers into the faith in a responsible way,” says Hutchcraft. They continue serving alongside Native young people throughout the year.

Hutchcraft adds, “[There are] just amazing things that God is doing. He is such an amazing God. These things don’t happen without the power of the Holy Spirit filling the lives, the hearts of these young heroes on this team.”

The On Eagles’ Wings team faithfully follows the Great Commission among Native communities, but they need your prayers and support.

“We do need God’s people to come alongside to pray and be the fuel that makes this possible,” he adds.

If the Lord is moving you to pray, to give, or to participate in any way, visit Hutchcraft Ministries!

Header photo: the Summer of Hope team (courtesy of Hutchcraft Ministries).

Roseline DeHart with For Haiti With Love says even though Kenyan peacekeeper forces arrived this summer, things have only grown worse. The northern city of Cap-Haitien is being inundated by people desperate for relief from the killings, abductions and hunger that have marked Haiti this year.

“People are on the streets, sleeping on the streets. They can’t eat, so they always come to our headquarters at For Haiti With Love, looking for food, for housing,” DeHart says.

(Photo of clinic courtesy For Haiti With Love)

Nearly half of the nation’s 11.7 million people face acute hunger, according to a September 30 report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. Among that half, 2 million are experiencing emergency levels of hunger — that means malnutrition and disease are present dangers because of extreme food shortages. 

For Haiti has continued to give out food and medical care as well as share the gospel of Christ. 

“When they come into the clinic, we always tell them about Jesus, about God, [and] if they would like to change their life, here’s what they need to do,” DeHart says. 

“Sometimes they listen and sometimes they don’t, and then they go. Sometimes they come back asking to know more about Jesus.”

The For Haiti team doesn’t ask questions of those who come to them for help. But they know there’s some risk involved in the work.

(For Haiti With Love’s headquarters, courtesy of For Haiti With Love)

“We never know who is coming up, who the people are [that are] looking for shelter. Some of them might be part of the gangs. Sometimes the gang sends up their family first, and then they come later. So security is a big problem,” DeHart says. 

“We try to do what we can, but the main thing [is] we just pray up, keep praying.” 

Ask God for the team’s protection. Consider supporting For Haiti’s work as the hands and feet of Christ to a people in crisis. 

“[Haitians] do need help. They’re very poor. They have nothing,” DeHart says. “We want to be able to continue to help. We need donations to do that.” 

Connect with For Haiti With Love at www.forhaitiwithlove.org. 

Header photo of Cap-Haitien courtesy of For Haiti With Love. 

At 10 pounds per box this person is carrying 70 pounds on their head. It’s also 3,500 Scripture booklets that will be shared in villages in Burundi.

partnering with them long-distance.

This year the gathering invited wives of leaders and national directors to attend and be encouraged. The wives often are crucial to the work and already involved with planning, scheduling, managing paperwork, and discipleship. Many also care for the family at home while their husbands travel to places that have not yet heard the Gospel. In the past few years, Every Home For Christ has been including wives of leaders in more ways, such as praying together.

Williams says, “It was exciting, invigorating. These people are just committed. And these are the people that World Missionary Press serves. We print these booklets not to sit on our shelves and not just to dump somewhere. But because there are those waiting with plans, and energy and teams to use the literature.”

Much of the Gospel outreach focuses on children and youth because Africa has the youngest population than any other continent. In South Africa, for example, children receive a coloring book by WMP that introduces them to the Gospel. In Uganda, where 45 percent of the population is younger than 15 years old, Gospel workers are currently distributing throughout the country a shipment of Scripture booklets received earlier this year. Williams says,

“There are young people in these countries that are going to come up and be in leadership in these countries. And they need to be reached. Now.”

Brother Gerome K., a 19-year-old Muslim, testified that he received salvation through reading a Scripture portion saying that “Christ is God.”. He joined a local church after receiving Jesus’ Love.

WMP is currently preparing to send shipments of over 40 million Scripture booklets for African countries. The ministry recently completed a campaign called the Founder’s Challenge, raising over $300,000 to send Gospel literature to Africa. So far, the funds have provided for shipments to Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, and Ethiopia. Each 40-foot shipping container can hold approximately two million pieces of literature.

“We have a shipment going to Nigeria, and I was told by our coordinator, as soon as he gets it, he’s got people waiting for it,” says Williams.

She asks believers to pray for the Nigerian Christians sharing the Gospel in areas at high risk of terrorism. Pray also for the ministry to have the staff and resources needed to continue supporting Gospel workers worldwide. Williams says,

“We are so grateful for all of those who pray and all of those who give so that we can provide for those who are willing to go.”

Learn more about the work and history of WMP at the 62nd anniversary celebration hosted in Nappanee, Indiana, and via livestream on October 28.

Interested in joining WMP? The ministry has several opportunities to work or volunteer.

Photos and captions courtesy of World Missionary Press.

Christmas traditions like gift-giving and parties can be a lot of fun, and they can be important bonding times for family. But often, we’re so bogged down by the busyness, expectations, and plans that Christmas passes in the blink of an eye.

Something different

About ten years ago, five pastors concluded this was exactly what they were seeing in other lives and experiencing in their own year-after-year. Instead of feeling full of joy and hope at the remembrance of Christ’s birth, they left the holiday season feeling as though they’d missed something.

Pastor Greg Holder of The Crossing and board member of Living Water International was part of this group and shared with us how their spoken realization turned into a movement for true Christmas celebration.

He says, “There was this growing sense of somewhere along the way, we were missing this opportunity to celebrate appropriately the birth of our King.”

It’s not as though we aren’t aware of the problem. In fact, Holder says, a common reaction from Christians is anger that we’ve let materialism and busyness overtake this most holy of holidays.

Along with the anger comes fear that our culture is swallowing the meaning of the holiday. Every year we play tug-of-war over wishing others “merry Christmas” instead of “happy holidays.” And we don’t have to think too far back to remember the controversy surrounding Starbuck’s plain red cups.

Making a plan

For this reason, the group of five decided they should do something about the growing distractions that plagued Christmas.

“What if we conspired together and said there was a way for us to celebrate Christmas differently, and to do what Jesus asks us to do in the Gospels when it comes to serving the least of these,” Holder says.

With that in mind, they started with their own congregations, teaching them four tenets of Christmas celebration. In short, the tenants are: Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More, and Love All.

Three of the pastors went on to share this movement with the world — leading thousands of churches, families, and small groups to choose a purposeful Christmas. The intentionality and planning this movement encourages is why they’ve called it Advent Conspiracy. Additionally, this intentionality means that to celebrate Christmas more fully, we don’t have to replace our gift-giving or traditions, but rather, think more deeply about how we do it.

Today, we’ll go into the first and foundational tenet:

Worship Fully.

(Image courtesy of Advent Conspiracy)

Holder explains, “It always starts with us coming back to the idea that we will worship the birth of our King, fully. That is the context and background for all we do, not just at Christmas time, but for all we do. Jesus was born, and that changes everything.”

In other words, the purpose of Advent Conspiracy is to make sure the worship of our savior isn’t the side-dish or afterthought in our Christmas celebration. It’s also to make sure the way we celebrate has an impact for the Gospel. We’ll share more on that — and what a ministry like Living Water has to do with it — as we talk about the final three tenets of Advent Conspiracy tomorrow.

Choluteca, Honduras

(Photo courtesy of World Gospel Mission)

Angie and her husband Larry have served as missionaries for 36 years in Honduras. For the last several years, they’ve worked in Choluteca, Honduras to establish education opportunities as well as churches. They’ve helped set up a vocational school as well as a Bible institute. These schools run under the belief that in order to affect true community transformation, education is necessary.

“Education is the key to everything we do, […] with a biblical worldview, basing everything we do on Scriptures and on teaching them about leading Christians lives.”

By sharing valuable information along with Gospel truth, World Gospel Mission has an incredible impact. Overholt says one of the most exciting things to see is preventative health education taught alongside Bible lessons.

A contact recently told her, “Because of the teaching they’ve had, there are people who have not been sick this year from the rains, the mosquitoes, causing malaria, dengue fever and everything, because they’ve been able to take better care of themselves.”

In addition to that news, they are seeing more people attend church and Sunday school classes, asking to know more about God — all because someone came to their door to talk to them about health.

But what about when people do get sick or injured?

Overholt along with her nursing mentors from Ohio State University discovered only about one-third of nurses in Honduras have their nursing degree. Usually, those nurses end up working in administration rather than interacting with the patients. That means the nurses on the floor of the hospital and in the communities are nurse’s aides. They only have about a year of nursing education.

The work in Choluteca includes helping the impoverished rebuild better houses. (Photo courtesy of Overholts)

“We came to the conclusion that out of the 8,100 nurses in Honduras, two-thirds of them are nurse’s aides who only have a ninth grade education,” Overholt explains.

In Honduras, students begin career training in high school. But when a nursing student starts working, they cannot finish high school. Overholt says there’s no opportunity for them to advance their careers or education. She wants to change that.

“Our goal was to try and somehow come up with a program to help the nurse’s aids go on to get more education so they would be better trained and better equipped to take care of patients better in the communities and in the hospital.”

For the next several years, the team began planning and consulting with health officials about what it would look like to create a whole new nursing program. Many people told them they couldn’t do it — that it would be too hard.

But they kept going, and God was right behind them.

Through a seemingly random connection, they were able to get a meeting with the Minister of Education of Honduras. He was thrilled with their plan, so much so that before the meeting was over, he began tweeting the President of Honduras to tell them they would soon have a new technical high school for nursing.

“They approved this project, and they want it to be so innovative that it is actually going to be the first high school where they’re adding extra, extended hours and it’s going to be a more intensive high school program than anyone else has.”

This February, not only will the students get to complete their high school education, but they’ll learn valuable skills in their vocation.

Choluteca School of Nursing

They are looking for a place to build. (Photo courtesy of World Gospel Mission)

For now, the program is starting small. They’re accepting 30 students under the age of 18 for this first year. They hope to expand this program in the following years to current nurse’s aides so they can finish high school.

Classes start soon — but there’s a lot that needs to happen in the meantime.

For starters, there are many financial costs. This includes running the school, student tuition, and supplies. Click here if you’d like to help support an area financially. In addition, check out their Amazon Wishlist here for library books.

The first year will be run out of their renovated clinic while they look for a property to buy and build on. That will bring up costs very quickly, but you can help support the Choluteca Nursing School here.

World Gospel Mission is also looking for volunteer work groups and collaboration from health authorities regarding their educational content. Contact them here if you think you could help.

This project isn’t just about one small school in Honduras. It’s about systematic change and spiritual transformation. With that in mind, can you pray? Ask God to guide them to the right piece of land for the school, and to provide all the pieces necessary for this to happen. Pray that the team working on this will be able to pull things together and create a quality education.

And finally, praise God! Overholt is trusting that He will continue to bring the right people into this story as they move forward.

“We’re so thankful [for] the way the Lord has opened up the doors. We could have never imagined this was the way it was going to go, and how God was going to work out the whole dream of having improvement in nursing care in Honduras.”

According to reports, the cold snap hit Uttar Pradesh the hardest last week, with a death toll climbing past 200. India's capital city saw its coldest day in 44 years, while temperatures dropped below 3.6 degrees Celsius in the eastern city of Kolkutta.

Sensing imminent danger for those exposed to the cold, missionaries supported by Gospel for Asia sprang into action. They quickly gathered over 100 blankets and organized teams to distribute them among the homeless.

"As the road intersected underneath several overpasses, hundreds of people could be seen lying on the roadside," said a GFA correspondent. "The situation looked so desperate that it was difficult to hold back my tears.

"The saddest was seeing people who covered themselves with plastic tarps or worn-out bamboo mats. The whole situation suddenly became real, and I knew at that point that this was truly a crisis."

At each bamboo mat or thin tarp covering the missionaries saw along the road, they stopped and replaced the cover with a blanket. Reaching a tent community, the believers offered more than physical relief.

"We pulled over and saw a row of five makeshift tents. Suddenly a young boy appeared, maybe 10 or 11 years old," the correspondent penned. "Before I could hand him the blanket, he was already grasping for its warmth. Within moments, 20 to 30 people came running out.

"We gave everyone Christian literature, telling them Jesus is the One who cares for their needs."

Pray that this act of compassion would draw each person closer to the Son of God.

Among the distribution team were Saeed and Baha, two teens from GFA's Bridge of Hope program. They were especially touched by the outreach.

"By seeing the condition of the people, I felt like crying," Saeed said when reviewing the experience at the children's home. "Here we are, being provided with all of our needs, but there are so many people who don't even have a single thing to keep them warm.

"I wish we could give everyone a blanket."

Check out our Featured Links section to see how you can provide outreach tools.