Invited to a local missionary’s house for dinner with other Christians in Vietnam, Thuan was surprised when they were somehow warm, fun and friendly without the drinking or opium-smoking common in his village. “He had heard the gospel from the local missionary many times, but he didn’t like hearing it,” the leader of a native ministry said. Thuan could not know that accepting the dinner invitation would set him on a journey to prison.

Taiba and her two young children arrived at the office of a Middle East-based ministry exhausted, hungry and destitute after fleeing a Taliban raid on their home in Afghanistan. They have lived the nightmare that tens of thousands of other Afghan refugees are trying to avoid. Witnessing the execution of her father and the abduction of her husband, she and her children had to leave home, town and country with only the clothes on their backs.

Armed men in a European capital tied up a Druze refugee from Saudi Arabia last year and were torturing him as they recorded videos demanding his family pay 25,000 euros (US$28,900) for his release. When Khaled cried out to God, his Muslim captors told him that if he was going to pray, he should pray like a Muslim to Allah. In the midst of his ordeal, Khaled found himself in an unexpected spiritual battle.