Missions Insider

Exclusive Stories from the Mission Field
News

Missions Insider

Search by date
Two years ago, Nigeria was Africa’s largest economy. People like Babatunde Afolabi, who spoke with the New York Times in June, worked to support his family by transporting people with his tuk-tuk taxi, which he owned. Life wasn’t easy, but they had enough. After his wife had childbirth difficulties, however, Babatunde was forced to sell his tuk-tuk to pay their medical bills. He found work in construction and, though the pay was far less than what he once earned, they still managed to get by. “We had no thoughts about starvation,” he told the Times. Babatunde, like millions of other Nigerians, could not have imagined the magnitude of the crisis about to unfold.
Free haircuts and dental care. The distribution of medications at no cost. Lessons in art and cooking and agriculture. To some, these things may seem like simple acts of kindness, the generous gifting of important services, resources, and knowledge to enhance people’s quality of life. But to native missionaries in Brazil, they present opportunities to live out the Great Commission, opening the door for them to be the hands and feet of Jesus among ethnic tribes who are not only wary—but sometimes even hostile—to missionaries’ attempts to share the gospel.
White smokestacks mar an otherwise cloudless desert sky, their toxic fumes not only a by-product of the more than 20,000 brick kilns that exist across Pakistan, but also a sinister warning to the 4.5 million people enslaved there: You cannot pass beyond our bounds.
For a moment in time—when a democratically elected president stood at Myanmar’s helm—a generation of young adults hoped life would be different than it had been for the generations that came before them. But in February 2021, when that same president was overthrown in a military coup, that dream shattered.
It was nicknamed “Cinderella” by some, this Latin American city that was rich in beauty and history but devoid of true joy, with no fellowship of believers and—prior to Daniel’s* arrival—no missionary to share the gospel message. Unbeknownst to Daniel, however, God had been preparing this place for a metamorphosis. Like Cinderella, it would soon rise from the ashes and transform into what, at its core, it was always meant to be. But unlike Cinderella, this would not be a fairy godmother intervention. This transformation would be through the work of the Holy Spirit.
Using her bare hands, a woman dug through the rubble of a home devastated by a flash flood that swept through her Kenyan village in early May. She pointed out her cousin’s red jacket to a reporter. It was streaked with dirt and snagged on a tree branch. A few feet away, a broken bed and mattress lay amidst a heap of debris. She was certain that her cousin lay somewhere beneath it.
Missions Insider

Exclusive Stories From the Mission Field

Sign up for Missions Insider




    This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.