Missions Catalyst

1. South Africa: Hope for Crime-Ridden Nation After Kidnapped Pastor’s Rescue
2. Mauritania: Christians Face Hate Crimes and Intimidation
3. World: Last-Mile Challenges in Translating the Bible
4. Iran: The Jihadist Died and Came Back to Life
5. Colombia: Fear and Silence Grip Hamlet After Eight Christians Vanish

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Source: Mission Network News, April 18, 2025

The rescue of kidnapped American pastor Joshua Sullivan in South Africa has drawn attention to the crime-ridden nation.

South Africa ranks in the top five countries with the highest crime indexes in the world. Police statistics between 2023 and 2024 data periods show a nearly 19% rise in commercial crimes. Kidnapping shot up by 8% during that time as well. Carjacking, murder, and armed robberies are also ills that plague the nation.

Marietjie Prollius of Trans World Radio says the increasing violent crime isn’t so much driven by political anger as by life in poverty.

“Part of it is also that there’s a lot of influx from other [African] countries. People come here to make a better living, but then they don’t find jobs, and then they’re kind of destitute here.”

That spiral can quickly lead people into situations they never thought they’d be in. For them and others caught in circumstances of their own or of others’ making,

TWR sends that hope by broadcasting biblical content in the heart languages of South Africans. The team invites and responds to listener prayer requests. Sometimes, they can connect them with counseling services.

“Many of them contact TWR and ask for prayer for safety, for their children just walking from and to school,” she says, “asking for prayer for children that get involved in gangs, asking for children that are involved in drugs.”

Read the full story. See also American Missionary Rescued After Being Kidnapped While Preaching in South Africa (The Roys Report).

Also from Mission Network News, see China Formally Bans Foreign Missionary Activity. The new regulations go into effect on May 1. Surprising? No. But this will raise new barriers.

Source: Middle East Concern, April 9, 2025

Christians in Sélibaby have grave concerns for their safety and lives as the incitement of hate against them by prominent religious and community leaders continues. Following a demonstration against the existence of Christians in the area, a mob desecrated the grave and exhumed the body of a recently deceased Christian. (See previous story.)

The angry mob went to the cemetery, broke the tombstone of the deceased Christian and exhumed his body. The body was dragged in the streets and brought to a village 20 kilometers outside of Sélibaby, where it was reburied.

Tensions eased by evening, but social media posts describing Christians as infidels and apostates, urging “action” against them, intensified the following day. The situation remains volatile.

See the full story for more context and prayer points.

Another article adds, “Mauritania’s Penal Code enforces one of the harshest apostasy laws in the world, prescribing death for anyone who leaves Islam. Though rarely carried out, the law itself emboldens extremists, silences victims, and fosters an atmosphere of terror” (EU Today).

As you pray for this African country, consider lifting up another. See Pray as South Sudan Teeters on Brink of Civil War (INcontext International) and read Two Years on, Sudan’s Civil War Continues to Devastate (International Christian Concern).

Source: Beyond, April 2, 2025

Everyone deserves to have the Word of God in their heart language. Today, we are closer to seeing the Bible translated into every language than ever before, but significant barriers remain. Over 20% of the world’s people are still waiting for the Bible in their own language.

“Last mile” describes the short final segment of delivery of services or items to customers. Last-mile logistics are usually the most complicated and expensive to complete the service or delivery. This same dynamic occurs in completing the task of translating the Bible into every language.

Many do not yet have the Bible in their own language because they live in areas hostile to the gospel. Unlike traditional translations, where translation teams locate in a place and work together for years, outside translators seeking to do translation in politically restricted and/or hostile regions often cannot gain access to these areas.

Translators who do have access are often faced with working in secret, moving from one location to another and keeping their work secret from friends, family, and the community. Often, due to death threats and persecution, translators wait until the work is completed, secretly taking the finished product to partners to print and share with others. In recent years, there have been numerous incidents of translators in these types of areas being kidnapped and/or killed.

Those of us assisting from the outside must adjust to the new realities and recognize that these men and women risking their lives deserve our best efforts and servant-hearted support instead of asking them to fit into our previous patterns and paradigms of translation.

Read the full story to see how one large network is responding. Let’s pray to get these translations across the finish line!

Also read the latest edition of AfriGO magazine which is focused on Africans in Bible translation.

Source: Back to Jerusalem, April 1, 2025

Abdull was born the grandson of an Ayatollah in Iran and sent to a radical madrassa as a young boy. When he was only a teenager, he joined a secret elite Islamic unit and was sent on a mission of jihad, where he died.

He was venerated as a martyr of Islam, but then something amazing happened. A few days after Abdull’s body was placed in a morgue, he came back to life! What happened next changed Abdull’s view of Islam forever. His shocking transformation led him on a journey of grace, love, forgiveness and, most importantly, truth. What he discovered sent the religious leaders of Iran into a fury, eventually landing him on death row in an Iranian prison.

Read more. This story is also told in the 2024 book Jihad: The Day I Died.

Christians in Iran were sentenced to a combined total of over 250 years in prison in 2024, a sixfold increase over the year before, says the advocacy group Article 18. Read The Tip of the Iceberg, their annual report documenting human rights violations against Christians in Iran.

Source: Christian Today, April 19, 2025

A Colombian hamlet is gripped by fear following the forced disappearance of eight residents—seven of them Protestant church leaders and members—after responding to orders issued by a guerrilla group earlier this month.

Most of the missing individuals are from the Evangelical Alliance of Colombia Denomination and the Foursquare Gospel Church.

They are from the hamlet of Agua Bonita in Calamar Municipality, Guaviare Department, and were all previously displaced from Arauca Department, another region where armed groups have violently targeted church communities and shut down places of worship.

They were last seen on April 4-5 after being called to private meetings by an illegal armed group. Family members who initially tried to trace their loved ones were later cautioned to abandon the search and told to “consider the case closed.”

Local sources informed Christian Solidarity Worldwide that some families are considering leaving the region due to growing threats and fear of retaliation.

Read the full story or see the press release from CSW. Both include more detail if you want to pray for these brothers and sisters by name.

For more about Colombia, watch a recent video from INcontext International (two minutes) below, or read a related article.

Source: Mission Network News, April 2, 2025

The death toll from Myanmar’s Friday earthquake has surpassed 2,700. That number is expected to rise as lifesaving rescue work turns to recovery work.

The United Nations Humanitarian Office (OCHA) says more than 10,000 buildings in Myanmar collapsed or were seriously damaged in the magnitude 7.7 earthquake and aftershocks. On top of rescue work, food, clean water, sanitation, and more are rising needs for survivors. Thousands in the city of Mandalay and other hard-hit regions are living on the streets, whether because they lost their homes or because they’re afraid more tremors will strike.

The earthquake is one more layer to Myanmar’s complicated situation. After four years of horrific civil war, Myanmar is already deep in instability, explains Brian Dennett with AMG International.

“We’ve been offering relief throughout the civil war. We have a trusted network of churches across Myanmar — ministry workers, as well as our team just over the border in Thailand, where we also operate a refugee camp,” Dennett says.

Over the weekend, AMG sent generators and food support, including nutritional drinks for the elderly.

“We are actively working right now with our team on the ground, assessing the situation, finding out where the most damage was, and we are going to be providing immediate relief. We really are well-positioned to make a difference there,” Dennett explains.

Read the full story and another from MNN, Conflict and Unity Mingle in Myanmar After Last Week’s Earthquake Disaster.

See also the videos and images at the Guardian. They report that the Red Cross believes Asia has not seen this level of devastation in 100 years.

Let’s keep praying for Myanmar, and especially for the thousands who just lost homes and loved ones in the earthquake.