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Today’s Headlines:

BLIND CHRISTIAN HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST IN CUBA TO GO TO TRIAL GOSPEL SPREADS IN COLOMBIA DESPITE TERRORIST THREATS CONVERSION OF ALGERIAN CHILDREN TO CHRISTIANITY ALARMS ADULTS TEEN SHARK ATTACK VICTIM USING EXPERIENCE TO PROCLAIM CHRIST SOUTH AFRICAN YOUTHS SAY ‘NO’ TO DRUGS, ‘YES’ TO JESUS POPE PUSHES FOR LAWS GUARANTEEING RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN EUROPE

Today’s News Stories:

BLIND CHRISTIAN HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST IN CUBA TO GO TO TRIAL A blind Christian human rights activist will reportedly be put on trial in Cuba after spending 18 months in prison. Juan Carlos Gonz ¡lez Leiva, who was arrested on March 4, 2002, along with a number of human rights activists, was formally charged with “public disorder, disobedience, resisting authority and acts of disrespect.” He has suffered ill health and mistreatment at the hands of the prison authorities. Sources in Cuba said the Cuban government informed Leiva’s wife that he would be tried in early November along with the other nine men and women with whom he was originally arrested. The government never gave a reason for the trial’s delay. Leiva is a lawyer and has been active in the Cuban democracy movement and the Varela (Human Rights) Project. Mervyn Thomas, Christian Solidarity Worldwide’s chief executive, said, “While we are heartened the Cuban government is finally going to give Juan Carlos a trial, we are still convinced he should never have been detained in the first place. It is our hope that the United Nations and international governments will demand a presence at this trial to ensure it is fair.” (Christian Solidarity Worldwide)

GOSPEL SPREADS IN COLOMBIA DESPITE TERRORIST THREATS Missionaries working in the terrorist minefields of Colombia boldly proclaim Christ amid bombs and guns of right-wing and left-wing terrorists. “In some places there are car bombs,” a mission leader from Colombia told Christian Aid this week. “Buildings and cars are blown up, but we go on preaching the Lord Jesus Christ.” The leader, whose name is withheld for security reasons, was in the U.S. to attend the Christian Aid-sponsored Gateways Conference of Indigenous Missions in October. In the past 38 years, he and his co-workers have planted 38 churches. “The rebels think that Christians and pastors bring government undercover agents with them,” he said. “So no outsiders are safe in the area.” That’s why most of his missionaries are local people. Some 55 missionaries are working in the jungle and rebel-infested areas. “Now we are starting a new work in Sogamosa,” he said. “On Nov. 1 we paid our first month’s rent for the missionary’s house there. Already we have six believers.” The unrest has caused many in the countryside to flee to cities and towns. Their unsettled condition makes them a fertile harvest field. One missionary is ministering to 38 children and some of their parents. “Soon we will have a new church there,” he said. (Missions Insider)

CONVERSION OF ALGERIAN CHILDREN TO CHRISTIANITY ALARMS ADULTS An article was written recently in the Algerian Milat Horizons newspaper expresses concern about the number of Algerian children that are converting to Christianity from Islam. Many school-aged children are watching the program, “As Sanabel,” which is aired daily by SAT-7, an Arabic Christian television network. Sources say a “considerable number of children” are confessing their new faith and then getting free Bibles and Christian tapes. Some conducted surveys with area children to find that most have watched the programming on SAT-7 without being aware of the Christian influences. Some Muslim adults are concerned about what may happen if the conversions continue. (Mission Network News)

TEEN SHARK ATTACK VICTIM USING EXPERIENCE TO PROCLAIM CHRIST A 13-year-old surfing star who lost her left arm in a shark attack last week in Hawaii sees the incident as an opportunity to proclaim her faith. Bethany Hamilton was bitten last Friday by a 14-foot tiger shark that took a 17-inch-wide bite out of her brightly colored surfboard. She was in stable condition after a second surgery Monday and told one of her friends that she’s glad this happened to her “because now I can tell the whole world about God,” reported The Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Her family is thanking Jesus Christ for preserving Bethany’s life and asking for everyone’s prayers. The shark attack has triggered a global avalanche of concern and curiosity toward Hamilton who had won and placed high in surfing contests in Hawaii and California this summer. (Charisma New Service/Associated Press)

SOUTH AFRICAN YOUTHS SAY ‘NO’ TO DRUGS, ‘YES’ TO JESUS Young people took their stand for Christ in an organized street march to Paul Kruger Square in Pretoria, South Africa, last month. Carrying banners, they called on the public to take a stand against drugs and to accept Jesus into their lives. “Some of the youth have been victims of drugs and now have overcome them. Some of it is a personal testimony,” said Edith Kiggundu, health and temperance director for the Seventh-day Adventist church in that region. The march, hosted by the Pretoria City Seventh-day Adventist Church, promoted health and temperance offering music, preaching and a talk on abuse of women. “The reaction was positive,” said coordinator Hospa Sibanda. “The South African Defense Forces asked us to come and do the very same program at their village camp.” (Adventist News Network)

POPE PUSHES FOR LAWS GUARANTEEING RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN EUROPE Pope John Paul II, addressing European interior ministers, on Friday, Oct. 31, said laws are needed to guarantee religious freedom in an increasingly multiethnic and multicultural Europe. The Roman Catholic pontiff praised efforts by Christian Europeans to enter into dialogue with the tide of immigrants, many of whom are Muslims, seeking work on the continent, but he said more was needed to insure “unity in diversity.” The pope called for “an adequate recognition, even legislative, of specific religious traditions in which all peoples are rooted and with which they often identify in a particular way.” The pope received European Union (EU) interior ministers concluding a two-day meeting in Rome on inter-religious dialogue as a “factor of social cohesion in Europe and instrument of peace in the Mediterranean area.” (Religion Today/Agape Press)

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