Today’s Headlines:

AUTHORITIES IN UZBEKISTAN RAID CHURCH DURING HARVEST FESTIVAL

HUMAN RIGHTS SOCIETY DENOUNCES CONTINUING PERSECUTION IN ASIA

HOPEGIVERS INTERNATIONAL TO BUILD CENTER FOR LEPERS IN INDIA

EVANGELISM SUMMIT IN MARYLAND FOCUSES ON ‘BILLION SOUL HARVEST’

* MYSTERIOUS DEATHS IN ECUADOR’S JUNGLE EXPOSE CLASHING WORLDVIEWS

Today’s Top Stories:

AUTHORITIES IN UZBEKISTAN RAID CHURCH DURING HARVEST FESTIVAL

Police and other officials broke up a meeting of members of the Full Gospel Pentecostal Church in Jizak, Uzbekistan (125 miles southwest of the capital city of Tashkent) Tuesday, Oct. 25, reported one of the Church’s pastors, Aleksandr Kuznetsov. About 40 people had gathered together for a meal in the house of a local church member. “I would stress that this was not a formal religious service — just an informal gathering of believers to celebrate the harvest festival,” he said. Begzot Kadyrov, chief specialist at the government’s Committee for Religious Affairs in Tashkent, said he had not heard about the police raid on the Full Gospel meeting in Jizak, but called the event an “official Pentecostal festival — they themselves wrote of this themselves when they lodged their registration application. So you can’t regard the meeting in Jizak as simply a gathering of friends — it was a religious meeting. Since the Pentecostals are not registered in Jizak, the meeting was therefore illegal.” The congregation in the town has been unable to obtain state registration. (Forum 18 News Service)

HUMAN RIGHTS SOCIETY DENOUNCES CONTINUING PERSECUTION IN ASIA

The International Society for Human Rights (ISHR) in Frankfurt, Germany, has denounced the persecution of Christian missionaries in Asia. The organization stated that believers face a “high risk of discrimination” if they exercise their right to proclaim their religion. Countries such as India, Vietnam and China have a “long tradition of persecution.” In Vietnam the clergy of the officially recognized Protestant associations as well as non-registered house churches are subject to discrimination by the communist regime. This year houses of missionaries in several regions have been burned to the ground. Missionaries working among ethnic minorities in the mountainous regions of Vietnam have been imprisoned, tortured and assaulted if they refused to abandon their faith. Some rice fields belonging to Christians have been confiscated and handed over to party officials. Some districts have been declared “free of Christians.” ISHR is concerned that the central government in Hanoi is not able to contain local authorities. (Religion Today/Assist News Service)

HOPEGIVERS INTERNATIONAL TO BUILD CENTER FOR LEPERS IN INDIA

Dr. Samuel Thomas, president of Hopegivers International, has announced plans to build the first Hope Center for lepers in New Delhi, India. The facility will include 250 homes, a community center and church, counseling center, a grade school and high school, an orphanage, a clinic, shops and factory workshops. “There are currently 4.5 million victims of leprosy in India,” Thomas said. “The only way to stop the cycle of leprosy is to teach the children health and hygiene, and a key part of that is to keep a healthy distance between them and their infected parents without totally separating them.” The Hope Center will operate as a non-profit, faith-based non-governmental organization under Indian law. “This will not be an old-fashioned leper colony,” said Thomas. “Our purpose is to create an environment where these despised and feared people will have dignity and be able to face the future without fear.” (Assist News Service)

EVANGELISM SUMMIT IN MARYLAND FOCUSES ON ‘BILLION SOUL HARVEST’

Pastors and church leaders are in Lutherville, Md., today to connect local churches to lost communities worldwide at the “Billion Soul Summit.” The meeting builds on the vision of the late Dr. Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ International and co-founder of the Global Pastors Network. Top leadership from across denominational lines is being hosted at Trinity Assembly of God Church. Rev. Tom Mullins, pastor of Christ Fellowship in West Palm Beach, Fla., said, “Dr. Bright symbolized the global impact that can come through transcending boundaries to build partnerships and transform lives around the world. What is unique is that this is generating additional momentum and building new alliances more than two years after his death.” Dr. James Davis, national representative of the National Evangelists Office, added, “We cannot think of a more effective use of time, than investing 12 hours with top church leaders, learning firsthand from them and allowing them to help pastors climb to a new level of dynamic ministry.” An additional five regional summits are scheduled for major U.S. cities in 2006. (Assist News Service)

*MYSTERIOUS DEATHS IN ECUADOR’S JUNGLE EXPOSE CLASHING WORLDVIEWS

Grief and an intermingled sense of relief gripped medical missionary Richard Douce as he visited a tiny Ecuadorian village struck by a mysterious outbreak that left seven people dead.

An HCJB World Radio infectious diseases specialist, Douce felt especially sorry for a couple whose loss was greatest. Two of their young boys died in the outbreak last summer in the jungle village of Jat ºn Molino on the Bobonaza River in eastern Ecuador’s Pastaza province. Later a third son, 13-year-old Washington, died after being rushed to the capital city of Quito.

“I can’t even touch the pain of what they must have felt losing three sons,” Douce said after his late-August trip to the remote village. “Basically, you cry with them.”

The story began in June when a villager killed an animal in the dark — a bat about the size of a pigeon. “The next morning the first dog started acting funny, and eventually died,” Douce wrote. “About a week later the first child died.”

When four more deaths followed, government health workers responded with blood tests and vaccinations. But villagers viewed the mystery differently. “The community thought that witch doctors had cursed them,” wrote Dr. Jerry Koleski, a missionary physician at HCJB World Radio’s Vozandes Hospital in the jungle town of Shell.

A short flight to Shell from Jat ºn Molino, Koleski was the first to see Washington whom he described as a “very frightened boy. We did all sorts of blood tests, but they all came back negative. In other words, we couldn’t figure out what was happening.” Further medical study in the village was hindered by traditional animistic religion and lack of knowledge about germs.

Douce wrote, “There seemed to be mass hysteria. Many in the village believed that they were going to die.” That hysteria pushed Jat ºn Molino’s residents into a practice of their Quichua Indian ancestors — witchcraft.

While many in Jat ºn Molino are evangelical Christians, witchcraft still emerges at times, according to Lloyd Rogers, a missionary for four decades in Ecuador. He directs the Quito-based ministry Misi ³n Evang ©lica Ecuador para Cristo (Ecuador for Christ Evangelical Mission). The gospel’s effect is evident “just as light drives out darkness,” said Rogers, and in general, witchcraft has been forced farther into the jungle as people learn of Jesus Christ.

Tensions rose with rumors that the foreign physicians couldn’t solve the riddle which began around the time the bat was killed in June. A nearby witch doctor was hailed as a “savior” by some villagers and reviled by others who were desperately searching for answers. Later rumors of his torture and drowning by villagers only added to the tensions.

What was killing dogs, children and adults in Jat ºn Molina? Was it something akin to the Ebola virus discovered several years ago in Africa? By the time Washington died, Ecuador’s Ministry of Health had ordered autopsies of outbreak casualties at Douce’s urging.

Autopsy results revealed paralytic rabies as the cause of the deaths. It manifests itself differently than furious rabies (also known as classic rabies or canine rabies). A vaccination campaign ended the immediate crisis, and the autopsy results from the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control confirmed that rabies was spread by vampire bats.

The bats inflict wounds with razor-sharp teeth while the victim sleeps, then drink blood for several minutes. The bats prey principally on livestock, but also on birds and other mammals and “rarely on humans,” according to Encarta Encyclopedia. But Douce said villagers (whose shelters have no walls)

consider bat bites almost as normal as mosquito bites. And on visits to jungle villages, Rogers has himself been bitten and has seen evidence of bites on students as well.

The outbreak exposed more than the lack of medical care and clashing worldviews among the Indians of Ecuador’s rainforest. Development of the petroleum-rich jungle is controversial. Jat ºn Molino’s favorable view toward petroleum exploration had angered residents of Sarayaku, a neighboring village. When children began dying, that animosity gave rise to Jat ºn Molino residents’ suspicions they’d had been cursed by a witch doctor from Sarayaku.

The small, obscure jungle villages’ conflict garnered a much higher profile in late October when the InterAmerican Commission of Human Rights in Washington heard a legal complaint by Sarayaku residents on the attempted reactivation of oil exploration. The complaint included various charges against a state-run firm, including attempts to kill the Indians. The state-run firm countered with its own charges against the Indians, including the kidnapping of some of its oil workers. The result of this disagreement is unclear.

In this environment of human and spiritual struggle, Rogers is optimistic that his jungle schools are preparing children for what lies ahead. “The kids now are the ones who are reading and writing — reading the Scriptures,” he said.  ¨They’re the generation that is going to make a big difference in all these villages.” (HCJB World Radio)