A church-planting story from Chad

Eliki and Lavenia Drodrolagi became the first WEC missionaries sent from Fiji, when they went to Chad in 1993. Eliki shares their early experiences:

Our first year in Chad was very difficult, physically and spiritually. We arrived on a plane at noon; it was so hot! They say there is a tourist stage in cultural adaptation, but we went straight into culture shock at the food, the dry, brown countryside, the soldiers with guns stopping you as you travel around, the primitive toilets and the poverty. And this was the capital city!

A story from Central Asia

One social category that has it rough in Central Asia is the single, divorced mothers. Many have fled from abusive husbands or been abandoned for another woman.

Bridenapping

Rachel is a 33-year-old single mother of two who has been divorced for nine years. She was married at 18 to a man she had only seen once. He was nine years her senior and was being pressured into marriage by his mother.

He singled out Rachel and then kidnapped her, a tradition known as ‘bridenapping’ in this country of nomadic heritage. Some women grow to love their husband-captors with time. Others, like Rachel, suffer at the hands of abusive or absent husbands and of their controlling mothers-in-law.

1.    Human trafficking generates $31 billion annually and enslaves 27 million people, half of them children.

2.    The Internet Watch Foundation reports a 1500% increase in the number of child pornography images available online since 1997.

3.    Christian organizations and NGOs are working to inform the public, to help victimized children, and to stop this evil.

The annual event, one of the largest mission events in the south of England, featured:

• seminars;
• a Global Village enabling many missions and WEC ministries to showcase their opportunities for service;
• a children's worship party;
• youth happenings;
• and large gatherings in the main marquee.