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Stories

Stories from the Field

  • An Orphan Turned Mother

    Rachel Chimits

    Many of Lithuania’s children have grown up without families, but one woman is working to give them a home.

    Reda spent four years in a children’s home during the Soviet occupation of Lithuania. Later, as a young adult, she was moved to a dormitory with other children like herself. No one seemed to care about them, and they had to find jobs and otherwise prepare for the adult world alone.

  • Mercy in the Slum

    Rachel Chimits

    In Kenya’s grittiest and most impoverished sector, God is bringing incredible change to people’s hearts and lives.

    As the sun rises on the eastern part of Kenya’s capital, it brings to light one of the world largest slums: Mathare.

    The third largest in Africa, this slum is home to some 500,000 people scraping together a living in grinding poverty.

  • Seeing Blessings in Guatemala

    Rachel Chimits

    World Challenge partners help widows in Latin America receive back their sight. 

    Rosa feels along the brick wall of her kitchen. Only the size of a living room in many Americans’ houses, her home is simple and clean. At least, she hopes it’s clean. She’s swept like always, bumping the broom between the table and chairs’ legs.

    Something clatters cross the floor, and she pauses, trying to squint through grainy gloom at whatever’s fallen.

  • Darkness on Peru’s Emerald Mountains

    Rachel Chimits

    Major challenges are facing the church in Peru as they look for ways to serve their society’s most vulnerable. 

    This spring, Director of Mercy Ministries Mark Buzzetta traveled to Cusco, Peru to connect with a local church doing great work caring for widows.

    The trip was eye-opening to Peru’s great natural beauty and local struggles, coming almost as often from floods of global tourists to their region as well as stifling animist traditions.

  • Ebola Outbreak in the Congo

    Rachel Chimits

    Government organizations and churches are working side-by-side to help save people from one of the world’s deadliest diseases.

    The current Ebola outbreak in the Congo is quickly becoming one of the deadliest in history, second only to the 2014 to 2016 epidemic that raged across West African, killing more than 11,300 people.

  • Protecting Mothers and the Unborn

    Rachel Chimits

    In the Philippines, church workers are helping educate pregnant women about how to keep themselves and their babies healthy.

    Pregnancy usually means extra doctor visits to make sure the mother and baby stay healthy.

    Some women, however, don’t have this option because either they live in a remote village or it’s not traditional practice. They often don’t realize the many health benefits that preventative care can offer both them and their child.

  • Returning Home

    World Challenge Staff

    Many young, educated Albanians leave their homeland in search of a better life, and Vera intended to be no different until she met God.

    Mynevere Saliu, more often called Vera by friends and family, was born into a Muslim Roma family in the city Peqin. 

  • Disciples Who Make Disciples

    Andreas Steffensen

    God makes a way for his children and gives them his favor, no matter how desperate their situation.

    In Acts chapter 3, Peter and John are entering the temple, and a lame beggar asks them for money. Peter responds, “I don’t have any silver or gold for you.”

    Pause there. This is a very strange response.