Stories from the Field

The UN estimates that, since the COVID pandemic, an additional 100 million people has been pushed into poverty.

World Challenge works with partners in many poor communities around the world, and we have witnessed daily wage laborers struggling to make ends meet in the face of instability and joblessness. Considering how to respond to such need, we have sought to implement a variety of income-generating initiatives to foster self-sustainability.

Many people in India still have never heard the good news of Jesus Christ.

After prayer and consideration, our ministry partners have begun focus on one particular unreached people group: the Banjara. The Joshua Project notes, “They are the largest nomadic group in India and are known as the root Romani of the earth.”

Kyrgyzstan walks a fine line between integrating democracy into its politics without allowing the uprisings that have led some central Asian nations to fall into dictatorships. This path, while worthwhile, has been a rocky one. 

The gospel news about Christ is reaching some of the most remote parts of Asia and transforming families’ lives. 

Mongolia is a vast, largely rural place. Many of the towns outside of their capital city are incredibly remote, almost as if they belong to another world.

Many methods of church and making disciples couldn’t work the same way during the pandemic, so the church in Brazil is working on more sustainable approaches to both. 

For the widows in Albania, life is never easy, and yet many of them have a glorious faith and peace in their Heavenly Father who provides for them. 

One of our partners in Albania work with widows, seeking to bless these dear women with food packages as well as spiritual and medical care. Many of the widows are quite elderly, have serious health concerns and live by themselves in poor conditions.

God is building his church in some of the most closed nations in the world through daring conviction of his children who put their lives in danger to share the gospel. 

Abdul was unfamiliar with the good news of Jesus until a friend shared it with him. He recalled, “This message stuck to my heart, and I thought about it for weeks and continued to meet him.” Every time they met, Abdul had more questions for his friend, and his longing to know more grew.

Christ still heals those who come to him in childlike faith, in this case a suffering young teenager in Cambodia.

One World Challenge volunteer’s experience in Ukraine reads like a memoir from World War II, as if it should be a glimpse into the distant past rather than the very recent life of so many Ukrainians like her. 

I want to tell you about Tanya Biloshapka, our volunteer who lives in Borodyanka, 40 kilometers from Kyiv. For three and half years now, Tanya has been serving the elderly widows in need.