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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

A drug user and alcoholic turns to God and becomes a respected member of his church and community.

A Hard Crash

Francis was a renowned weed smoker, drug supplier and drunkard in his Ugandan village.

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.

Two church leaders in El Salvador were moved to help the country’s children and build toward a better future.

In 1961, John and Lois Bueno were invited to El Salvador to become the pastors of Centro Evangelistico Church. 

They left their home in California and moved to El Salvador’s capital to start a new life and ministry, hardly guessing the magnitude of the plans God had in store for them. 

God gave Maria a task most would have rejected, but she obeyed and has seen great rewards for her faithfulness.

If God asked you to leave your job right now, would you do it?

For many who are their family’s primary breadwinner or barely making ends meet for themselves, this would be an extremely hard question.

One woman refused to allow tradition to separate her and her grandchildren, and God made a way for them.

A woman in Kenya who has just lost her husband is immediately faced with a terrible choice: To be “cleansed” or not.