DAWN Fridayfax 1997 #33

DAWN News from Thailand, Spain, USA, Germany

Thailand: healed of epilepsy - half a village is saved

In a special ceremony, a Thai couple filled a bottle with rice, hair and nails and then prayed to evil spirits to protect their son as he grew up. The opposite happened: the child became chronically ill, suffering from epilepsy. Raewat, a Thai missionary, was on a long tour through the jungle and rice paddies with two assistants when they arrived in the village. They knew that they were the first Christians to ever visit the village, because the villagers were completely speechless as Raewat preached there. The villagers' life was full of evil spirits who had to be placated with endless rituals. They had never heard of a God who loved people. The missionaries also met the epileptic boy's parents. As they prayed for him, God acted immediately and healed the boy. When they saw what had happened, the parents destroyed the magic bottle and burned its contents, followed by other people from the whole village, who burned their amulets and other instruments which they had used for Buddhist and Animist worship. "Most of the villagers confessed their sins and decided to become Christians," according to the report.
Source: Gospel for Asia, India/USA

Spain: again too small

It's a relatively new phenomenon in traditionally Catholic Spain, for evangelical church buildings to become too small for the meetings. According to Mark Wardein, who operates an evangelical news service in Spain, "evangelical churches on the Spanish Mediterranean coast have been growing recently." One such church is "El Buen Pastor" in Castellon near Valencia, led by Nathanael Frugoni, where the number of members has quadrupled from 40 to 160 in six years. The new church building with space for around 350 people, which was opened on 14 June 1997, is "again becoming crowded", he says.
Source: M Wardein, e-mail wardein@stalker.es

USA: an aim without strategy is a waste of time

Target 2000, the Pentecostal Holiness Church's strategic plan, calls for every member to pray for 20 minutes each day for world mission, and to concentrate completely on multiplying new Christians and churches. "What does God have planned for our church up to the year 2000, how many members should we have by then?", ask the leaders of the denomination. which, in 1994, numbered 125,000 members in 1,490 churches. The denomination now plans to grow to 2,000 churches by the year 2000, and particularly to plant churches in 200 'world-class cities', with the aim of winning "one tenth of one percent of the world population by the year 2000" - around 570,000 people. Based on a 'Harvest Theology', the denomination expects every local church to set its own aims and concentrate on today's mission areas, particularly the explosively-growing cities. "We have to go to the people, and stop permanently expecting them to come to us," according to one of the church's statements. "In addition, it is a waste of time to set aims and then not develop a strategy by which to reach them," they say.
Source: Pentecostal Holiness Church, P.O. Box 12609, Oklahoma City, OK 73157, USA, fax (+1)-405-789-3957

Germany: out of the esoteric dead end

After 34 years of marriage and three children, his wife's decision to divorce him was an incredible shock for 58-year-old Dieter Schwarzlmüller (58). "My uncontrolled drinking and its consequences were the trigger," he writes. "Where now was my self-confidence, which I had learned through countless esoteric books and expensive New Age seminars. And my positive thinking? Where was that, too?" One evening, an 'inner voice' told him to visit a seminar about 'Management by the Holy Spirit', despite all that had happened: "Dieter, go!" "Surprisingly, my wife Brigitte also came, and at 10:30pm that evening, we both decided to become Christians. The esoteric and New Age gurus had always spouted self-assurance, self-confidence, self-esteem and self-determination, but it was just a dead end. Jesus has set me free of all that!" The Schwarzlmüllers are still married...
Source: Dieter Schwarzlmüller, Christen im Beruf ("Christians in the Workplace"), fax (49)-9921-67207

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