DAWN Fridayfax 1999 #34

Brazil

Plan Goiania - 1000 per day should come to Christ

In September 1999, "Goiania for Christ", a multiconfessional long-term city-wide project, will start in Goiania, a city near Brasilia with a population of 1.2 million. At least 1,000 of Goiania's over 2,000 Christian churches and fellowships will take part in the programme. The year-long project's aim, according to the organisers, is that "for every participating church, at least one person will come to know Christ every day." At the end of July 1999, visitors from over 40 countries attended a prayer conference in the city, including a night of prayer with some 12,000 participants. In October 1998, a similar conference attracted 1,800 attendees, "which shows that interest in prayer and cooperation is rapidly increasing amongst Brazilian Christians," says Ueli Haldemann, who attended the conference as part of an almost 50-strong Swiss delegation. An 'Alpha Vision' camera team was also present to document the astonishing Brazilian prayer movement led in part by Elizabeth Cornelio; their report will be broadcast on Swiss television on 4 December 1999. The broadcasting company was swamped with orders for copies of Alpha Vision's previous documentary about Argentine prison pastor Juan Zuccharelli, "When murderers pray".
Source: Ueli Haldemann

Serbia

Churches call for a week of prayer and fasting

According to the World Evangelical Fellowship (WEF), the Serbian Evangelical Alliance UK called for a week of prayer and fasting for all people groups living in Serbia, starting on 26 July. They invited Evangelical churches all over the world to pray and fast. "Only the prayers and fasting of Christians all over the world can help us in our need," said Rev. Lazar Stojsic, President of the the Serbian EA. They particularly asked for prayer 'for revival, unity, fulfillment of the Great Commission, that the evangelical Christians' example will have a visible moral influence, for democratic change and a government which allows freedom for evangelical Christians." "Religious differences were not the cause of the problems between Orthodox Christians and the Catholics and Muslims in the Balkan area," reports the WEF. "During the half century of Communist rule, the religious institutions were weakened and made vulnerable to the point where they opened for nationalistic influences which polarised the area's three main religious groups." However, "religious institutions are the only significant remainder of a civil society in the Balkans, and will play a very important part in the reconstruction efforts," according to Balkan experts in a journalistic comment on the Balkan crisis (see www.newsroom.org).
Source: WEF, Wheaton, IL 60189, USA; Fax (+1) 630-668-0498.
The WEF claims to represent some 160 million evangelical Christians in 107 national Alliances.

Egypt

The start of house churches

"Egypt appears around 700 times in the Bible. Today, the Bible is appearing with increasing frequency in Egypt," writes the German Bible League, which distributes Bibles in Egypt, among other places, and trains local Christians. "In Egypt, it is illegal for more than 5 people to meet in a house, but over the last year, 36,000 people met in 1,267 Bible groups. In 1998 alone, 71 house churches were started by local Christians working with the Bible League."
Source: German Bible League, fax (+49)-791-857035, e-mail BibelLiga.D@t-online.de

Switzerland/Kosovo

Jesse Jackson's prayer diplomacy

At the end of June 1999, important politicians including Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Macedonian President Kiro Gligorov, moderate Kosovo-Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova, Serbian opposition leader Zoran Dkindic, UNO Special Emissary Eduard Kukan and Swiss Federal Councillor Pascal Couchepin met to discuss the future of the Kosovo. At the end of the meeting, as they were preparing to leave, US citizens' rights activist and US envoy Jesse Jackson called on everyone to stand and unite in prayer for Kosovo. Astonished, they stood, some faces showing the fight between the seriousness of the need and the humor of the situation as Jackson prayed that God would help bring peace. Even Viktor Tschernomyrdin, one member of the Russian delegation, who followed the prayer via simultaneous translation with a set expression, later said "The Kosovo conflict cannot be solved without God's help".
Source: Basler Zeitung (a Swiss newspaper)

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