Praise Reports

ASSIST News Serice reports that Juria Bardhan, Gospel for Asia's state leader in Orissa, India, has seen dozens of churches burned to the ground in the last two weeks. He has seen missionaries and Christians beaten and killed. But during all these horrific attacks, Juria has had one thought. "We know the Lord is in control," Juria said in an interview Thursday. Juria's comments may sound naïve to Western ears, but to Christians in volatile parts of Asia, they ring true. They expect persecution rather than peace. They know that to follow Christ means choosing to bring more trouble into their lives. They also know that Christians standing strong in the face of such trials encourages others to follow Christ. "The encouraging thing is that the attackers themselves acknowledge that Orissa used to be only 2 percent Christian, and now it's 28 percent Christian," Juria said. "They don't understand that by doing this, the church will grow by leaps and bounds, and this will cause thousands to come to Christ."

RABAT, Morocco (AP) — Once, he was one of America's most feared bogeymen: a Mideast thug who unleashed terrorist goons on U.S. interests around the world. Now, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is breaking bread with the secretary of state in his kitchen and plying her with gifts. In the 1980s, Libyan terrorists were staple villains in the movies and on TV. It was hard for many Americans to imagine a greater evil than the strongman blamed for a string of anti-U.S. attacks, most notoriously the 1988 downing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. But after abandoning his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and renouncing terrorism in 2003, Gadhafi completed a remarkable five-year rehabilitation last week, transforming himself from a mysterious and reviled enemy of the United States to a partner of known quantity.