I have been moved this week by the story of the South African Christian family attacked in Afghanistan last weekend. The father, Werner Groenewald, and his two teen-aged children were killed. The mother, Hannelie, is a doctor and was serving in a clinic when the attack happened, sparing her life. I cannot even imagine the grief and loss that this dear sister is enduring.

Set within Pakistan’s Punjab province about 40 miles southwest of Lahore, Chak 59 is a rural village where most people work as day laborers. Like many other families here, Christians Shahzad Masih and his pregnant wife, Shama Bibi were compelled to work long days at the brick kiln. Their 6-year-old son and two daughters, 4 and 1 ½, will also be expected to work when they are older.

For decades, The Voice of the Martyrs has launched balloons printed with the Scriptures into North Korea. In recent years we’ve even been able to attach entire New Testaments to balloons, and to track their flight and delivery via GPS signals. In this way we know we have landed New Testaments into the capital region of Pyongyang.

Listening to the news about Iraq brought a different response from me than before. I had just finished reading The Lost History of Christianity by Philip Jenkins and my response was—“They’re still at it.” In a phrase attributed to Yogi Berra, “It’s déjà vu all over again!” The book is about how the great churches of the Middle East in the first few centuries of Christianity essentially collapsed, and many totally disappeared after decades of invasions, persecution, coercion to convert to Islam, and massacres. Churches, clergy, institutions, libraries, whole villages destroyed. Those that still exist (and have survived under the most severe difficulties) periodically face severe pressures unknown to us in the West.

Last week VOM's Todd Nettleton was interviewed by Mission Network News about the upheaval that is currently rocking Libya, and what it might mean for Christians there. Here is the resulting story:

The eyes of the world’s media turned last month to the northern plains of Iraq, and to the city where Jonah first delivered Jehovah’s message thousands of years ago. Today the story isn’t of a messenger of Jehovah going into Nineveh (now called Mosul), but thousands of Jehovah’s followers being forced out of the city. The alternatives given to Christians by IS (Islamic State) if they don’t leave Mosul are subjugation to Islam or being forced to follow a different god—Allah. Or they will be killed.

The world is watching as ISIS (which now simply calls itself IS, for "Islamic State") takes control of more and more territory in Iraq and Syria. But what does the growth of this radical Islamic group mean for Christians in that region?

It’s 9:59 p.m., and I’m still in the kitchen, washing baby bottles. I have just cleaned up dinner and packed lunches for the next day after getting my two little ones to bed. A basketful of laundry, needing to be folded, waits for me in the living room.