Earlier this week I put forth a challenge to my persecution bloggers for this weeks carnival and I am very pleased with the entries I received as a result. If you submitted an entry that wasn't a part of the challenge, I will post that in next weeks carnival.

Earlier today VOM Media released the picture to your left, and also the following news item. Please keep Andrew in your prayers. To see a more graphic picture of his injuries, click the link below.

• On July 19th at 5:00 p.m. in the southern state of Kerala, rioters belonging to the Students Federation of India smashed and destroyed vehicles, computers, office equipment, furniture, doors and windows of Christian-run educational institutions.

The following is courtesy of Mission Network News - a great ministry that follows missions news every day.

For the last few months every Friday we've been highlighting posts that you who are apart of our persecution blog team have written. This week I'd like to ask you to write a post about a person in the bible who was persecuted, and how they overcame the persecution and what you learned about how to deal with persecution.

This is by far one of the most encouraging devotions from the awesome book Extreme Devotion, which we frequently highlight on this blog. My favorite line in this devotion is "They wanted to encourage Christians in the West." Isn't that awesome! Take a minute and read this, and then pass it on to a friend. And please leave me your thoughts, I want to know how this encourages you today.

We here at the Persecution Blog want to thank you for all of your support and love. I appreciate personally the dedication those of you have in prayer and writing for the persecuted church. That's why I love Friday's because today is the day I get to highlight what you all have written. So let's begin...

One of our persecution bloggers is going to be taking on an extraordinaire feat of love for the persecuted church. Blogger Cindy Grayson has gracious considered The Voice of the Martyr's as her ministry of choice to stay up all night blogging for donations. Cindy asked if I could help spread the word, and I told her "Of course!"

After acquiring land where they could build a house of worship, local Christians in the Ethiopian town of Yebu faced heavy opposition. Numerous times, local Muslims had warned the Christians that if they did not stop evangelizing, they would be attacked.