With less than two weeks to go before this year’s International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church (IDOP) on November 3, is your church planning to “Remember them that are in bonds” (Hebrews 13:3) on this significant Sunday?

“For me the issue has been settled. The Lord called me to reach out to my people and I have to. So whether they are killing me, I will still love them with the love of God. I do not see them as my enemies because they killed my son. I have forgiven them because they do not have Christ and that is all they can think at their level.”

For Agnes, forgiveness was a long time in coming. Agnes is a Christian widow, living in northern Nigeria. In 2004, her shop-keeper husband was caught in a religious riot in Kano. Muslim rioters entered his shop and shot him with arrows. Bleeding, with arrows hanging from his chest, he ran home. The mob chased him and broke down the door. He was killed in front of Agnes and his four kids, who were barely able to convince the mob not to kill them, too.

Last month VOM's Todd Nettleton visited the nation of Nigeria to meet with and interview persecuted Christians, including several who have been treated in the new prosthetics clinic provided by VOMedical. Last week Todd was a guest on Moody Radio's program, “In the Market With Janet Parshall,” and talked about the trip and the people he met with in Nigeria. Listen to the interview below.

Photo of the day: this photo was taken recently by a VOM team visiting Nigeria. The team was blessed to meet with Nigerian Christians, hear their stories of persecution and faith, and pray with them for God to bless them and to bless the church in Nigeria.

The support of VOM readers provided 16 patients with prosthetic legs in January 2013. "I feel so happy!" said Esther, a woman who received one of the prosthetic legs.Attacks against Christians in Nigeria have increased over the past three years. As the number of victims has grown, VOM has responded with a one-of-a-kind medical clinic. This special prosthetics lab will greatly improve the lives of amputees. "Providing them with mobility will impact not only their own quality of life, but also that of their families," said a VOM medical worker.

“There is something about experience . . . When somebody becomes a Christian after he has persecuted the church, he knows what persecution is about and it is important to support him to be able to go back and live the Christian life and be an evangelist because he has something to say to persecutors. He can say, ‘I have been there; I know what it means.’ He has a message that is not only theoretical but personal—a message that is out of both the Bible and personal experience that will reach out to the people because of his personal experience.”

In 2007, Babasola’s oldest son was attending classes at his university [in Nigeria] when three Muslim men armed with machetes approached him. They called out his name.

As we meet with our family members around the world, we often celebrate with them as they share miraculous accounts of God’s direct intervention in their lives. A specialized team of four women from VOM just returned from two weeks in Nigeria. These women offered listening ears, hours of prayer and profound words of encouragement to a dozen widows of Christian martyrs.

Although it hasn't received a great deal of media coverage, late last month a Boko Haram commander spoke publicly about a cease-fire in the group's ongoing war with the Nigerian government.