From @chinaaid : "Court upholds fine for Yang Xibo and his wife"

The ChinaAid Association is a non-profit Christian organization - based in Midland, Texas - with a mission to uncover and reveal the truth about religious persecution in China, focusing especially on the unofficial church. They do this, they explain in their website, by exposing the abuses, encouraging the abused and equipping the saints to advance the kingdom of God throughout China.

ChinaAid Photo

Court upholds fine for Yang Xibo and his wife
Distributed by ChinaAid, November 2022 ...

XIAMEN, FUJIAN PROVINCE, CHINA –On July 29, 2021, Siming District Religious Affairs Bureau issued a fine of ￥200,000 (~$27,000) against Pastor Yang Xibo, and his wife Wang Xiaofei of Xunsiding Church. The couple filed an administrative litigation against the Religious Affairs Bureau at the end of 2021. On November 24, 2022, they finally received a verdict from Jimei District People’s Court. The Court deemed to uphold the fine issued. Wang Xiaofei said they will appeal to Xiamen City Intermediate People’s Court ...

• More on this story from ChinaAid ...

From @chinaaid : "Minister An Yankui and Zhang Chenghao released"

The ChinaAid Association is a non-profit Christian organization - based in Midland, Texas - with a mission to uncover and reveal the truth about religious persecution in China, focusing especially on the unofficial church. They do this, they explain in their website, by exposing the abuses, encouraging the abused and equipping the saints to advance the kingdom of God throughout China.

ChinaAid Photo

Minister An Yankui and Zhang Chenghao released
Distributed by ChinaAid, November 2022 ...

TAIYUAN, CHINA – Minister An Yankui and coworker Zhang Chenghao of Zion Reformed Church were released after serving their sentence. Yao Congya, An Yankui’s wife, disclosed that the two ministers could not return to their home and reunite with their wives due to the pandemic lockdown, so they went to their hometown first and waited there ...

• More on this story from ChinaAid ...

From @chinaaid : "ChinaAid’s Bob Fu visits Taiwanr"

The ChinaAid Association is a non-profit Christian organization - based in Midland, Texas - with a mission to uncover and reveal the truth about religious persecution in China, focusing especially on the unofficial church. They do this, they explain in their website, by exposing the abuses, encouraging the abused and equipping the saints to advance the kingdom of God throughout China.

ChinaAid Photo

ChinaAid’s Bob Fu visits Taiwan
Distributed by ChinaAid, November 2022 ...

TAIPEI, TAIWAN – On November 14, Reverend Dr. Bob Fu, president of the China Aid Association, and Ms. Nadine Maenza, president of the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Secretariat, met with Mr. You Si-kun, President of Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan in Taipei ...

• More on this story from ChinaAid ...

From @chinaaid : "Christian stands trial for 'picking quarrels and provoking trouble'"

The ChinaAid Association is a non-profit Christian organization - based in Midland, Texas - with a mission to uncover and reveal the truth about religious persecution in China, focusing especially on the unofficial church. They do this, they explain in their website, by exposing the abuses, encouraging the abused and equipping the saints to advance the kingdom of God throughout China.

ChinaAid Photo

Christian stands trial today for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble”
Distributed by ChinaAid, November 2022 ...

GANSU, CHINA – Long Kehai, a Christian from Gansu Province, will in court for the crime of “picking quarrels and provoking troubles.” Lawyer Zhang Keke received the notice to appear in court on November 15. The letter requires lawyer Zhang to attend the trial at the No. 1 Trial Chamber of Hui County People’s Court of Gansu Province ...

• More on this story from ChinaAid ...

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

When we are praying about the result, say, of a battle or a medical consultation the thought will often cross our minds that (if only we knew it) the event is already decided one way or the other. I believe this to be no good reason for ceasing our prayers. The event certainly has been decided—in a sense it was decided ‘before all worlds’. But one of the things taken into account in deciding it, and therefore one of the things that really cause it to happen, may be this very prayer that we are now offering. Thus, shocking as it may sound, I conclude that we can at noon become part causes of an event occurring at ten a.m. (Some scientists would find this easier than popular thought does.) The imagination will, no doubt, try to play all sorts of tricks on us at this point. It will ask, ‘Then if I stop praying can God go back and alter what has already happened?’ No. The event has already happened and one of its causes has been the fact that you are asking such questions instead of praying. It will ask, ‘Then if I begin to pray can God go back and alter what has already happened?’ No. The event has already happened and one of its causes is your present prayer. Thus something does really depend on my choice. My free act contributes to the cosmic shape. That contribution is made in eternity or ‘before all worlds’; but my consciousness of contributing reaches me at a particular point in the time-series.

• From Miracles
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

When the third day dawned—with a brightness you or I could not bear even if we had dark glasses on— they saw a wonder ahead. It was as if a wall stood up between them and the sky, a greenish-grey, trembling, shimmering wall. Then up came the sun, and at its first rising they saw it through the wall and it turned into wonderful rainbow colors. Then they knew that the wall was really a long, tall wave—a wave endlessly fixed in one place as you may often see at the edge of a waterfall. It seemed to be about thirty feet high, and the current was gliding them swiftly toward it. You might have supposed they would have thought of their danger. They didn’t. I don’t think anyone could have in their position. For now they saw something not only behind the wave but behind the sun. . . . What they saw—eastward, beyond the sun—was a range of mountains. It was so high that either they never saw the top of it or they forgot it. None of them remembers seeing any sky in that direction. And the mountains must really have been outside the world. For any mountains even a quarter of a twentieth of that height ought to have had ice and snow on them. But these were warm and green and full of forests and waterfalls however high you looked. And suddenly there came a breeze from the east, tossing the top of the wave into foamy shapes and ruffling the smooth water all round them. It lasted only a second or so but what it brought them in that second none of those three children will ever forget. It brought both a smell and a sound, a musical sound. Edmund and Eustace would never talk about it afterward. Lucy could only say, “It would break your heart.” “Why,” said I, “was it so sad?” “Sad!! No,” said Lucy. No one in that boat doubted that they were seeing beyond the End of the World into Aslan’s country.

• From The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
• Compiled in A Year with Aslan

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

The Rev. Dr. Cynthia Rigby

Today in the Mission Yearbook: December 4, 2022

REV. DR. CYNTHIA RIGBY OF AUSTIN SEMINARY - Do you feel like you belong?”

That’s what the Rev. Dr. Cynthia Rigby, the W.C. Brown Professor of Theology at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, asked the people attending the recent Covenant Conversation at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Oklahoma City. Rigby was the keynote speaker....

• CLICK HERE to read more.

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

Screwtape shows Wormwood how to transform a minor trespass into a major sin:

Success here depends on confusing him. If you try to make him explicitly and professedly proud of being a Christian, you will probably fail; the Enemy’s warnings are too well known. If, on the other hand, you let the idea of ‘we Christians’ drop out altogether and merely make him complacent about ‘his set’, you will produce not true spiritual pride but mere social vanity which, by comparison, is a trumpery, puny little sin. What you want is to keep a sly self-congratulation mixing with all his thoughts and never allow him to raise the question ‘What, precisely, am I congratulating myself about?’ The idea of belonging to an inner ring, of being in a secret, is very sweet to him. Play on that nerve. Teach him, using the influence of this girl when she is silliest, to adopt an air of amusement at the things the unbelievers say. Some theories which he may meet in modern Christian circles may here prove helpful; theories, I mean, that place the hope of society in some inner ring of ‘clerks’, some trained minority of theocrats. It is no affair of yours whether those theories are true or false; the great thing is to make Christianity a mystery religion in which he feels himself one of the initiates.

• From The Screwtape Letters
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Photo by Rich Copley

Today in the Mission Yearbook: November 30, 2022

KIN-DOM YOUTH CAMP IN TEXAS - This past summer, 1001 New Worshiping Communities ministry kin-dom community hosted its first kin-dom camp for LGBTQIA+ youth ages 12–17 living in Texas and other states in the Synod of the Sun ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

The Rev. Jennifer Burns Lewis

Today in the Mission Yearbook: dECEMBER 2, 2022

PRESBYTERIAN THEOLOGY - For the Rev. Jennifer Burns Lewis, “love makes room” is the umbrella of her theology. Along with Micah 6:8 — to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God — it is the shaping framework of her work as the vision and connecting leader of the Presbytery of Wabash Valley ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

In the News ... "'Empty Stocking needs help"

• Enabling Salvation Army to provide toys and food baskets to needy families in Odessa

Staff Report
• The Odessa American

ODESSA, TEXAS - With 16 days left to go to raise funds for the 28th year of the Empty Stocking Fund to help the needy in Odessa time is of the essence.

Funds stay in Ector County and help needy families like that of Tanya, not her real name, a single mom with three children who recently was laid-off from work. Tanya and her children are struggling financially with hospital bills as one daughter has leukemia.

The Empty Stocking Fund, an annual fundraising effort by the Odessa American and The Salvation Army, will continue through Dec. 17.

Funds stay in Ector County and help needy families. The Empty Stocking Fund, an annual fundraising effort by the Odessa American and The Salvation Army, will continue through Dec. 17. Empty Stocking Funds go for a good holiday meal and small gifts under the tree for needy seniors and children.

The Empty Stocking Fund was created by the Odessa American in 1995 and has raised more than $2.1 million.

LATEST "EMPTY STOCKING" DONATIONS

• James Cox: $204
• Christopher Pipes: $204
• Today’s total: $408
• Previous total: $10,150
• Grand total: $10,558
• Goal: $100,000

WANT TO HELP?

Donations to the Empty Stocking Fund may be mailed or delivered to the Odessa American, 700 N. Grant, Suite 800, Odessa or the Salvation Army Community Center, 810 E. 11th St.. ZIP codes for both are 79761.

You can also donate online at Thttps://give.salvationarmytexas.org/campaign/empty-stocking-fund-2022-odessa-texas/c436247.

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Call (432) 332-0738.

In the News ... "GOOD NEWS: Gift Boxing"

Courtesy Photo

• Andrews High School girls soccer program joins 'Operation Christmas Child' program

Staff Report
• Odessa American

ANDREWS, TEXAS - The Andrews High School girls soccer program recently finished boxing up 40 Samaritan’s purse boxes for the Operation Christmas Child program.

The players shopped, stuffed the boxes, wrote notes of encouragement, and spoke words of affirmation for the child who would receive the box.

They raised money to purchase the items for each box by working the Green Exchange cleanup on the weekends during the fall ...

• Enjoy the rest of this OA photo album ...

In the News ... "The Salvation Army needs your help ringing the bell"

KWES Photo

• Red Kettle Campaign relies on volunteers to ring the bell, raise funds for the non-profit's mission

Staff Report
• KWES-TV

MIDLAND, TEXAS - The Salvation Army is asking for the public's help for its annual Red Kettle Campaign.

Every year, the non-profit posts bell ringers at locations across the United States to help raise funds and help support the community.

Leading up to Christmas, volunteers can sign up for a date, time, and locations that they'd like to ring at and collect donations for the local community.

This year, however, the Salvation Army says it is in need of more volunteers. ...

• Read/watch the rest of this KWES report ... 

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Photo by Elizabeth Turk

Today in the Mission Yearbook: November 28, 2022

PRESBYTERIAN HIV AWARENESS DAY - During the last two years of Covid and other global crises, progress against the HIV pandemic has faltered, resources have shrunk and millions of lives are at risk as a result. This year, UNAIDS is challenging us to tackle the inequalities and inequities in HIV prevention and treatment. Inequity exists between countries and within countries. In Madagascar, only 15% of those infected with HIV know their status while in the U.S.A., 87% of those infected know their status. Both countries are striving to reach at risk populations ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.