Tess Rivers

ASIA (BP) -- To most of the world, 13-year-old Nitya Singh* is simply one of the world's 1 billion children who live in urban centers, according to UNICEF data. To Helen McKinney*, however, Nitya is more than a statistic in a world in which nearly 600 million children live in poverty. Nitya is a child worthy of God's love. Three years ago, Nitya and her mother Parul* came to McKinney's home to get clean water from an outside faucet. Nitya had not yet met the foreign woman who only recently had moved in. Within a few days, McKinney, with a few cookies, ventured out to meet the mother and her daughter. "They laughed at my attempt to communicate," McKinney recalls, but her simple gesture marked the beginning of a friendship. Soon Nitya brought her friends to meet "Auntie," the kind woman who gave her cookies but couldn't speak her language. As the friendship grew, the group of children moved from the gate to the porch and into the living room. They helped McKinney learn their language, and McKinney taught them simple English. "The children came every day, sometimes twice a day, for a cookie and prayer," McKinney says. "Through a Bible story book and lots of great pictures, I started teaching them about Jesus." As McKinney came to know the children, she began to visit the families who lived in the squalid slums near her home. Slowly, she met some needs that families could not, such as taking a child to a doctor or dentist or buying a family a bag of rice. But McKinney's visits brought more than food or even friendship. They brought hope -- the hope found only in Jesus Christ. "The families welcomed me into their little huts, and I became 'family,'" McKinney says. "Many of the children came to know Jesus as their Savior." Today, between 30 and 50 children come to McKinney's weekly class, where she gives them food, medicine and love, and about 10 children visit each morning before school for breakfast and prayer. On Sunday mornings, McKinney goes to church in an SUV packed with children. Throughout Asia, Christian workers like McKinney are sharing God's love with children from all walks of life, from the desperately poor to the outrageously affluent. Mary Bennett* is another example of someone who sees past the numbers.

ROGERS, Ark. (BP) -- Turner Bowman* walked into a jail cell as the door slammed behind him. He knew all too well the sounds, smells and sights of captivity.

HENDERSONVILLE, N.C. (BP) -- "No foreigners beyond this point," the sign reads in a remote area of Central Asia. Paul Hart* notices it just as the motorcycle he is riding blows by.       "They knew I was a foreigner," the 48-year-old entrepreneur recalls. "Foreigners are the only ones who wear helmets."

RICHMOND, Va. (BP) -- Overseas, the sound of a gate closing often signals the end of the workday when many business, healthcare and engineering professionals retreat into gated homes and communities.

LAS VEGAS (BP) -- Amid a celebration with a South African flair rivaling a Las Vegas stage show, International Mission Board trustees appointed 62 men and women as overseas missionaries.

RICHMOND, Va. (BP) -- This is not your father's Southern Baptist Convention. That's a message SBC President Fred Luter wants an increasingly diverse generation of young evangelicals to hear. "Our challenge as Southern Baptists is to let young believers know that you are welcome at the table," said Luter, who met recently with International Mission Board (IMB) leadership and staff at the home office in Richmond, Va. "We want you to come, sit at the table and tell us what we can do to help you fit in more with this convention." The SBC's first African-American president, Luter also is encouraging ethnic minorities, particularly African Americans, to look to international missions as a means of expanding God's kingdom. Of IMB's 4,900 missionaries, 27 are African American, 79 are Hispanic and 317 are Asian. For African Americans, that's one-half of 1 percent of the total IMB missionary count, explains Keith Jefferson, IMB's African American church missional strategist. When compared to as estimated 1 million African Americans included in the SBC's 16 million members, "that's a disproportionately low number of African Americans serving overseas," he said. Although African Americans have served in spurts with the IMB (formerly the Foreign Mission Board) since shortly after the SBC began in 1845, the low number serving overseas today doesn't surprise Luter. "A lot of our African American churches are in the 'hood," said Luter, who pastors Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans, La. "It's a daily fight every day. [People ask me], 'Why do I need to go to Africa, Asia or Europe? We need to get people saved in this community.'" Luter aims to change that mindset. Jefferson hopes to help him. "It's a both/and approach," Luter said. "We need to reach the people in our neighborhoods and get African Americans out on the foreign field." Jefferson agreed. "Charity begins at home, but it doesn't end there. The command begins in Jerusalem, but we don't stop at the beginning."

RICHMOND, Va. (BP) -- Medical strategies are a key piece of engaging unengaged, unreached people groups, said Trey Alexander,* a church-planting strategist in Central Asia.

RICHMOND, Va. (BP) -- Medical missions is dead. IMB no longer appoints medical personnel. Transitions of IMB-funded hospitals to local leadership are a failure.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (BP) -- A deer meat processor and a doctor. A nanny and a nurse. A soldier and a statistician. These are just a few of the jobs previously held by 84 men and women appointed by IMB trustees Nov. 15 at Second Baptist Church in Springfield, Mo.

NIAMEY, Niger (BP) -– Floodwater destroys, dissolves, stains, reeks, stagnates and displaces. For those with homes built of mud and livelihoods based on farming, the devastation -- and the time it takes to rebuild -- multiplies exponentially.