Lottie Moon Week of Prayer 2014

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (BP) -- Growing up in a rural part of the Dominican Republic, Mary wanted to move to the nearest city at age 18 to find work. When a woman offered to help, Mary thought it was too good to be true. Mary thought she would become a maid when she arrived at a house in the city, but it was a house of prostitution.

EAST ASIA (BP) -- Along the side of a mud-packed mountain path, four East Asian believers sit under the shade of tall bamboo with a small, stooped woman in the traditional dress of her minority people group. The sounds of a radio program ring out from an MP3 player stowed in one of their backpacks, and her eyes light up as she listens to Bible stories told in her mother tongue.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (BP) -- Good values weren't enough for Linda Hamfors of Stockholm, Sweden. Hamfors, who grew up in an atheist family, believed Jesus was "a really amazing guy" and learned values from her parents like forgiveness, acceptance and love. But, good values couldn't sustain the singer/songwriter through the tumultuous years when her parents began drinking more and pursuing materialistic gain.

SOUTH ASIA (BP) -- For Mitch Englehart*, it's a beautiful sight that's taking place in some very dirty water. The South Carolina native watches from the bank of a stagnant canal as six new believers are baptized outside a small village in the South Asian countryside. Dhanwan is one of them. "I want to follow Jesus!" the young man says, explaining that he became a Christian following a miraculous healing through the prayers of a local pastor. That pastor, Lalbahadur, is a fifth-generation Christian whose faith can be traced back to Englehart's church planting network. ...

SOUTH SUDAN (BP)-- Moving to South Sudan, a war ground of turmoil and strife in northeast Africa, has been a major risk for Robert and Maridith Lane, even to the point that the IMB missionaries call in daily to assure their teammates in Uganda that their family is still alive. Since age 8, Maridith, a Georgia native, knew she would one day lead a life surrendered to Christ on the mission field. Robert, from Texas and Tennessee, found his calling at age 19, when he became aware of the startling amount of unreached people groups, which now number more than 6,500. By 21, he was committed to reaching the unreached with the Gospel overseas.

SOUTHEAST ASIA (BP) -- The young woman gingerly crawls off a motor scooter, grateful for the ride. Last month, Kalliyan Seng* could make the two-mile trek from her home on a bicycle. But now that she's nine months pregnant and could give birth at any moment, it's harder to pedal that distance.

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (BP) -- Dinner was a far cry from a Baptist church supper. On this night, six members from Valley Baptist Church in Searcy, Ark., squeezed into a modest home in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, of a Muslim family breaking their Ramadan fast.

LAGARTO, Ecuador (BP) -- Amadeo Torres took Jesus' command in Matthew 4:19 literally: "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men." When contemplating how to share the Gospel with an unbelieving friend in an Ecuadorian fishing village, Amadeo asked IMB missionary Johnny Maust to help him buy a fisher's net for the friend.

LAGARTO, Ecuador (BP) -- Tony Mathews was on a mission. He wanted to find the man he had led to Christ a couple of days earlier. Mathews, pastor of North Garland Baptist Fellowship in Garland, Texas, had met Wiston while walking through the small town of Lagarto on the Ecuadorian coast with a handful of fellow African American pastors and church members from the Dallas area.

RICHMOND, Va. (BP)-- Hardly a day goes by without someone telling Adam Hailes, a Southern Baptist missionary in Madagascar, that he's out of place. In the Malagasy dialect that the Antandroy people speak, the term for white means foreigner. Locals address him by that title. The term isn't used out of disrespect. Their attitude of separation is produced by fear.