Bolero singer turns to Christ

Lima, December 1st, 2004 (ACPress.net). 
The Peruvian singer of romantic ballads and ‘boleros’, Ramón Aviles, perhaps the best-known of his musical genre on the American continent, has been converted and now spices his songs with the Christian message.

No longer do divorce and unrequited love dominate his lyrics, after coming out of a disorderly life into faith in Christ. He entered a competition in 1963 for up-and-coming singers, reached the final, and was offered a job singing Creole music with Sono Radio. He then moved into boleros, finding fame with his song ‘Where are you, Yolanda?’ He admits to being unfaithful to his wife several times but today he owes his existence to God, his family and his church. “I am not religious, I’m a Christian. Religion doesn’t get you anywhere, today I’ve got a relationship with God that everyone should have with their Creator. He gave me success and these new songs are really part of my conversion.”

He still sings his old songs at his concerts. “One has to be realistic. If I give a totally Christian concert, people will not attend.” Aviles has just given a concert in which he presented a new album called ‘The reason why I came to Christ’. He sang old songs but also gave his testimony. The album includes 11 bolero songs and his aim is to make Christ known across North and South America.

San José, December 1st, 2004 (ACPress.net).  
The ex-President of Costa Rica, Rafael Angel Calderón, said he often reads his Bible in his prison cell, as well as taking exercise and answering many letters.

“Most of the time I spend studying the Bible. It is a time of searching for the purpose of my life. What has God got in store for me?”, said Calderón on a radio programme. He added that what most upset him was the separation from his family and the breakdown of his health due to stress in recent weeks. He also complained at the injustice he had suffered at the hands of the authorities: “the violation of my human rights is amazing. Despite having no evidence, just the evidence of one person in the Treasury was enough to get a judge to order my arrest and put me in prison for 9 months (reduced to 2 months).”

Calderón’s case has to do with the alleged embezzlement of over 7 million euros in commissions, part of aid given by Finland to buy equipment for the Social Security Bank.

Havana, December 1st, 2004 (ACPress.net).  
The first stone in what will be the first Russian Orthodox Church in Cuba was laid on November 16th by Metropolitan Kirill, Chairman of Foreign Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Cuban President, Fidel Castro, despite convalescing after a fall at an event on Cuban Culture Day in October, received the Metropolitan and talked to the rest of the delegation which attended the symbolic act in the Cuban capital. Kirill also met Caridad Diego, Head of Religious Affairs of the Cuban Communist Party, as well as several local government officials. Apparently, the Director of the Havana Historical Institute, Eusebio Leal Spencer, was given the building plans by the Metropolitan on a visit to Moscow. They were later approved.

Leal heads up the restoration of ‘Old Havana’, an area designated as of universal interest by UNESCO. He made contact with several archaeologists and architects who are involved in conservation projects in Moscow, to ask them to join the project. The church building will be situated on the sea-front in Old Havana, the same area of town which is home to the Greek Orthodox Cathedral. It is hoped to open it within a year.

During the Cold War period, quite a lot of Russians lived in Cuba and many got married there. Cuban hospitals also treated many Russian children affected by the nuclear accident at Chernobyl. The stone was laid on the 485th anniversary of the founding of Havana which, according to tradition, began with the celebration of a Catholic Mass on November 16th, 1519.

Quito, December 1st, 2004 (ACPress.net). 
The Andes Conference on Religious Equality ended with a call to the authorities to recognise the rights of evangelicals, and to allow them to practice their faith freely.

In an agreed statement, the participants recognised that in recent years, Latin American governments “have abandoned their confessional character and have included the freedom of conscience and worship in their Constitutions.” However, continued the communiqué, “the truth is that there is still discrimination and there are legal discrepancies in the treatment of religious minorities which contravene the Constitutions and international law.” Therefore, they call urgently for legislation which guarantees religious equality for all.

Delegates from Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Spain, Peru and Venezuela agreed that freedom of conscience “is a fundamental human right, which enables people to choose their own convictions and religious practices, and not to be persecuted nor restricted within the parameters of human rights.”  Evangelical leaders at the Conference highlighted the need to continue thinking on this issue, to publicise the results of the Conference and to take the debate back to their churches.

They also see the need to take the debate to other religious groups and to society at large. To this end, they propose the creation of a study group and another to promote judicial equality when it comes to the treatment of religious minorities by the law. They also committed themselves to “strengthening the organisations represented and the union of existing evangelical churches, and to work for the establishment of them in areas where there are none.”

Rio de Janeiro, December 1st, 2004 (ACPress.net).  
In recent municipal elections, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) ­ a group much questioned in Christian circles, and condemned by some as a cult - lost ground, leaving it with 70 Council seats out of 350 in this key Brazilian city.

This does not mean the UKCG has reached the limit of its growth but that it finds itself up against other evangelical churches. At least, this is the opinion of Maria das Dores Campos Machado, a researcher of religion and social action at Rio University. She says that evangelical churches are beginning to compete among themselves to get their people elected on local councils and regional legislative bodies, as well as the national parliament. There, on an issue involving morals, evangelicals forget their differences, close ranks and vote together. Evangelicals in Parliament consist of 58 MPs and 3 Senators, spread among 12 political parties.

Evangelicals concentrate their efforts on rejecting projects which seek to impose taxes on churches, and on issues of social communication. Almost 60% of evangelical politicians come from the south of the country; five states in the north did not elect any evangelicals at all. Overall, 56 evangelical MPs and Senators have been voted into office since 2002, winning just over 4.6 million votes between them. However, the evangelical population of Brazil stands at around 26 million, which disproves the thesis that evangelicals vote for their own.

New Delhi, December 1st, 2004 (ACPress.net).
A mob gathered in Bilhar in northern India from six different villages, to capture, beat and tie 3 Christians to a tree: a pastor, Manrathan, his wife and another woman. If noone paid the ransom of 25,000 rupees they demanded within 48 hours, then these Hindu radicals said they would kill the three as a sacrifice to their gods.

The group included some of the same elements responsible for burning Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons alive in 1999. The mob prevented anyone from leaving the village so that they could not warn the authorities, but later a believer escaped to tell the story. All other Christians could do was to pray for the protection of their brother and sisters. No further news is so far forthcoming.

In Chattisgarh, two pastors were kidnapped and beaten in early October while preparing the baptism of 32 new believers, the first in their village. One of the victims, pastor Vijay, managed to escape and ran 25 miles to tell his leaders. The other pastor, Tulsiram, remains in captivity but the location is not known.

A group of students from Hope Givers International handing out Bibles in Rajasthan were attacked by a mob of about 40 people who took all the literature the students were carrying and burned it publicly. Later, five members of the group ­ three students, one teacher and one older man ­ were beaten up. Despite all these attacks, the numbers of those converting to Christ continues to increase.

New Delhi, December 2nd, 2004 (ACPress.net).  
The other side of the coin in India comes from the district of Sindurgh where more than 300 Catholics were forcibly ‘converted’ to Hinduism at a public ceremony where they were given food and new clothes.

According to Monsignor Alphonse Bilung, Bishop of Rourkela, the diocese where the ceremony was held, said “nationalists threaten them with terrible consequences if they attend church.” The situation for Christians in Orissa state is very tense, as Hindu nationalists are active there. In September, a further 76 ‘Christians’ were ‘converted’ to Hinduism, according to reports.

Washington DC, December 2nd, 2004 (ACPress.net). 
Rev. Jerry Falwell has has announced the formation of a new group that will try to take advantage of the success of the ‘values voter' in last week's election. The high-profile Virginia pastor was the driving force behind the formation of the ‘Moral Majority’ in the late 1970s.

The movement was largely credited with helping get Ronald Reagan into the White House, and for increasing the profile of conservative Christianity in the nation's capital. Now, in the wake of the decisive victory for George Bush, Falwell has announced he is starting a new group called "The Faith and Values Coalition" (TFVC), which he sees as the spearhead of an "evangelical revolution." It has several missions: to see that court vacancies are filled with pro-life conservatives' to support a constitutional amendment banning same-sex "marriages"; and to elect another "George Bush-type" conservative in 2008. "One of our primary commitments is to help make President Bush's second term the most successful in American history," Falwell stated. The 71-year-old Virginia pastor calls the effort "an investment in America, in our children, and in our children's children," and is calling on concerned Americans to join him in the task of "bringing this nation back to the moral values of faith and family on which it was founded."

Lahore, December 2nd, 2004 (ACPress.net).  
Pakistan remains firmly on the list of countries where persecution of Christians is widespread and goes largely unchecked. Pastors are kidnapped and tortured, the murder of Christians is poorly investigated, and Christian children are kidnapped and brought up as Muslims.

Yousaf Masih, 33, a Protestant pastor from Sindh, is recovering slowly after being kidnapped, drugged and severely beaten. He was attacked on his way home from church. His Muslim attackers said he should stop praying for Muslims. After 2 days, he was dumped semi-conscious out of a lorry about 600 miles from his home. He is the second Protestant pastor to be attacked in the last 4 months in Pakistan.

Two years after seven Christians were shot dead at a Christian welfare agency in Karachi, the police are no nearer finding a suspect. Indeed, evidence points to police complicity, even direct involvement, in the crime. The two Christians who survived the attack fared little better: one remains partially paralysed, while the other is in hiding after being tortured for 27 days by the police as part of the investigation. Three separate sources who have studied the case closely suggest that the secret police were behind the massacre.

A Muslim father, Abdul Ghaffar, kidnapped two children from their Christian mother in September. Joshua, 5, and Miriam, 3, were smuggled out of a court in Lahore minutes before Ghaffar was due to begin a supervised 2-hour visit to the children. Seven years ago, a 17-year-old girl, the mother of the children, Maria Samar John, was kidnapped and forcibly married to Ghaffar. For two-and-a-half years she lived as a virtual slave in his house, shut in and beaten by him and his mother for refusing to recite Islamic prayers. She had one child and was pregnant with the second when she managed to escape her captors. She has been living in a secure shelter since December 2000, and obtained a legal divorce in February 2003. She is now obviously very sad and concerned for the fate of her two children.

Abidjan, December 2nd, 2004 (ACPress.net).  
Recent unrest in Ivory Coast with much of the north of the country in rebel hands and reprisals against westerners for the destruction of the country’s air force by French forces are having a serious effect on Christian work there.

Laurent Gbagbo, Ivory Coast’s president, decided to crush the rebellion which has occupied half of the territory for the past few months. In doing this, he has involved the international community. This has in turn excited many in the country to express their anger against western people, in particular French citizens. Paul N’Goran, pastor of a church in Gagnoa (about 250 miles from the capital), is trying to sell French books in a depressed economy. He is also involved in recording the radio broadcast Échos de la Vérité (Echoes of Truth). Another section of his activities is the correction of the lessons sent in by the students of the Preachers Correspondence Course organised by Europress (the French language work of Evangelical Press) which has some operations in the Ivory Coast.

N’Goran and other believers in Gagnoa have not been affected directly by the riots and lootings going on and reported by the media. Though there were shootings in Gagnoa’s town centre recently, and though the church preferred not to meet last Sunday, the situation is not yet dangerous. Yet prayer is needed for these brethren. It is not easy to be in such an unstable situation. It is also certain that the situation is bound to worsen and many envisage a full scale civil war. Already many foreigners have left the country. Though the ‘Christian/Muslim’ divide is not the core of the problem, it is certainly one ingredient, and that is bound to affect believers.

N’Goran does not envisage relocating at present, mainly because of the local church, but it may come to the point where he will have to, and this is never easy. Gospel work is hindered because travelling is virtually impossible.

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