In March 1994 Ray Rising disappeared into the Colombian jungle. FARC (Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia) had abducted the Wycliffe missionary and radio technician. For the next 810 days, hard men with machine guns in their hands and murder in their hearts held him captive, constantly moving from camp to camp, always watching.

When the guerrillas released Rising in June 1996, he thought his ordeal was finally over. But Rising’s battle had only just begun.

In a residential neighborhood in Hanoi, Vietnam, church leaders of the Dao ethnic group gather in a newly built classroom to learn about Christian leadership.

Afterward they stream downstairs to a communal kitchen where attendees of a women’s training program are eating lunch, the room filled with sounds of Vietnamese and the Dao’s local dialect.

Up on a hill above the Tamsui River, past the renovated Fort San Domingo, stands Aletheia University, a quiet campus filled with leafy trees, an imposing neo-Gothic church with a 32-foot-tall pipe organ, and two pointed arches at its entrance. Walk through the arches, follow a winding stone path in a manicured garden, and cross a bridge over a koi pond, and you’ll reach a red brick schoolhouse, a blend of Western and Eastern styles of architecture. 

A Michigan judge last week ruled that a former Baptist missionary doctor accused of sexually abusing more than 20 minors in Bangladesh will not stand trial. Ottawa County Circuit Court Judge Jon Hulsing said Donn Ketcham, 87, is incompetent to stand trial, citing dementia and Parkinson’s disease, according to WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Angie Mercer wondered if she was the only person freaking out in the hospital room. The others—an international student from China, his pregnant wife, and his mother—wore stoic expressions. The mother-to-be was deep in labor, yet the doctor had not arrived, and the understaffed nurses were busy elsewhere.

The frankness of the Middle Eastern pastors is remarkable. They are learning, growing, reconciling, and repenting as their challenges deepen. The main reason? They can’t afford not to.

The assaults of the Syrian war—which enters its eighth year this month—and the ravages of Islamic State opened neighboring countries and their churches to new fears, new threats, and throngs of refugees at their doors.

I used to think that nothing brought me more delight than to hear someone respond to a story or column in WORLD by saying quite simply, “I didn’t know that.” Now I know I was much too easily satisfied. Real gratification comes, I’ve discovered, when someone reads, reflects, agrees—and then, as a result, changes his or her behavior in a significant manner.