Sixty members of a Chinese church have submitted applications for asylum in Bangkok, after being denied refuge in South Korea. They had fled the communist regime to escape religious persecution. Pastor Pan’s church has been on the run for years. He said the persecution is growing worse. The group remains stateless, jobless, and homeless, but not without faith. ‘We're thinking of our children's future. We refuse to put their education in the hands of the Communist Party, to give them an atheist education, and to turn their backs on God. So we are willing to pay this price to flee China to allow them to keep going to church school and to know God. Although we don't know what we will encounter in the future, what our God gives us is the best. He will lead us through these issues; God always has the best plan and arrangement.’

‘Those who believed Peter were baptised and added to the church - about 3,000 in all’ (Acts 2:41). This passage reminds us that the early Church grew rapidly during a time of persecution. It is happening again in Laos. Small house churches are scattered throughout the country, and believers in Laos face continual persecution. Converts to Christianity are considered betrayers to their community’s Buddhist-Animist traditions. Unregistered house churches are illegal. Communist authorities intensely monitor Christians. Yet, there is reason for hope. While only 2.5% of the 7.4 million population are evangelical, the yearly growth rate of the Church is 6.8%. Most of the house churches in Laos are led by faithful but untrained leaders, but this is not a limitation for a sovereign God. Pray protection over house church leaders who are targets of persecution; pray for believers to safely proclaim the Gospel to their neighbours and persevere with grace.

Over a hundred Armenian soldiers are dead after border clashes with Azerbaijan ,which lost fifty of its troops in the worst fighting since 2020. Armenia appealed to world leaders for help after Azerbaijan began advancing on its territory. The conflict between the former Soviet republics is over the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is Azerbaijani territory but populated with ethnic Armenians. Azerbaijan states that ethnic Armenians are illegally occupying its land. 30,000 people died in a 1991 conflict following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and ethnic Armenian separatists broke away from Azerbaijan. The six-week war in 2020 killed 6,500 people and ended with a Russian-brokered truce; Armenia cedied swaths of territory it had controlled for decades. Armenians are mostly Christian with military ties to Russia, while Azerbaijan is a Muslim country with ties to Turkey. On 14 September Armenia said a truce had been agreed but there was no confirmation from Azerbaijan. See

A young man who accepted Jesus in 2018 was arrested by militias and detained several times during recent years. They tried to force him to recant his faith. There is no rule of law; there are no official law-enforcement agencies. Libya has no law against apostasy, so converts are tried for treason. However, a court based its decision on a law enacted by the elected legislative body between 2012 and 2014 ,which states that an apostate from Islam must be executed if they do not recant. That law and others were cancelled by the current Tobruk-based parliament, elected in 2014. However, as part of a continuing power struggle, the Tripoli supreme court declared the Tobruk-based parliament illegal, allowing courts freedom to still apply the cancelled laws. The accused did not have legal representation during the proceedings.