SBC Life Articles by Kristen Hiller

MEXICO CITY (BP)--Israel leans back against a cast-iron gate on the streets of Mexico City's Tepito barrio. With arms crossed in front of his chest and head bowed in prayer, he shifts his weight, then wipes a tear from his eye.       Mauricio Rojas knows the feeling. He was once in Israel's shoes.       The drug addictions that enslave Israel once trapped Mauricio. Standing at Israel's side, Mauricio gives the young man his address and tells him to stop by whenever he wants.       "Christ can do anything," Mauricio says. "He got me out of the trash, and He can do the same for you."       In Mexico City, a city of 28 million, Israel is one of countless young people battling drugs in a barrio with rampant drug trafficking, prostitution and a thriving black market. The presence of evil-spirit worship and animistic cults makes the darkness of barrios such as Tepito seem oppressive.       While other missionaries concentrate on areas outside the city proper, William and Orpha Ortega are the only International Mission Board missionaries among an estimated 9 million people living in Mexico City's inner city. The task before them and believers like Mauricio is great.       With five inner-city missionary opportunities available in Mexico City alone, Tom Benson*, a regional strategy associate for the IMB, estimates 20 job requests have yet to be filled in urban centers across the country.       "We have to go where the people are," Tom says. "We have entire hidden cities within cities that are yet to have a serious Gospel witness."       For the Ortegas, the spiritual darkness of Tepito can be overwhelming, but it's also the primary reason they chose to serve here.

BALTI, Moldova (BP)--The blue hues of dusk reflect off the apartment walls where believers gather to pray. On bended knees, they form a semicircle around the coffee table, voicing the names of former neighbors who now live hours, and in some cases, days away.       But those positioned around the small table in Balti, Moldova, share a common church home with their former neighbors, no matter where they have settled. Since 1987, Bethany Baptist Church has sent nearly 80 members of its congregation to serve as missionaries throughout Moldova, Ukraine and Russia.       "There is a very big need [for the Gospel] in other parts of the former Soviet Union," says Eugeni Munteanu, pastor of prayer at Bethany. "So the brothers here left their houses and their apartments to go over there to the desert."

KIEV, Ukraine (BP)--As an evening worship service begins at Central Baptist Church in Kiev, Ukraine, more than 25 young people crowd into a basement room to pray for the contemporary youth service to follow. Among the group is youth worker Vladimir Goloschapov from Transfiguration Baptist Church in Donetsk, Ukraine.       "Young people are the future," Goloschapov says. "The kind of young people we have in our church today will determine what kind of church we have tomorrow."

PAVLODAR, Kazakhstan (BP)--Roman Gopanchuk gestures with his left hand and leans forward to explain a Scripture passage to his home Bible study group in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan.       Just outside the living room door, Gopanchuk's 8-year-old son Timofey plays with Russian-speaking children. After a year of repeated asthma attacks, Timofey can finally breathe freely. And with their son's health restored, so can Roman and his wife Viktoria.

RICHMOND, Va. (BP)--At 8 p.m. on Sept. 6, a group of Nicaraguan believers and Southern Baptist volunteers from Florida and Georgia accompanied International Mission Board missionary Jim Palmer to a cemetery in Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, to bury the bodies of Hurricane Felix's latest victims.

ICA, Peru (BP)--It wasn't the first time Ester Muñoz pulled her invalid grandfather from his home in an attempt to save his life.       When flooding and landslides damaged thousands of homes in southern Peru in 1998, Muñoz carried Carlos Cajo Cortez to safety.

PISCO, Peru (BP)--The tremor lasts only a moment, but Amparo Guerra can't mistake the familiar feel of the earth moving in waves beneath her feet.       Her forehead wrinkles in panic as she screams, "Get away from the building!" and herds her sons, Aldais, 12, and Jeanpeer, 11, away from the brick wall in Pisco, Peru.       Guerra, her husband and two sons now sleep in a tent on the street. They're still wearing the clothes they wore Aug. 15 when an 8.0-magnitude earthquake destroyed their rented apartment in Pisco.       The tremors that jolt residents of Pisco two to three times a day have left many paralyzed with fear.

LIMA, Peru (BP)--A Baptist disaster assessment team in Peru encountered the kind of lawlessness reported in areas hardest hit by the 8.0 earthquake Aug. 15 that has claimed more than 500 lives.

LIMA, Peru (BP)--Missionaries Pam and Kevin Shearer were sitting down to dinner with their daughter when the Aug. 15 earthquake struck Lima, Peru, and nearby regions.

RICHMOND, Va. (BP)–Emeritus missionary Harry Cecil McConnell died March 2 at Shands Hospital in Jacksonville, Fla., after more than 40 years of service on the mission field as a pastor, church planter, professor and president of the Baptist Theological Seminary in Chile. He was 93. Born April 5, 1913, in Monroe County, Ohio, McConnell’s dedication […]