Grahams

A military marriage is difficult to begin with, but having a spouse come home wounded from active duty adds incomprehensible strain. Operation Heal Our Patriots, a ministry of the Franklin-Graham-led Samaritan's Purse, will be the first program in the country to offer support for couples in such marriages.

The marriage enrichment program, featuring weeklong retreats to a remote, refurbished fishing camp in Alaska, begins next month with its first set of ten couples, each having a spouse with battle injuries – either visible or invisible.

"It's important that we are doing this now when the nation starts to focus on the winding down of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. These injuries that people are left with, whether they are visible injuries or the invisible injuries such as the PTSD or post-traumatic brain injury, these are going to continue for a long time," retired Marines Brigadier General Jim Walker told The Christian Post. more >>

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association is recruiting churches across Canada to train some of their members in evangelism as preparation for next year's launch of its "My Hope" telecast.

The Canada telecast of BGEA's "My Hope," which involves friends sharing Jesus with friends with the help of broadcasts and videos, is being planned for November 2013, Calgary Herald reported.

With the goal of saturating every country in the world with the Good News of Jesus Christ, this relationship-based ministry has reached 57 countries and about 10 million people have said they have established a personal relationship with Christ, according to the ministry website. more >>

An enthusiastic welcome was given to evangelist Franklin Graham by Ghana President John Evans Atta Mills on the first night of a two-night Billy Graham Evangelistic Association event held at a stadium in Accra.

Mills, along with Ghana's First Lady, made an appearance at the "Ghana Jesus Festival" last Saturday night, BGEA and the country's news services reported.

"We need the Word of God," said Mills, an outspoken Christian, who recently declared a nationwide week of thanksgiving and fasting. "It is my hope and prayer that the message [Franklin Graham] gives us will fall on fertile soil." more >>

While the still skeptical secular media chose to describe Chuck Colson as a "mastermind of dirty tricks" in obituary columns, Christian leaders focused on his life and work after his transformation and remembered him as a great friend, mentor, apologist and witness for Christ.

"I'm saddened by Chuck Colson's passing yet rejoicing that he is now in the presence of the Lord he loves so much," Lee Strobel, author and Christian apologist, told The Christian Post.

"Chuck once asked me to succeed him as head of Prison Fellowship, but I knew I could never fill his shoes," Strobel recalled. "The world has lost a passionate, brilliant, persuasive and humble witness for Christ. Those of us who remain should redouble our efforts to define and defend the truth of Christianity to an often hostile and skeptical world, as Chuck urged us so often to do," Strobel said after Colson's death Saturday. more >>

Nearly 10,000 people came to hear evangelist Will Graham speak at two consecutive weekend outreach events produced by The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in Texas.

The successful events, which began in the Red River area and concluded last weekend in Trinity Valley, had a combined total of 400 people coming forward to make decisions for Jesus Christ, according to BGEA.

Graham, the son of Samaritan's Purse president and CEO Franklin Graham, appears to have successfully and humbly accepted the torch passed down from his famous grandfather known for preaching before huge crowds at outdoor and indoor evangelistic events. more >>

Jim Elliot, one of five men who in 1956 were speared to death by Waorani Indians, is the most famous American missionary of the twentieth century. He and his colleagues longed to bring the gospel to this fierce and isolated Amazonian people.

His wife Elisabeth was taking care of their ten-month old daughter back at their mission station at the time. Jim and Elisabeth had met as students at Wheaton College. They were both Classical Greek majors and would study together in the east wing of Blanchard Hall. Their relationship deepened as Jim came more and more to rely on her to help him translate Thucydides.

Wheaton College was itself a kind of curious wonder in the mid-twentieth century. The other historic liberal arts colleges by then had mostly diluted or shed altogether their Christian identities. Wheaton, however, was fervently evangelical. Its students were on fire to make their lives count "for Christ and His Kingdom." There were many other Christian colleges with no less spiritual fervor, but they were almost all Bible schools. At Wheaton, one would study not only the Bible but also chemistry and anthropology, ancient history and the new physics. And one would learn to write well. more >>