A Haitian woman praises God during a weeknight worship service at Restoration Baptist Church in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, that IMB missionary Carlos Llambes helped start. Through a church-planting institute he began five years ago, Haitian and Dominican Baptists in the island nation have started nearly 100 new churches, many of them Haitian. (IMB photo by Wilson Hunter)

HEART OF WORSHIP

In a border town of Turkey, a Syrian family who fled from the civil war struggles to find food and shelter. The mother, Ghufran (name changed), looks at the dying bird her children have brought in and says, “We’ve become like this bird here, and the bird is better than us. We are living, but we are not living, because we are living like death.” (IMB photo by Jedediah Smith)

HELL ON EARTH

A young man gives a look of indifference at a street corner bar in the northern Vietnam city of Hanoi. (IMB photo by 
Chloe Lewis)

SPOTLIGHT ON VIETNAM

A Jola woman in West Africa wears a traditional headdress meant to invoke the spirits. During a traditional ceremony, an unidentified woman will wear the headdress, along with a cloth covering her face. Though she is unknown to the villagers, when she is wearing the headdress and carrying the idols, she is believed to be channeling the spirits. (IMB photo by JoAnn Bradberry)

AFRICAN TRADITIONS

Charity Malinao’s father, Antonio, sits in the rubble of his family home that was destroyed by Typhoon Haiyan as IMB missionary Kim Cruse comforts Charity. Antonio saved one cooking pot from his home in the Philippines; everything else was destroyed. (IMB photo by JoAnn Bradberry)

TYPHOON AFTERMATH

Pain. Loss. Fear. Uncertainty. All of these are captured in this image of a young woman as she visited one of the makeshift memorials to the fallen on Kiev’s Independence Square. Ukrainians have been reminded that independence comes at a high price and have come together on their knees as a nation called to prayer. (IMB photo by Marc Ira Hooks)

MOURNING AND BROKEN

A street corner prayer meeting in Ukraine’s eastern town of Donetsk. (IMB photo by Charles Braddix)

CALL TO PRAYER

Richard Buan eats his dinner by candlelight outside the tomb where he sleeps with his family in Cebu, Philippines. Baun’s family home was destroyed in Typhoon Haiyan. His family now sleeps in open tombs, where they are protected from the elements, but still fear evil spirits and thieves. Ninety percent of the homes in their village were destroyed in Typhoon Haiyan, and most people are still living in tents and other temporary structures. (IMB photo by JoAnn Bradberry)

TEMPORARY SHELTER

This young Syrian girl desires to be a journalist, even as many of her fellow countrymen and women who are journalists are risking their lives to tell the stories of the ongoing conflict. (IMB photo by Joseph Rose)

HOPES AND DREAMS

On a bus four hours east of Havana, Cuba, two women banter about the weather, grandchildren and mutual friends. It’s early morning as the “Road to Victory” bus filled with Cuban Baptist church planters is already miles down the road.
They embark on a five-hour drive throughout the Cuban countryside on Saturdays to share the gospel in small towns and villages where there is little or no gospel witness. (IMB photo by Will Stuart)

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