Bengali radio plants three new churches Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Bengali, South Asia Tushar Manna, a World Mission Broadcast radio producer and coordinator, together with his staff, produced 52 episodes focusing on the Gospel in 2010.

The program is called Swarger Shidi, meaning "Ladder to Heaven." The 15-minute program is aired weekly through Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation and consists of music and a brief message promoting the gospel.

The audience is mainly Bengali-speaking people in South Asia, and follow-up is done by writing letters and making telephone calls and personal visits. The team also organized six meetings for 300 of their listeners in 2010. Three new churches were planted after listeners met.

"Radio ministry is going on well," Manna said. "These days we are emphasizing our follow-up visits, interaction with the listeners, listener get-togethers, and starting house churches. We conducted six follow-up meetings for the listeners on the Kochbihar, Jalpaiguri, Dinajpur, and Malda districts.

"They were excited to see us coming from the radio station and to be able to talk with us. I had good interaction with many of them. They like both our music and the speech. They have requested me to broadcast the radio program every day."

Manna and his staff's future plans are to produce programs in five additional languages: Nepali, Hindi, Oriya, Asamese, and Meitei to cover the majority of unreached people in South Asia

Nazarenes enter two new Eurasia areas Eurasia Region Monday, April 13, 2009

When the Church of the Nazarene's General Board met in February, it chose to receive Norway and Moldova as two new areas of work in Eurasia. 

"[This] is a response to something that's part of the Nazarene DNA," said Eurasia Regional Director Gustavo Crocker. "People go to a new location and they ask, 'Is there a Nazarene church here?' If not, they start one."

Take Jorge Rocha as an example. When he moved to Norway from Cape Verde and got a job at the South African embassy in Oslo. Jorge began to ask visitors to the embassy if they belonged to a local church. Those that didn't were invited to join his home church, which grew from 15 people to almost 50 in four years.

The Portuguese congregation was organized with 23 charter members in December 2006 as part of the Scandinavia District.

Newlyweds Irina and Sergey Talalay have begun their marriage as volunteer church planters on the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Field.

Married in 2007, the Talalays are already responding to a call to plant the first Nazarene churches in Moldova.

In 2005, Sergey began drug and AIDS prevention, and abstinence training in local schools. He also conducted outpatient rehab courses for those who had already gone through the program and their family members.

Sergey, is also hoping to open an outpatient clinic for drug addicts next.