Giggle Doctors and healthcare
Theodora Giggle Doctors are professional performers, highly trained to work in hospitals and hospice environments with children with disabilities. They are actors, entertainers, magicians, musicians and singers. Play in hospital gives children the chance to forget about what they are going through and makes situations that could be scary and worrying more fun, creating happy memories. Play stops children getting bored and takes their mind away from what is going on around them. The Giggle Doctors always bring joy and laughter not only to the children but also to parents and hospital staff. During their visits they are able to make children relax and feel happy, taking their mind away from the hospital environment they are in and creating smiles which parents treasure.
Zen meditation group to meet no longer at York Minster
A Zen group will no longer be holding their hour-and-a-half silent meditation sessions at the Old Palace in the Cathedral grounds, due to complaints that it is incompatible with Christianity. The Wild Goose Sangha group sessions were run by Canon Chris Collingwood, an Anglican priest who is also a Zen teacher, and referred to as the Sensei within the meditation sessions. Zen meditation roots are in Buddhism and Canon Collingwood describes himself as ‘religiously bilingual’ and said Zen poses fewer problems than other non-Christian customs because it doesn’t claim to be a system of doctrine or belief. Concerns were raised three years ago about the compatibility of Zen with Christianity and finally cancelled after the Rt Rev Dr Jonathan Frost, the dean of York Minster, ended the Minster’s association with the group.
100 persecuted Christians rescued since March
On 31 May 2006 Dwura, an Iraqi Christian housewife, saw her brother-in-law gunned down by terrorists who asked him for his identity card and when they saw that he was a Christian he was shot in the head and chest. ‘From then onwards we lived in fear’, she said. The family stayed in the plains of Nineveh, where Christians have lived for nearly two millennia. But things got worse and they fled for their lives with tens of thousands of other Christians. Now families can return but their homes are destroyed, there is nothing there. Dwura and her husband wanted to start a new life where they could live freely as Christians. With visas from the Australian government and financial help from Barnabas Fund, they flew to Australia a few days ago. Over 100 similar air tickets have been issued since March.
Algeria: massive Church growth
The world’s largest Arab country (95% Muslim), once home to the Phoenicians, Romans, Ottomans, and French is now home to a growing number of Christians, despite significant persecution. Believers face intolerable pressures from family and neighbours militating against any open expression of Christianity, along with anti-conversion and blasphemy laws. Yet in God’s economy, as much as Satan attempts to squeeze the church, the faster it grows. In 2008 there were 10,000 Christians - by 2015, it was 380,000. It could now be approaching 500,000. A healthy portion of the growth is attributed to Christian satellite programming into North African countries. Joshua Project, tracking church growth, confirms that there are now 600,000+ professing Algerian Christians. So many are coming to Christ that there are regular baptism services for 60 to 100 new believers and one church has already planted 14 daughter churches.
