Never did I imagine the first time I’m in Kenya, it would be to write about the Chinese.

Kenya has about 50,000 Chinese ppl living in the country, the majority of them short-term migrants working for Chinese companies under the “One Belt, One Road” initiative. Here I am in Nairobi’s Chinatown. Pretty much all the customers are Chinese, but the ppl serving them tea and grilling their meat skewers are mostly Kenyans.

A🧵 for people who want to donate to churches serving Ukrainian refugees & sending aid to 🇺🇦:

This is a list only of places/ppl I’ve personally visited during my trip to Poland. So it’s not comprehensive, but they are churches whose work I’ve seen w/ my own eyes. 1. The Pentecostal Church for Ukraine in Warsaw

As a church for Ukrainian immigrants in Warsaw, this church is intimately connected to churches throughout Ukraine & the Ukrainian diaspora. Since day 1 of war, this church has helped >20,000 refugees find housing/shelter.

Something to keep of note is how small the evangelical population in Poland is. Only about 0.2% of the pop. in Poland identify as evangelical— less than 100,000 in the entire country.

That's what makes the scale of the refugee ministry here so amazing. Read🧵 below.

https://twitter.com/SophiaLeeHyun/status/1506258290354921477

Most evangelical churches in Poland are small by American standards. No megachurches here.

I’m seeing a massive, collaborative effort to help 🇺🇦 refugees among churches that mostly have a congregation of abt 70-80, many less. This is no megachurch, big NGO-status operation.

The last 5 days, I’ve traveled through Warsaw & Krakow & some smaller border towns in Poland, and the response of churches all across 🇵🇱 to 🇺🇦 is, in an inadequate word, incredible.

Every pastor I’ve met tells me they don’t know of any church that’s not involved in some way. To put things in perspective: There are now more than 2M Ukrainian refugees in Poland, out of the 3.3M that have fled Ukraine so far.

The entire population of 🇵🇱 is <38M. That’s including about 1.5M Ukrainians already living here as migrants/immigrants.

A Polish pastor of a church in Krakow sent me this pic of the first service he held for Ukrainian refugees in Krakow. He was exhausted after days of receiving refugees, and also in trepidation abt preaching to a shell-shocked group: “Oh Lord. What do I say? What can I say?” For these displaced Ukrainians, this service was the first worship space since the war in which they can express their faith. So the pastor went w/ that. His sermon was simple: “We don’t understand why this is happening. But God is good. He is always good, He doesn’t change.”

For a force that’s supposedly “liberating” the Ukrainians, there are countless stories of atrocities against civilians by Russian military.

Here’s Valentina, at a church in Lublin (Poland) that’s hosting refugees, holding back tears as she lifts a shirt riddled w bullet holes. A family w young kids & a 80-y-o grandma were fleeing by foot for Poland, when Russian forces fired on them. As they blasted them w bullets, the family dashed across the fields, shielding themselves w/ their luggage. Every single item in their luggage was ruined by bullet holes.

Interviewed a pastor of a small Baptist church in Chelm, Poland, 30 mins from Ukrainian border. They were one of first places to open up doors to Ukrainian refugees.

1st day, 20 showed up— women, kids, babies, ppl w disabilities.
2nd day: 120
3rd day: 200
And they keep coming. This church has been hosting more than 200 refugees a day since Russia invaded Ukraine.

It’s a church of 80 members w/ 0 full-time staff. The pastor & wife take care of 11 foster kids, 3 w/ Down syndrome. And now their church is one of 2 transit centers for refugees in Chelm.

Well, this is not news anymore, but this is my last week at WORLD Magazine after nine years on staff. I turned in my notice of resignation on Oct 27.

Here’s my final column for WORLD, bidding farewell to readers: wng.org/articles/thank… I wanted to announce my resignation on my own terms & timing, but such is life— many things were out of my control.

If my reasons for leaving seem vague, that’s intentional. At such a heavy time, when so many ppl are affected, I believe the less said, the fewer regrets.

“We are a family, & at times we seem incredibly dysfunctional. But we love each other,” says @EdLitton to press. Says he feels God has called him to “help us remember again why we’re a family, and what the focus & objective is...to get the good news to as many people.” #SBC21 Says he wants to build bridges and not walls. Litton has run for president on a campaign focused on unity & healing and being Great Commission Baptists. He won 52% of votes in a run off.

#SBC21 THREAD: (skip if you’re sick of tweets about SBC)

So from what I've heard from messengers here at #SBC21, Critical Race Theory IS a big issue. But for lots of diff reasons. One black pastor told me CRT is the "#1 issue" for him. Why? "Ask 100 ppl what CRT is, you'll get 100 diff answers." He says “many ppl want to talk, but no one wants to listen. If someone like @tomascol listened to someone who’s diff from them, they’ll better understand.”

Protesters and National Guard face off. Protesters asking them to march with them. Wow

Someone tagged this bench and another protestor, Ricky Woznichak, yelled are him: “Stop vandalizing.” He told me he’s upset because “this is not a good look. I don’t want the wrong ppl to get blamed.” He was at the protest in Fairfax yesterday, got shot rubber bullets by cops. “If you’re a person of color! To the middle! If you’re white! Go to the edges!”

Omg. It’s happening. The guy is ok. He got a scrape on his ankle and is in shock.

I'm at the San Diego immigration court right now, sitting in for a whole afternoon of "Master Calendar Hearings." Basically, here is where the gov tries to remove an immigrant from the U.S. Most of the defendants are asylum seekers living in Mexico via "Remain in Mexico" policy. I'm visiting 3 courtrooms today. Each judge has about 3 dozen cases. I looked at the case sheets, and out of abt 100 ppl showing up for their hearings, only 5 have attorneys. W/o legal representation, less than 5% of asylum seekers have a chance of winning their case.