CHRISTIAN MILKMAN BRUTALLY MURDERED IN PAKISTAN BY THREE MUSLIM MEN

Imagine with me that you were doing a job you were hired for and when you were expected to get paid, that your employer told you to wait another month for your wages. Understandably, that would be upsetting. And I'm not sure exactly how these events took place, but it appears this happened to a Christian milkman in Pakistan.
It is being reported that the Christian man was desperate to support his family and needed the money. So he confronted his Muslim employers and they murdered him. Here's part of what is being reported:
Desperate to support his family, Ashraf returned on February 1 and demanded his wages. This enraged the three Muslim men, who said, "You are Esai [a derogatory term for Christians] and you demanded your pay from Muslims, what courage you have. We will finish you right now. Then go to your Esa [Christ], He will give you everything." After killing Ashraf, the three men fled.
We know that Ashraf (the Christian) had a family that he left behind. Please take a moment today to pray for his family and also those Muslims that murdered him.

BILLY GRAHAM ASSOCIATION FEELING THE GLOBAL ECONOMY MELTDOWN; PLANNING FOR 10% LAYOFFS

CHARLOTTE – The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association will lay off 10 percent of its workforce, or 55 employees. Ken Barun Sr., vice president of communications and development at the Charlotte-based BGEA, said most of the cuts will come in areas such as grounds keeping and food service, important areas but not essential to the core mission of evangelism.
The layoffs will affect six employees at The Billy Graham Training Center at the Cove in Swannanoa.
Barun said about a year and a half ago BGEA President Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's son, “asked us to see how we could do a much more efficient job of proclaiming the word of Jesus Christ around the world.”
The layoffs are particularly painful because the employees are “family and friends,” Barun said. He noted that most of the jobs will be outsourced, and BGEA employees will have a good chance of working for those companies.
The laid-off employees will be given 30 days of notice with pay, plus a severance package based on years of service. They also will receive outplacement and spiritual counseling, Barun said.
Barun said probably 75-85 percent of the BGEA's funding comes from donations, which have remained flat this year. Barun said he expects donations to increase as people realize the BGEA is focusing even more intently on its main mission of evangelism.

CHRISTIANS MARK ASH WEDNESDAY WITH AGE-OLD RITUAL IN WESTERN CHRISTIAN CHURCHES

Western Christian churches today mark Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, the traditional 40-day period of fasting, prayer and penitence before Easter.
To observe the day, Roman Catholics, Episcopalians and Lutherans hold services during which the foreheads of the faithful are marked with the sign of the cross with ashes made from last year's Palm Sunday palms as a sign of repentence and reminder of mortality.
A clergy person or, in some cases, a lay person, applies the ashes with variations of the phrase: "Remember you are dust and unto dust you shall return."
The 40 days of Lent do not include Sundays. Easter falls on April 12 this year.
The fasting associated with Lent spawned pre-Lenten celebrations such as Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) and Carnivale as a last chance to eat, drink and be merry before the 40 days of self denial began.
Tradition holds that a Philadelphia staple -- the soft pretzel -- was created by a monk as a Lenten food at a time when the faithful abstained from meat and animal products, such as milk and eggs.
The Eastern Orthodox Church, which follows a different calendar, will mark the start of the Great Lent on what is called Clean Monday on March 2. Orthodox Easter is April 19.

MUSLIM YOUTHS WENT ON A RAMPAGE ATTACKING CHRISTIANS AND BURNING CHURCHES IN NIGERIA; THOUSANDS DISPLACED DUE TO RIOTS; PRAY FOR NIGERIA

BAUCHI, Nigeria— At least 4,500 people have been displaced by sectarian violence in the northern Nigerian city of Bauchi which left 11 dead and 100 hospitalised, police said Tuesday.
"About 4,500 people have been displaced and they have been camped at two army barracks in the city", Bauchi police commissioner Adanaya Tallman Gaya told AFP after rioting between Muslims and Christians began on Saturday.
"We have recorded 11 deaths and 100 casualties in the two-day violence and our men have succeeded in making 30 arrests in connection with the disturbance", Gaya said.
The city was calm but tense on Tuesday. Troops were deployed there and seven neighbourhoods affected by the violence were under dusk-to-dawn curfew.
"The curfew is still in force, it will only be lifted when normalcy is fully restored and anybody who defies it will certainly be apprehended and prosecuted", Gaya said.
Over 200 houses, six churches and three mosques were torched, according to Bauchi Red Cross secretary Adamu Abubakar.
"We have been providing food items to the displaced but our tent supplies have been exhausted and many of the displaced sleep in the open," Abubakar said at the Shadawanka barracks where 3,000 people were sheltered.
"I'm still apprehensive and afraid to go back to my house because the situation is still tense and I can't risk my life and that of my family," said Yohanna Moses who fled to the barracks from his home.
Muslim youths went on a rampage Saturday, attacking Christians and burning churches. They said their acts were reprisals for the burning of two mosques overnight in the state capital Bauchi.
Tensions have risen in Bauchi, a city of four million, since February 13 when Pentecostal Christians barricaded a pathway used by Muslims attending Friday prayers at a nearby mosque, residents said.
Bauchi suffered bloody sectarian strife in 2004 when Muslim-Christian violence in the town of Tafawa Balewa, some 100 kilometres (62 miles) away, spilled over to the city, and houses, mosques and churches were burnt.

MAN STABS HIS SON FOR WEARING A HAT IN CHURCH IN BALTIMORE

BALTIMORE — Police said a 58-year-old man stabbed his teenage son after he refused to take off his hat at church earlier in the day. The father and his 19-year-old son got into an argument on Sunday afternoon. That's when police said the father went to a car, got a knife and stabbed his son in the left buttock and fled.
The son was taken to University of Maryland Medical Center for treatment. The father's name was withheld pending his arrest.
Information from: The Baltimore Sun, http://www.baltimoresun.com