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Heather Mercer, 24, and Dayna Curry, 29, were arrested August 3 for allegedly trying to convert a Muslim family to Christianity. If convicted, they could face the death penalty. The women were working for Shelter Now, a German Christian relief agency. Twenty-two other Shelter workers, including 16 Afghans, also were arrested (ct, Oct. 1, p. 26). In his September 20 address to the nation before a joint session of Congress, President Bush demanded that the "unjustly imprisoned" foreign nationals be released.

While studying at Baylor University, Curry and Mercer were part of a college ministry at Highland Baptist Church in Waco, Texas. When Highland launched Antioch Community Church in Waco as a church plant in 1999, the women became members. Before joining Shelter Now, Curry was a social worker with the Waco Independent School District. Mercer was a leader in the church's college ministry. Mercer has been in Afghanistan since March. Curry had served in the country from August 1999 until last January. In mid-March she began another one- or two-year term.

Mercer's mother, Deborah Oddy, has told reporters that she urged her daughter not to go to Afghanistan.

Mercer's younger sister, Hannah, died after two painful back operations. "The loss was traumatic for our entire family," Oddy told ct. "I don't think Heather received the counseling she needed prior to her departure for Kabul, nor do I think she had enough time to process her terrible loss. This left her entering. … a very harsh country in an already weakened emotional state.

"She has begun to show physical symptoms: vomiting, sobbing, inability to sleep," Oddy says.

The Afghan Foreign Ministry allowed a physician to examine Mercer on October 4. Baptist Press reports that all eight foreign defendants were suffering from stomach ailments.

"She is one frightened young lady," Oddy says. "Who could blame her after 63 days of captivity, not knowing what her future holds, and nightly she hears bombs and rocketing on the outskirts of Kabul? She is the youngest of all the detainees and has spent the least amount of time in Afghanistan."

Curry's mother, Nancy Cassell, says she saw Curry five times in Kabul, including once in the courtroom. She says that while her daughter was in a good emotional state, she had hurt her ribs in a fall and was experiencing complications from asthma. Cassell says her daughter and some of the other aid workers did not know the official charges against them or the potential penalties.

Seibert, who visited the women in Afghanistan last summer, says the church has been in regular contact with them through their Pakistani attorney, Atif Ali Khan. Messages of prayer support are pouring in from Christians in Egypt, Germany, Australia, and Japan. The Protestant International Church in Islamabad, Pakistan, also has prayed for the eight.

Citing the Acts 12 story of an angel leading the apostle Peter out of prison, Seibert asks Christians to continue to hope and pray. "Our hope is not in the [Islamic legal] process, but in gathering enough prayer so that what happened in the Book of Acts can be realized," he says.

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November 12 2001, Vol. 45, No. 14