HUNGARY
Government Okays Abstinence Pitch
More than 150 Hungarian doctors and educators met in Budapest recently for a symposium on what is for this country a revolutionary approach to AIDS prevention: abstinence-based sex education.
“Using a condom is not the only answer to preventing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases,” Dick Day, coauthor with Josh McDowell of Why Wait?, told attenders. “You can change behavior.”
The symposium was sponsored by the Ministry of Health but coordinated by Campus Crusade for Christ in Hungary. Last year Crusade’s Gábor Grész proposed the idea of an abstinence-based AIDS-prevention program to Hungary’s top official for AIDS-related issues, Dénes Bánhegyi. “He responded to my proposal in 24 hours,” Grész says.
During the symposium, doctors and educators attended lectures and discussions on ethics, and morals-based sex education in schools. Organizers said they were given considerable freedom to incorporate Christian principles, and those discussions were met with enthusiastic, positive responses.
Now, with a grant of $20,000 from the Ministry of Health, Crusade will develop a curriculum based on Christian principles for use in Hungary’s schools.
By Thomas S. Giles in Budapest.
News Briefs
♦ Peruvian lay evangelist Juan Mallea, 35, has been released from prison after being held for nearly a year in connection with a crime later shown to have been perpetrated by Peru’s military (CT, April 25, 1994, p. 46). That nation’s supreme court in April upheld a lower court’s ruling that there were no grounds against Ma Ilea for a trial.
♦ Aid to the Church in Need, a Catholic charity based in Germany, is trying to raise $6 million to assist about 6,000 Russian Orthodox priests living in poverty in Russia. The goal is to provide about $1,000 to each priest. Many must spend their time working at other jobs and have no time for their ministry beyond saying the liturgy.
♦ Greater Europe Mission (GEM) will open its first Bible college in the former Soviet Union in September. The school, in Zaporozhye in eastern Ukraine, will draw students from Baptist churches throughout the Zaporozhye region and will feature as professors North American pastors and educators and GEM missionaries.
♦ James Mininger has been appointed president of Lithuania Christian College in Klaipeda, Lithuania. Mininger, currently academic dean of Hesston College in Hesston, Kansas, will assume his duties July 1, 1995.
♦ The Kisi language New Testament was dedicated during a three-hour service Palm Sunday in Monrovia, Liberia. Kisi is the language of the Kisi tribal area in northern Liberia. The translation was the result of a partnership between Lutheran Bible Translators and the Kisi Translation and Literacy Committee, a group of Kisi pastors and church leaders.
♦ David Adeney, 82, missionary to China and minister to students, died May 13 in Berkeley, California. Adeney’s ministry spanned 60 years and he began with his missionary work as a church planter in China before World War II with the China Inland Mission. He also formerly headed the missions department for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.
CAMBODIA
Khmer Rouge Releases American
Melissa Himes, a Food for the Hungry worker taken captive by Cambodian rebels March 30 (CT, May 16, 1994, p. 48), was released unharmed May 11. Himes, 24, of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, returned to the United States a few days later. Two Cambodian Food for the Hungry staff members were also freed.
Though Himes’s captors had demanded cash, vehicles, a well-drilling rig, and other material, they eventually settled for two truckloads of humanitarian aid.
Himes suffered no ill effects from the experience and, in fact, plans to return to Cambodia in the near future. “This experience has actually increased my desire to work in Cambodia,” Himes says. “It has shown me more clearly the problems that are there.”
