Categories: christianity
Date: 25 February 2009 22:11:06
as it is known in Germany is today (or what's left of it in my time zone).
Lent has crept up on me unawares this year (this may have something to do with the fact that I only got round to taking down my Christmas lights last Friday). Fortunately, there are those more organised than I, and a charity I support has sent a booklet with details of countries to pray for where Christians are not free to worship (or if officially they are free to do so, they face fierce opposition in reality from their government and/or other religions).
I'm not sure if I'm disciplined enough to blog every day for the next 50 but I'll start with today's country and see how it goes (you may get several countries together some days).
Afghanistan:
(And as this is really a blog about language, I'll look up some extra info for you!)
Official languages: Dari, Pushtu, Uzbek, Turkmen.
Had several Christian dioceses before the 7th century but now approximately only 0.02% of the 24 million population is Christian. (I just used my calculator: that's about 4,800 people in the whole country). There are no church buildings of any sort - the only ones (chapels, I suppose) are within foreign embassies. The country has suffered occupation, war and violence for the past 35 years.