Welcome to the latest edition of TWR E-Snapshots! This edition includes:
- Christmas Around the World
- Year-End Challenge
- TWR's Oldest Listener
- Warriors of the Blue Veil
Christmas Around the World
 It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and not just in the United States! The holiday season is chock-full of traditions and excitement, and it’s celebrated differently around the world. December’s Web theme unwraps a few festive traditions from different parts of the globe. Learn about the distinctive Christmas traditions in India, Japan and Albania.
Be sure to check out the listener responses from TWR’s Christmas celebration in Albania. Also, have you ever wondered how many Christmas wreaths are in the White House? Discover this and other fun facts in Christmas by the Numbers. Visit our homepage at www.twr.org to find out more.
Year-End Challenge
 TWR has an exciting year-end giving opportunity. Some special friends of the ministry have provided us with a very generous gift of $200,000 to help us meet our end-of-the-year financial needs so that we can finish 2009 on solid financial footing.
With this gift comes a challenge to other friends and supporters to equal their contribution by December 31st, the end of our fiscal year. TWR needs to raise $790,000 this month to meet our regular budgeted needs for December and make up the ground we lost in previous months. There are new opportunities coming in 2010 that we have dreamed about and prayed about for a number of years that we still hope to accomplish, and every one of them will also depend on the support of friends like you who believe in this work.
Therefore, it is important that we realize the full benefit of this $200,000 year-end Challenge Gift. For TWR to close the current year in good shape, we need you to respond to this challenge gift opportunity.
Please click here for answers to other questions you may have about the year-end challenge, or to make an online donation right now. Thank you for your help.
TWR's Oldest Listener
 Sister Maria was a 103-year-old widow and was bedridden for the last 50 years. We first heard about her when someone delivered to us an envelope with a small donation in cash. When a second donation arrived in the same way, we became interested in the story. We learned that Sister Maria lived in one of the larger cities in Lithuania and eventually paid her a visit.
Before Communism, prior to the Second World War, Sister Maria and her husband, who was a Baptist pastor, were very active in ministry. They were trained in the U.S. and returned to Lithuania to serve their people. Sister Maria led the choir in the church, and people were quite open to the gospel. When the Communists took over after the Second World War, she and her husband were sent to a labor camp in Siberia as punishment for their Christian work. After seven years they were released, but Sister Maria had suffered injuries that made her an invalid for the rest of her life. It was 1959.
Sister Maria shared that she listened to our programs every night and for her the programs were her daily bread and her local church. When our field director met her and heard her story, he felt that all the work done at GNC (Good News Center, TWR’s Partner in Lithuania) was worthwhile just for her sake and for people like her.
Ever since this visit, she became a regular monthly donor. She remembered when there was a freedom to spread the gospel, but life changed during Communism, and the days become dark and bleak. She supported the radio ministry because she was thankful that the gospel can be aired freely again and she wants to be a part of it.
We have since learned that Sister Maria went home to be with the Lord on November 14, 2009, in Klaipeda, Lithuania. Please be in prayer for her family.
Warriors of the Blue Veil
 The Tuareg people are predominantly nomadic people of the Sahara desert, often referred to as “Blue Men of the desert” because their robes are dyed indigo blue. They live in small tribes with between 30 and 100 family members and migrated from northern Africa into the Sahel regions of the western Sahara.
Though there are some Tuareg who have become Christians, the majority have never heard the gospel. TWR and OneStory are bringing the gospel to the Tuareg people in their own language and preferred communication style.
From December 2009, TWR will broadcast OneStory episodes in the Tawallamet dialect of Tamajaq. Volunteers from IMB (International Mission Board) and Campus Crusade have spent two years in Niger, learning the language and crafting Bible stories that address Tuareg worldview issues.
The 15-minute program contains songs and testimonies. Each episode begins with the previous episode’s story, then repeats the new story so that it can be remembered. As there are no written Scriptures in the Tawallamet dialect, these stories will form an audio Bible for the Tuareg.
The word “Tuareg” is an Arabic term meaning “abandoned by God.” The Tuareg refer to themselves as “Imashagen” or “the free people.” TWR hopes that through the OneStory programs, the Tuareg will see that God has not abandoned them and that only through Jesus Christ can they truly be free.
To learn more from TWR-Africa’s Web site, click here.
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