An OM team has a rare opportunity to share the Gospel with the Doma people at the funeral of a senior member of the community.

The figures of impact were impressive during a recent medical outreach in the indigenous region of Guamote in Ecuador. But only because He showed up.

Three short-term volunteers spending the summer in North Africa learn life-changing lessons from a Transform outreach.

OM SportsLink in Brazil hosts 85 children from a slum in São José dos Campos at their futsal school. They are amazed by open doors.

A young lady in a small Laotian village is pressured to recant her faith or jeopardize her educational future.

OM Chile team member Marloes Achterveld witnesses God change the life of a homeless man.

OM partner finds young men on the street and offers them jobs and a place to study the Bible.

On 22 August, 150 people climbed in the inaugural OM Boonah Freedom Climb to raise awareness and funding for the Jogini girls of India.

Winning a rickshaw in a race sponsored by the OM sports ministry team in Bangladesh changes Anwar's life and his family's life.

This summer nearly 1,000 Roma children in Roma villages throughout Central and Eastern Europe heard the Gospel.

OM Hungary works alongside partner organisations to bring comfort and Jesus’ love to refugees in Budapest.

“The timing couldn’t have been worse for refugees from Syria passing through Macedonia.” An OM worker shares about conditions in a Macedonian refugee transit camp.

OM Finland extends love and fellowship to immigrant mothers through friendship groups, open conversation and learning together.

Friends Derek and Josiah, who grew up in OM, talk about their most recent adventure: one year producing videos in the Middle East and North Africa.

After 10 years in North Africa, an OM worker sees a change in the hearts of neighbours and friends.

Throughout the year Bus4Life provides encouragement to local pastors and OM teams in Eastern Europe, partnering with them to share the Gospel.

Dimas, the headman of a small village along the shores of Lake Tanganyika, shares about the challenges of being a headman and Christian.

OM Greece

A speedboat approached the gritty beach of the Greek island of Lesbos carrying around a dozen people. It quickly dumped their luggage into the choppy sea before racing away. After some emotional greetings, the OM Greece team and others offered the newcomers towels, water and bananas. The team soon discovered that they were three generations of Syrian Christians, grandparents to grandchildren, fleeing to Europe's safety.

The team's hearts sank when the Syrians told them that the same boat, which charged them a steep 2000 € per person for the 30-minute trip was to make another journey to bring the rest of the family from Turkey. The team had seen the harbour police arrest the pilot and had to break the bad news to them that their relatives' fate was uncertain.

And so the trials and difficulties continue for the hundreds of thousands fleeing conflict in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan making their way to Greece's shores in the hopes of moving onward into Europe. OM Greece continues to demonstrate God's love and compassion there.

The OM Greece team on Lesbos has enjoyed chatting with the refugees—something not many other relief workers are doing.

"A young Iraqi guy approached us and excitedly told us the he, too, wanted to become a Christian," recounted the team leader, heading up efforts on the island, where many of the refugees land.

"Stunned, we immediately gave him a Christian tract in Arabic we had picked up earlier that day, and those gathered around began reading it."

Waves of new arrivals of Syrian and other refugees to Greece's shores are overwhelming relief groups and authorities in the biggest humanitarian emergency since World War II.

Despite the early onset of autumn's rains, more than 2,500 mainly Syrian and Afghan refugees, soaked and exhausted, reached Lesbos in just a matter of hours this week alone. This marks a sharp rise in the rate of arrivals making the dangerous sea crossing from Turkey, aid officials said.

Most refugees traveling in unsafe dinghies and boats, squeezing about 40 to 45 people aboard, came in the pouring rain. Some suffered from hypothermia.

Over 430,000 refugees fleeing mayhem in the Middle East already have worked their way this year from Turkey to Greece. Despite Greece's dire economic crisis, many Greeks have been welcoming the refugees even though resources are scarce and many Greeks are also looking for help.

Gabby Markus, OM Greece country leader, also coordinates humanitarian assistance provided by numerous churches in the Athens area to ensure more effective cooperation and aid on behalf of the fleeing refugees.

Government and local officials have appreciated OM Greece and the local churches' quick ability to organise Arabic and Farsi/Dari translators to help communicate with the refugees as well as the practical provision of badly needed water, clothing and cooked meals. A clothing bank, shower facility, possible WiFi/Internet access points, and a potential campsite for temporary stay by the refugees are also in the planning.

"You tell us and we will get the people," Gabby told an official of Greece's Migration Policy Ministry. As a registered Greece-based organisation and with work in 110 countries worldwide, OM is strategically placed to help the refugees in their hour of need.

This week, the Athens team has helped numerous Afghans, including Harazas, sheltering in a sports stadium after a torrential downpour drove them out of one of Athen's outdoor parks.

Inside the stadium, where colorful pup tents lined the floor, young Afghan men danced to a throbbing, ethnic beat. Their arms sliced the air and bodies spun, enrapturing Afghan and Greek onlookers alike.
Greek doctors were on hand to carry out health checks on those who made the strenuous journey from their war-torn homeland.

"We had 45 people packed inside our flimsy rubber dinghy," 20-year-old Habib told OM. It was a dangerous journey and we were very frightened. Now we're exhausted, but we must continue to move on," said the youth, with dark, intense eyes.

Other OM Greece workers participate in cooking and serving meals to refugees gathered at churches in a food-share project. They also assist in meal distributions in parks where refugees congregate in the Greek capital.

"We must help these people who have left everything behind," Gabby said.

OM Greece needs your prayer and financial support to continue and intensify its aid efforts for Syrian and other refugees fleeing conflict to Europe.

A developing OM project, called Safe Passage, focuses on meeting refugees at their initial entry points, providing information as well as water, food and essentials. To give specifically to projects in Greece, please mark your gift to be given to Greece. To give to OM Europe's general relief efforts, or for more information about how to get involved, please contact your local OM office.

Their desire to help leads a Love Moldova outreach team to a woman whose loss of her toes leads to the salvation of her soul.

A woman found not criminally responsible for fatally stabbing a stranger in the heart at the makeup counter of a Toronto drugstore five years ago could ultimately be allowed to live in the community if the mental health facility where she is staying decides she can, the Ontario Review Board says.

Mayor John Tory, Dr. Eileen de Villa, the city's medical officer of health, and Toronto Fire Chief Matthew Pegg, head of the city's emergency response team, spoke at a city hall news conference Thursday afternoon.

A sports writer covering the strange return of South Korea's baseball season says fans should brace for similarly odd experience in Toronto, if and when the 2020 season begins.

A third person was rescued off the roof of the burning building after the house went up in flames at about 11 p.m. on Thursday.

Region of Waterloo Public Health says there are 44 positive cases of COVID-19 at the Breslau meat processing facility Conestoga Meats.

Despite sharp differences in the impact of COVID-19 in different parts of Ontario, the Ford government is rejecting a region-by-region approach to loosening emergency restrictions.

Some provinces are moving to allow people to double their so-called COVID-19 social bubbles. Chris Glover looks at why that's not yet happening in Ontario.

Karla Bell was outside an Orangeville hospital waiting to start her nursing shift when she heard a cry for help from a car in the parking lot. She ran up to find a woman in labour in the passenger seat. Natalie Kalata tells us the incredible story of how this baby was born.

Toronto’s islands are closed to the public to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and there’s no word on when tourists can return. Ali Chiasson looks at the impact the pandemic will have on the islands.

Toronto officials reported 180 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, a figure that represents a dip when compared to the more than 200 cases announced daily this week. 

Hanna Jovin and Adrian Morphy say many, including themselves, have been experiencing strange and vivid dreams since the pandemic began and the pair decided to illustrate and share them on social media.

Approximately one out of every seven Ontarians who were working before the coronavirus pandemic hit the province have now lost their jobs, according to Statistics Canada's latest national labour survey.

Leonard Rodriquez's grieving loved ones say he was a man who would drop everything to help those in need. But they say his death could have been prevented if he'd had the personal protective gear he needed to do his job.

Living on a 10-acre plot of land 100 kilometres outside Toronto, David Stevens thought he and his family were well prepared to ride out the COVID-19 quarantine. But after a call from his mother, he learned that even the best laid plans can go wrong.

Lindsay Forsyth Brochu thought by now she'd have the double-lung transplant she's been waiting for. But she had the misfortune being put on the waitlist the day after most surgeries were suspended in Ontario due to COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic has meant a spike in demand for puppies and an opportunity for scammers who are charging inflated prices for dogs not ready to be adopted out or with missing or bogus papers.

CBC Toronto wants to introduce you to all the people making a difference during the COVID-19 pandemic through a series we're calling Front-line Heroes.

Poor visibility from winter-like weather has put a halt on the Snowbirds aerobatics team's plans to fly over southern Ontario on Saturday.

Ontario reported its lowest new COVID-19 case count of the week on Saturday with 346 new confirmed cases of the virus. Meanwhile, the government has issued an emergency order allowing school board employees to be voluntarily redeployed to hospitals, long-term care homes, retirement homes and women's shelters.

The Citizens for an Accountable Mega Hospital Planning Process are in court trying to get leave to appeal a ruling that dismissed their appeal to the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal over the location of the mega-hospital.

Located on Huron Church Road, the lab was one of 12 such facilities run by the Ontario government, and processed tests for diseases like tuberculosis and West Nile virus. But it was demolished to make way for the Herb Gray Parkway.

Paramedics who come back from COVID-19 related calls have to remove and either discard or wash their PPE. They are getting help from students called doffing assistants.

Here's a look at what's happening in our area on Thursday, May 7.

The province's networks of labs processed 15,179 tests in the last 24 hours, more than any of the three days previous but still short of the 16,000 tests per day target set back in April.

Every few days for the past two weeks, Windsor resident Joseph Antone has loaded up his red pick-up truck with food, water, fruit and other essential supplies for people who need it most.

Lambton County resident Joeleen DeGurse-MacDonald still has memories of the fatal vehicle collisions she's witnessed at the intersection of Kimball Road and Petrolia Line. Now in her 50s, DeGurse-MacDonald said she vividly remembers an accident that took place when she was only five-years-old, eating a pear picked from an orchard on her family's farm at the northest intersection of Kimball and Petrolia. 

With proms cancelled across Canada, an online resource for kids called the Student Life Network has organized a national virtual prom.

If you think it's cold this morning, just wait — the forecast low for Friday night is –3 C.

As automakers look to restart the industry, union representatives are looking to ensure safety is the number one priority for workers.

OPP are investigating a fatal crash that took place in Lakeshore Thursday night.

Here's a look at what's happening in our area on Friday, May 8.