The diagnosis could have been worse, but it could have been better: Fibroid tumors in her womb that would need to be surgically removed. At that moment in 2008, all Ruth Simon could think about was that she would never be able to have children. "I cried all day and called my mom to pray with me."

Often shrouded in mist and rain, Mexico's Sierra Norte Mountains hide a forgotten people—descendants of Aztec Indians whose ancestors fled from European conquerors. Although forgotten by the world, they have not been forgotten by God. Decades ago He sent two devoted missionaries, Leonardo and Maria Morales, to the region's poor mountain villages. There they found hungry hearts, and they spent several years spreading the gospel and planting churches. Hundreds of lives were impacted.

Unless the doctors perform head surgery, he has only a 15% chance to live. That bleak prognosis, sent to me by Heaven's Family national missionary Khamh Thang, chilled my soul. I prayed right then for Van Lal Sawma, a 23-year-old I had never met, but whose desperate situation now gripped my heart.

"Your baby girl's skull is fractured, blood is seeping into her brain, and she is in a coma. Her chances for survival are slim." The doctor's words drained what little hope remained in the hearts of Daniel and Sung, parents of ten-month-old Sarah, who had fallen one story and landed on a concrete floor.

"God, if you are there, can you end my suffering?" That was the anguished cry of 20-year-old Miriam Nduwimana of Burundi, East Africa. She had endured almost unimaginable suffering. It began two years earlier when Burundi was embroiled in bloody tribal warfare. Miriam and her two younger sisters witnessed the slaughter of their other family members. They survived their nation's holocaust by fleeing to neighboring DR Congo.