Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Russia

Another week in Eastern Europe, with four countries that were once a part of the Soviet Union.  I'm traveling this week so I could use help identifying prayer requests for these countries.  I know one thing I will pray for is the continued work of missionaries in these formerly Communist lands.  My parents have good friends who emigrated to the US from the Ukraine, and they used to travel back with suitcases filled with Bibles.  The WCC site is right that there is certainly a long tradition of Christianity in these countries, but the effect of official atheism is still profound.

Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary

Still in Eastern Europe for a few more weeks.  Hungary is mostly Catholic, and Romania is mostly Orthodox, and Bulgaria, I don't know.

Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia

This is a hodgepodge of former Yugoslavia, and there's a lot of variation.  Slovenia, for instance, has a fairly comparable economy to Western Europe and avoided ethnic cleansing; Bosnia, wasn't so lucky, and Albania has a per capita income that is closer to the Third World than the First.

But if it was hard last week to think of anybody but John Paul II, it's hard this week to think of anyone other than the world's most famous Albanian, Mother Teresa.  As with most of Catholica, I am not nearly well-versed enough in all that she did and all that she means to the church.  I am told that one of the best biographies about her is Kathryn Spink's Mother Teresa.  I am reading Rev. James Martin's My Life with the Saints (which I recommend highly).  Here is an abridged version of his chapter on Mother Teresa, which helped me learn a great deal about her.