Carla is a British–Caribbean follower of Jesus who has spent the last six years in Beirut helping churches in the Middle East and North Africa walk with young people under pressure. She shares about growing up as a mixed‑race pastor’s kid in a mostly white English town, the intense expectation to be “perfect,” and how a mission trip to Kenya and reading the entire Bible at 16 transformed her from a double‑life teenager into someone deeply shaped by Scripture and the stories of the persecuted church.

That sense of call eventually took her to Bible college, then into serving persecuted Christians, and finally to Lebanon—alongside her husband Steve, who chose to share her calling even when it meant leaving an Oxford academic path. Carla explains what persecution looks like specifically for teenagers whose faith and ethnicity make them minorities, drawing on the book of Daniel and her work helping churches become the safest place for young people to return without shame.

She also describes life in Lebanon through revolution, economic collapse, the Beirut port blast, and the aftershocks of October 7 and the Gaza war, including the psychological warfare of sonic booms and the horrific “pager” explosions of 2024. Through it all, Carla’s love for Lebanon and its ancient Christian communities has deepened, as she continues to help young believers build resilient faith in one of the world’s most fragile contexts.

00:00 – Meeting Carla in Lebanon
01:00 – Growing up mixed‑race and a pastor’s kid
03:00 – Wrestling with church and finding faith
08:00 – Teenagers, smartphones, and anxiety
11:00 – Called to stand in vulnerable places
15:00 – Theology, Bible college, and unexpected detours
17:00 – Praying for the Middle East and a new job
18:00 – Meeting Steve and the call to Lebanon
20:00 – Engagement, marriage, and the big move
22:00 – Shared callings and marriage in the Middle East
23:00 – Building resilient young believers under pressure
25:00 – Daniel, empire, and identity
28:00 – Minority life in MENA education and culture
29:00 – Making church the safest place for youth
30:00 – Crises in Lebanon: revolution, collapse, and COVID
34:00 – Psychological warfare and sonic booms
31:00 – Surviving the Beirut explosion
32:00 – Economic collapse and the cost of staying
33:00 – October 7, Gaza, and Lebanon on edge
38:00 – Pager attacks and a week of horror
41:00 – Evacuation, waiting, and returning again
42:00 – Why we still love Lebanon
44:00 – Final reflections and hope for Lebanon

In this episode of Faith without Frontiers, we meet Palmira de Sá from Angola, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, domestic violence, and racism who now walks alongside other survivors with the hope of Christ. She shares how God protected her as a child, met her in a Muslim-majority country with no church, and led her through a costly journey of forgiveness that even astonished a psychiatrist. Palmira also exposes systemic failures in Angola’s police, courts, and churches—where half of reported child sexual abuse cases happen in church contexts—and explains why silence, bad theology, and cultural patriarchy keep victims unprotected. Today she leads “Prince and Princess,” an association serving survivors and training church leaders, and is partnering with Angola’s First Lady to confront abuse as a national and ecclesial crisis.

Guest: Palmira de Sá, co-founder of Prince and Princess Association, Angola

This episode contains detailed descriptions of child sexual abuse, domestic violence, racism, and suicide ideation. Listener discretion is advised.

What does it mean to lose your home — not just the walls and roof, but the place where you belong, where you are known, and where you meet with God? In this deeply moving conversation, Valentyn and Luba Syniy of the Tavriysky Christian Institute (TCI) in Ukraine share their firsthand experience of war, displacement, and faith.

Valentyn, a theologian and seminary president, was born and raised in Kherson — a city that once had 350,000 residents and now has fewer than 60,000. When Russia occupied Kherson, he made the painful decision to evacuate the entire seminary — students, professors, and all — first to western Ukraine and then to Kyiv. Meanwhile, his elderly parents and his father, a pastor, stayed behind through nine months of brutal occupation.

In this interview, Valentyn and Luba open up about:
• The Russian military using TCI’s 15-acre campus as a military base and looting their library
• The emotional wound of a Russian evangelical volunteer who stole Valentyn’s Bible and used it to teach soldiers at night
• Losing staff and students to war — including a chaplain killed by a mine and a soldier killed by a drone
• The deep theological meaning of “home” — as family, city, church, and nation
• New Ukrainian churches planted across Europe by refugees
• TCI’s new master’s programs in Chaplaincy and Peace Building
• Why true reconciliation between Russia and Ukraine requires repentance first
• Valentyn’s upcoming book in English: Serving God Under Siege: How War Transformed a Ukrainian Community (releasing October 2025)

Guest: Valentyn and Luba Syniy, Tavriysky Christian Institute (TCI), Ukraine
Book: Serving God Under Siege: How War Transformed a Ukrainian Community by Valentyn Syniy
• Ukrainian/Russian title: The Man Whose Home Was Stolen
• English release: October 2025 | Publisher: Eerdmans Publishing

00:00 Meeting the Syniys
00:30 Book Title and Theme
01:20 Leaving Kherson
03:40 Family Split and Parents Stay
06:48 What Home Means
10:37 Seminary Under Occupation
13:28 Economic and Emotional Toll
14:30 Betrayal and Grief Stories
21:59 Rebuilding and New Programs
23:47 Church Growth in Diaspora
26:39 Chaplaincy and Peacebuilding
30:52 Reconciliation and Repentance
33:45 Serving God Under Siege
38:04 Closing Thanks