Busier Than Ever
October finds us grateful to be well and safe during the pandemic. We pray you are, too!
COVID-19 has changed many things in our lives recently, but it has not stopped our ministry of reaching the Unreached. In fact, ministry-wise, we are busier than ever.
Here’s a quick update on what is the same for us, what’s different, and what’s better and more exciting that we could have imagined…
The Same
- HOME. We continue to work from home, connecting online.
- MAKING MISSIONARIES MORE EFFECTIVE. Bill continues to work with his team developing materials and a mobile app to help missionaries gain fluency faster in order to speed up the spread of the Gospel.
Different
- NO TRAVEL. No surprise there! We’ve had none of our usual trips to Asia or our training centers to train missionaries and consultants.
- VIDEO CONFERENCES. 2020 is the year of Zoom, Teams, Skype, and all the other online meeting apps for everyone, and we’re no exception. Bill spends a lot of his time connecting online with his team and with missionaries and consultants in many different countries who need his help.
- SLOWER INTERNET. Even here in the US, our internet gets bogged down a bit lately because of all the homeschooling, video conferences, and students home from college playing online games!
Better and More Exciting
- MORE PROGRESS FASTER. Meeting online has proven to be very effective. A two-hour meeting can be followed by a few days of processing and implementation, followed immediately by another meeting. This has actually worked better than less frequent, week-long all-day face to face meetings.
- MORE AVAILABILITY. Progress has also picked up pace because many of Bill’s teammates, who are scattered all around the globe, actually have more time to give to the CLA (Culture and Language Acquisition) project. Some of their other ministries are on hold due to COVID-19, giving them more time to devote to working with Bill on CLA materials and the CLA app.
But the most exciting thing is SOMETHING TOTALLY NEW:
Bill and his team will have a part in training Gospel workers from all over Asia. This is a huge, new and totally unexpected opportunity in addition to those we’ve already been training! Church planters from many closed and difficult countries (shhhh… we can’t name them here) want to be better trained to reach the Unreached People Groups right there in their own countries. Many of them are in countries where it is dangerous to share the Gospel, or even to be a Christian, and where no training is available for them.
We’re excited because many of these workers need to learn another language. So they will use the culture and language acquisition (CLA) materials Bill and his team have been developing. And they will also be able to use the mobile app that goes with the CLA materials. Some will use a common language for ministry, but they will still need training in cross-cultural communication. Bill and his team will develop modules to help with training all these workers in this difficult-to-reach countries.
The prayer is that over time, this training will spread to other continents, as well. Having so many more trainees in so many different countries will greatly expand the impact of the CLA materials and the app, making the hours spent in development all the more worth the effort!
Not only this, but we’re finding missionaries from other agencies who are very interested in having their people use the CLA materials and the app.
Going Viral
So the Gospel is truly going viral… and will be spread even faster, in part because of the coronavirus! God is taking what looked like delays and frustrations and turning them into opportunities for the Gospel.
If you would like to more about the exciting new training opportunities we mentioned, let us know. We would love to fill you in! We just can’t post details online or in email communication.
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