A few days ago, the father of an eight-year-old boy in AWANA direct messaged me on Twitter to see if his son could ask me a few questions. It’s so awesome how the Lord can use social media outlets like Twitter to make connections for His glory!
Here’s how the conversation went:
Dear Jack,
My name is Will. I am 8 years old. In AWANA I have to ask a missionary some questions.
Where do you work?
What do you do as a missionary?
Do you ever get scared?
Is it hard to speak different languages?
Thank you. We are praying for you.
Your friend,
Will
Here’s how I responded:
Hi, Will!
Thanks for asking some great questions. I’ll try and answer them as best I can.
Where do I work?
I will be working in a country called Papua New Guinea. It’s a big island that’s right above Australia. The island is about the size of California, and there are more than 850 different languages spoken on it. My team and my family will be working with a group of tribal people who live deep in the jungle. We can only get to the tribe by flying in a jungle airplane called a 206. Here’s a video of me and my friends flying into a tribe who lives very close to the tribe we could possibly be working with:
I visited Papua New Guinea last summer. This summer my family and I are moving over there for many years. My two best friends, BJ and Jeremy (and their families), are moving over there this week! Our three families will live in a tribe together.
Do I ever get scared?
That’s a great question with an easy answer. Yes! But you know what the cool thing is? I serve a BIG God, who has promised to never leave me. That doesn’t mean that bad things won’t happen, but it does mean that God will always be there with me.
In Matthew 28, Jesus commanded us to make disciples of all nations (which includes people who speak every language on earth). Some of those people live in scary places, but they still need to hear God’s message about Jesus. The awesome thing is that right after Jesus told us to go make disciples of all the people on the planet, He made us all an incredible promise! He said, “I will be with you always, even until the end of time.” Pretty cool, huh? That means He’s going to be with you too, Will. No matter where you are, even if it’s someplace scary, you can know that Jesus is there with you.
What do you do as a missionary?
This is one of the best questions you asked. There are a lot of answers, but I’ll tell you a few of the things tribal missionaries do. The funny thing is that some of them are things you can do too. First, I get to start making friends with people who are very different from me. Do you know people at school who are different from you? Think about how you could try to be their friend. It might seem scary, but Jesus was friends with all kinds of people who were different from Him. He wants us to be like Him. Making friends with the tribal people is going to be even more interesting, because I don’t speak their language yet.
So the second thing I have to do is start learning their language. This might take a few years, and they’ll probably laugh at me, because I won’t be saying things the right way at first. But that’s okay. I’ll just have to laugh at myself too.
The people also do things much differently than we do. We call all the things they do, their culture. Before I can start telling them about Jesus, I need to learn their language and why they do the things they do (their culture). In our culture, you might do things like going to school, eating ice-cream, watching tv, playing on the computer or iPad, or playing basketball or football. In their culture they do things like shooting little toy bow and arrows at each other, hunting wild pigs, eating grubs, working in the garden, telling stories around the campfire at night, and making canoes out of tree trunks.
After I’ve figured out why they do what they do, my team and I will start making Bible lessons, so we can tell the people God’s story from Genesis to Jesus. We’ll also create an alphabet for them (because they don’t have one in their language yet), and we’ll teach them to read and write, so they’ll be able to read their Bible just like you’re able to read your Bible. And that’s the last thing we’ll be doing for the people: making the Bible in their language. It’s going to take a long long time, but I can’t think of any better way to spend the time God has given me!
Thanks for asking such great questions, Will! And thanks for your prayers!
Keep the Son in your eyes,
Jack
Will is excited to share with the rest of the guys in his AWANA group, and they’re going to follow our team’s journey and pray for us every week! How cool is that? So there ya go, God is doing cool things through Twitter!
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