How many of you used to (or still do) play racing video games? For us, it was “Cruisin’ World” and “Mario Kart.” For others, I know there are more off-road type of games and the list is probably endless of different games available.
But how many of you have actually driven on a race track like that in real life? How about a whole set of them? As I was driving over some pretty awful roads yesterday, through mud, around water, sliding in the sand, across rocks, up hills, over bumps, etc., that’s one of the things I was thinking about. Each of these visits to different villages in our People Group is kind of like a different race track in a video game. You never know what obstacles this particular race course is going to give you, and, like in Mario Kart where your opponents can throw banana peels and other un-helpful things at you, there is no guarantee that the road will look the same each time you take it, either. These are roads that require good moto-driving skills, and even to sit on the back of the moto you can’t be a beginner or you’ll fall off. These are roads that make off-roading in the US look tame. These are roads that literally become impassable at certain times of the year. And it’s over these roads that thousands of people live who have never heard the name of Jesus. Are the bumps and white knuckles worth it for them to hear? I’ve said yes. What about you? Will you come and take some of these roads, these real-life video game roads, so that they can hear about Jesus for the first time?
(NOTE: The road in the picture is not one of the roads I was talking about that leads to our People Group. Instead, it’s a road that leads to another unreached people group elsewhere in West Africa, one that no missionary has volunteered to go and work among yet.)