Thank you for being a part of this journey with us.
Please enjoy our last story that highlights God’s faithfulness as we celebrate all that He's done in Southeast Asia. Don’t miss this opportunity to listen to this special conversation with our missionaries. We hope you are encouraged and blessed as they share about their challenges overseas and how they’ve experience God’s goodness through it all.
The Joy of Side-by-Side Faithfulness
An opportunity was brought before Cafe 1040 missionaries in Southeast Asia over a year ago to consider launching an English class on a university campus in the city where they live. It was something they were eager to do, but in our ministry, there is occasionally a tension for our overseas staff as they try to balance their twofold purpose to train up the next generation of missionaries and to serve as missionaries themselves. So when a new opportunity (like teaching an English class) presents itself, the question has to be asked: will this serve to disciple students or to make disciples in Southeast Asia? Fortunately, the answer is often "yes". Rather than separating these two facets of our mission, our overseas staff seek ways to combine them, and this is exactly what they did with this English class. Students who arrived in Southeast Asia for the mentorship program were invited to teach and befriend students eager to learn English from the university campus. The result? Our students learned how to minister in a cross-cultural setting and our staff were able to serve their community and engage the unreached with the Gospel.
But it gets better. A young university student who attended these classes quickly got to know a group of our students andour overseas staff. Through the boldness of our overseas staff, this student learned about Jesus Christ and the saving power of the cross for the first time. In the course of time he put his faith in the Gospel, was baptized, and became a member of a local church.
Let that sink in for a moment. A young man, living among an unreached people group with little to no access to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, heard the Good News of Jesus for the first time, gave his life to Christ, and is now walking with the Lord and sharing his faith with those around him! Praise God!
The story above displays the beautiful harmony God has often brought as we have endeavored to fulfill our unique calling as a ministry. While "missionary" and "missions mobilizer" are often set apart as distinct roles, we praise God that our overseas staff are able to embody both. And in the same way our students are not just "students", but in a very real sense they are missionaries who serve with us for a short time, engaging the lost in South Asia, North Africa, and Southeast Asia. For the last twenty years we have not just been training young adults, we have also been inviting them to step into the ongoing, ever-expanding work of making disciples alongside our overseas staff.
That isn’t to say it has always been easy for our staff to balance their diverse ministry. Receiving a new group of students every few months is a huge commitment of time and energy. Yet, despite the challenges, the fruit that comes from frequently welcoming a group of eager, curious, Gospel-driven Christians to serve at our overseas locations is well worth the effort. For starters, many of the individuals who have placed their faith in Jesus through the work of Cafe 1040 did so because of the side-by-side faithfulness of students and staff. But the impact doesn't stop with individuals, it touches entire people groups.
many of the individuals who have placed their faith in Jesus through the work of Cafe 1040 did so because of the side-by-side faithfulness of students and staff.
For years now, our Southeast Asia staff has been bringing their teams of students into contact with a small community made up almost entirely of Muslims. They live in semi-remote villages, and because of their location it is exceedingly difficult to plant a long-term missionary among them. Despite that, because of a few relationships between these locals and our overseas staff, our students are welcomed there and invited into homes to learn about their culture and ask deep, probing questions about their religion, often opening up windows of conversation to talk about Christ. So miraculously, these people who normally have no access to the Gospel are regularly infiltrated by a group of young believers in Jesus with a genuine desire to share their faith. And if it weren't for our students, our staff would not have the same continuous opportunity to be a witness to these villagers, and they would all remain without the hope of the Gospel as a presence in their lives.
Of course, these village excursions aren't only for the benefit of the villagers. The impact these trips have on our students is equally motivating as it opens their eyes to entirely new realities. Consider the experience from the eyes of a student:
It is a dark, starry night on the banks of a winding river in Southeast Asia. From the end of a stone pier, I carefully board a small boat while clumsily balancing the weight of a backpack almost as tall as myself. Once my whole team has safely stumbled in, I hear the gruff-voiced boatman mutter something I don’t understand and the motor growls in reply as I feel myself begin sliding forward into the unknown. The coolness of the air and the wide open water is a sharp contrast to the ceaseless hustle and bustle of the city I am leaving behind. Neon lights and motorbikes are replaced by the shadowy outlines of ramshackle homes built into the riverbank, and alongside exciting thoughts of adventure I begin to consider the isolation of the village to which I am headed. The warm glow from the passing windows starts to shed new light for me on the term "unreached people group", especially because my ears are still ringing with my team leader's comment from earlier that there is not a single church, missionary, or Christian known in this area. The sense of the spiritual darkness around me begins to thicken like the fog, and in the calmness of the night I wonder, "Who will tell these people about Jesus?”
If there's one question we want our students to wrestle with during and after their time with us, it's that one. While many have heard it before, there's a big difference between asking it in a North American Sunday school classroom and having it pressed upon you as you glide across that dark river. I would know, because I've been on that river. I was a student with Cafe 1040 clambering into that boat several years ago, and several years later it continues to impact my life in profound ways. I saw firsthand the continuing progress of Cafe 1040 staff as they ministered to those people, and I partook in interactions and conversations that I believe, in some small way, advanced that progress. I'll never forget the joy of being a part of that, and I may not still be pursuing a career as a long-term missionary without it.
Though I may never see those people again, I will always remember their faces. And not just theirs, but also the many faces of people I met in Southeast Asia whom I grew to love, both missionaries and locals. I will always be grateful for my time with them, and looking back on my mentorship I have come to realize there's nothing quite like serving overseas with Cafe 1040. My hope should Christ tarry is that the last twenty years have paved the way for many more students like me to be transformed by the experience for decades to come.
For Cafe 1040, the answer to the question "Who will tell these people about Jesus?" is simple: we will, alongside all of those whom God sends us.
