A Step Of Yes | The Reach October 2022

I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your PARTNERSHIP in the GOSPEL from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. 
Philippians 1:3-6

Dear friends,

One of my favorite poems over the past few years has been the well-known one by Robert Frost – The Road Not Taken. In it, Frost speaks about two roads diverging in a yellow wood and being regretful that he could not travel both. In some ways, my family and I have been standing at that proverbial fork in the road the last couple of months, longing to travel down both roads and questioning God about what our next path will be. Unlike Frost, perhaps, we have comfort knowing that God guides us down each road we take as we seek Him and follow His will. He is both sovereign and He is good.
 
It is with a mixture of joy and sadness that we bring the news that my family will be transitioning out of World Outreach at the end of this month. We are joy-filled because it is the LORD who calls us elsewhere, and we trust in His goodness and sovereignty.  But we are sad to come to the close of this rich season of partnership in the gospel.  This has not been an easy decision for us but one we have toiled over in hours of prayer and in concert with community.  With the LORD’s leading, we have decided to accept our local church’s call to enter pastoral ministry with opportunities to expand our local congregation’s global vision for the nations.
 
These past years working with World Outreach and getting to know so many of you has blessed and shaped me in many positive ways. We are a denomination that is full of gracious and obedient living in sincere partnership to each other. You all have taught me what it means “to count others more significant than yourselves,” in the ways you support and pray for our sent-ones of Gospel proclamation. Through my work with EPCWO, my vision for what it means to have a sharp focus on those with least access to the Gospel has increased. This will be a leading guide as I move on with a grateful heart for the honor its been serving the EPC in this role.

As our paths diverge for a season now, I am confident that our sovereign LORD will continue to use us all for His glory and even bring our paths together again for the sake of the Nations. I find it fitting in my spirit that a great saint, who passed onto the other side of the veil recently, left us this charge when we are standing, perhaps, at a fork in the road:

Let us all continue to take those steps of “yes” to further God’s Kingdom and see all peoples worshipping and following Jesus!

Grace, peace, and much love.

Jason Dunn
EPC World Outreach Associate Director

If I’m called to step into this role, what will be my greatest asset?
I asked this question 18 months ago during my final interview with the search committee before joining EPC World Outreach. A two-word answer came back to me, “Jason Dunn.” That answer has been validated repeatedly since my first day on the job. To work alongside like-minded, passionate people aligned with the greatest cause in the history of mankind, the fulfillment of the Great Commission, is all I’ve ever wanted to do since my freshman year in college. The Lord has been gracious to allow me to work with great, godly, talented men and women over the years and while I expected that to be true here in World Outreach, I didn’t have to wait a single minute to experience it through Jason. I thank the Lord for the time we’ve had to strive side-by-side for the faith of the gospel. As you read his announcement to follow God’s call to serve elsewhere you might experience the same mix of emotions that I had, sadness to part ways, but excitement for the opportunities God has in store for them. The contribution he has made, the investment in kingdom work and into the lives of all of us at WO and the EPC brings glory to His name and will bear fruit for years to come and into eternity. To God and to Jason I only have two words, Thank You!
Gabriel de Guia
EPC World Outreach Executive Director

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Courage in Christ | the Reach November 2021

Dear friends,

“Now that I know God, He makes me feel brave enough to share the gospel with my Muslim family members. I know now that I don’t have to worry about what other people think of me because I only care what God thinks of me.”
– Saimeera*

I first met Saimeera in June of 2020 when she was looking for someone to help her read the Bible. The only believer in her family, she was brand new to the faith and had never had any Christian friends or been to church before. During our first meeting, she asked me to teach her how to pray. As I talked her through what God teaches us about prayer, her eyes widened. “You mean we can just say anything that is in our heart to God and He will listen to us?” she said in amazement. In nearly every one of our meetings, she was so overwhelmed by the good news that she started to cry.
 
Saimeera takes the Word of God very seriously. Every time we met, she brought a list of questions that had come up during her reading the previous week. She reads the Bible every single day because she wants to know and understand all of God’s Word. Her questions revealed a sincere heart: she was doing everything she could to digest and comprehend everything she was reading. “Why was Jesus called the Son of Man if he wasn’t actually Joseph’s son?” she asked one week. “Are the people who rejected Jesus just like me before I understood the gospel?” she asked another week.
 
Often, new believers can gravitate toward one particular mentor and only feel comfortable learning and sharing with them. While this is completely normal for the beginning of someone’s faith journey, it is essential for newer believers to eventually gain confidence in talking to and sharing with a wider variety of people. In October of 2020, Saimeera was brave enough to start attending an online women’s Bible study. “If I have anything I want to say, I’ll send you a private message,” she told me. By February of 2021, not only was she regularly attending the Bible studies, she chose to share an insight with the group every single week. Just recently, I witnessed her encourage another girl from a similar religious background who is experiencing persecution from her family.
 
Saimeera’s faith journey has been a huge encouragement to me over the past year. From her careful attention to the details of the Bible to her incredulous wonderment at the fact that God would care to draw near to her, her life provides a sweet reminder for all of us who have perhaps grown numb to the good news of the gospel over time. As we rejoice to see how God is at work in the life of one woman in Indonesia, let us also rejoice that the same God is at work in our lives and in our communities every day!
 
*Name changed for security purposes

Written by WO Worker, JB, serving in Southeast Asia

Community Life

Loving Your Muslim Neighbor

Read this book written by EPC WO global workers on how to become compassionate and courageous witnesses to Muslims in your community.

Jesus Film

These videos from Jesus Film’s “Do You Ever Wonder?” series provide an excellent tool to share the gospel with others. They’re available in several languages, including Pashto

EPC Thanksgiving Offering

The EPC Thanksgiving Offering this year is designated for a World Outreach project to provide Christian literature and other resources to Afghan refugees in the U.S. and Europe. Stated Clerk Dean Weaver, WO Executive Director Gabriel de Guia, and WO Associate Director Jason Dunn describe how donations to the project here. To give, click here.

God’s Promise in to His People | November 2020

Dear friends,

 
 

Earlier this month, I received a cryptic text from our national translator, Jake, telling me he would be late for our scheduled call.  But it was only when I talked with him the following day that I discovered the grave danger he had been in. 

While he was at the local university visiting his brother, a medical student, three gunmen from a radical religious group attacked the campus and killed 22 students. Jake, his brother, and a number of other students hid in a basement room.  As a new father, Jake was acutely aware of his wife and child and their vulnerability if something happened to him. But he realized the students around him were trembling with fear and were without hope. So Jake stood up in the room and said he was going to pray for everyone’s safety (not in the usual Islamic way but extemporaneously in his own language). It was after that prayer he sent me his text.

About an hour later they were told that the area was secure.  As they left, many of the students thanked Jake for his prayer for safety. But Jake’s brother was angry at him for praying so boldly and visibly as a Christian. Jake was still shaken when he connected online with me the next day and asked for help to get out of the country. Why were we doing nothing for them except praying?!

I understood Jake’s anguish.  We do cry out to God daily asking him to give our teammates and their children a peaceful life (1 Timothy 2:2).  We pray for peace, but strangely God sometimes does not rescue his people out of dangerous places or conflict zones. Instead he sends them there! Yet He promises to always live with his people. I reminded Jake that God sent our son back into the country after he completed university in the States, and that we too have experienced the pain of losing more than twenty co-workers and friends due to the violence in this country. 

So, after some more talking and prayer online, Jake and I got back to the work at hand, which that day happened to be in Titus. A few days later the in-country team decided to meet weekly with their wives for worship, (alongside of the days the men meet for translation checking). In part they decided to follow the principle in Titus that older women should be teaching the younger women in matters of faith and practice. What a beautiful Bible application immediately in the lives of the translators! We praise God that the team is coming together even more than before in these difficult times.

Field story from two World Outreach workers on a Bible translation team. Names and locations have been changed for their safety. 

 

Community Life

Translation Project

If you would like to support the workers above in their ministry of Bible translation, we encourage you to give by clicking here. When filling out the donation form, make sure to do so indicating the Field Project Fund #296

In Search of the Source - Neil Anderson

For another look into the work of translating the Good News, read In Search of the Source: A First Encounter with God’s Word. You’ll get a glimpse into the lives of Neil and Carol Anderson as they work to translate the Word into the language of the Folopa people of Papua New Guinea.

Why Bible Translation?

Curious why translation of the Bible is so important? Watch this two-minute video by Wycliffe to understand how crucial this work is, and the urgent need for it. 

One Flock, One Shepherd | October 2020

“And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”
John 10:16

Dear friends,

Living in a country that holds one of the largest Muslim populations can be daunting, but the Great Shepherd has other sheep that are not currently of His fold.  After joining World Outreach two years ago, we moved to our city of a million people, and saw no one reaching out to the Muslim community. No Christians in our city had seen any Muslim come to Christ.  We began befriending and interacting with Muslims, while training local pastors and youth to do the same. This task can be laden with challenges, but we have seen fruit from this kingdom work and wanted to share two testimonies with you, showing the ways God has revealed himself and save our Muslim neighbors.

The King Cobra is considered one of the most poisonous snakes in the world; many in this country die every year from its bite. One night our believing friend, Nadia*, woke up to a hissing sound. She saw a cobra wrapped around the neck of her daughter, Mirai*, viciously biting. Nadia got up quickly and rebuked the snake in the name of Jesus, unraveling it with a stick until it left. After praying together, she and her family went to bed. The cobra bit Mirai six times. By any accounts, this should have killed or dangerously hurt her. But thanks to the grace of God, Mirai was spared – not even needing medical assistance. What a wonderful testimony Nadia has to Jesus’ power to save!

God is doing wonderful things in the house church we recently started.  In doing home visits with a family, we met Aanya*, their daughter.  She had been tormented by an evil spirit for months. She would see troubling things whenever she tried to sleep, and had horrible dreams. Desperate for help, Aanya’s mother and grandmother had taken her to a Muslim Imam, but that  only made her sufferings worse.

As we visited in the home and prayed for Aanya’s healing, God broke through! She is 90% better now, and continues dramatic improvement. She and her uncle put their trust in Jesus, and the other family members are very close to fully committing their lives to God!

These are just two testimonies of how God is moving in the lives of Muslims. The LORD Jesus is calling out to this other flock, through us, and they are listening to His voice.  We’ve seen this fruit in both long-term and short-term missions’ trips – in the States and abroad. Therefore, our challenge for you is to pray for Muslims every day and find a Muslim community near you to share the love of Christ with. How you can participate with God and other believers in this kingdom work to call those that are not yet part of the fold?

*names changed

 
Written by EPC WO global workers, R & S

Community Life

Support R and S

If you or your church would like to support R and S in their ministry, you can learn more and give online here. For additional information about their work, please email us!

WO Workshop

Take R and S’s challenge to heart and learn more about Muslim communities in your area and how you can share the love of Christ. Starting in November, World Outreach is offering a workshop on connecting with your Muslim neighbors. To learn more, visit us online.

And the Word Came with Power

If the stories above of of God’s providence captured your interest, we’d encourage you to read this story about a missionary working with the Balangao people as they engage in a spiritual battle. 

I Can Only Imagine: Rocky’s Story | September 2020

Dear friends,

 
 
 

This is Rocky’s story. It’s a story of joy and delight, followed by horror and sadness, and then an unfolding of the goodness of God in a way I could not have dreamed.

Imagine crowded buildings, where one can only see cracks of light through the walls and roofs above; of groups of dadhi walas (bearded ones) in long white robes and topis (skull caps), and of women clothed all in black with only their eyes showing; and other women wearing shalwar kameez (baggy pants and tunic), flashing blues, reds, pinks, and all hues as they wander down the street; of roaming goats, scooters, bikes, and carts loaded with vegetables or fruit to sell. And through it all the sounds of running children, honking horns, and echoing calls to prayer reverberating from mosque to mosque. This is where I live, and this is where I first met Rocky and his family a few years ago.

I wish you could meet Rocky, beaming smile, infectious spirit, and an absolute lover of Jesus. He became a follower of Jesus about two and a half years ago (was baptized with a bucket from our bathroom!)… and then, in the grip of mental illness, unresolved trauma triggers, and following a medication switch, committed a terrible murder and went to prison.

It is hard to put into words those dark days — trying to manage the police investigation, helping his grieving and terrified family, and somehow avoiding the journalists flooding the area. I thought his life was over — such a promising young man with his life destroyed. And the one who was murdered — the grief of a life ended too early. Rock’s older brother told his sister, the only girl of the family, to take poison, because surely the family of the victim would seek retribution. Instead, she came and lived with me and my teammates for the rest of the year.

Two weeks before this crime, Rocky sat in my living room, fearing he would hurt someone, having tried to commit suicide. We took him seriously, but with no mental hospitals accessible at that time, we didn’t know where to turn for help. Despite being in South Asia, in a mega city of thirty million, this was a village with family feuds that went back generations. All my training on strategies and church planting, of sharing my faith with others, my training in discipleship, and those seminars in spiritual warfare, none of it quite prepared me for this. Even growing up (as I had) in the Muslim world had not prepared me for this! These were dark and grim days.

But it wasn’t the end of the story. As in the gospel, the story doesn’t end with a life taken, and a life destroyed.

 

Rocky turned himself in to the police and went to prison. He took full responsibility for what he had done and said he was willing to face whatever punishment was decided, even knowing the death penalty was a possibility. About a month after going to prison, Rocky had a dream where the person he murdered appeared to him and said, “I forgive you.” In that moment he felt God’s forgiveness washing over him. He began meeting with other young men and teaching them what he had learned about Jesus. We were able to smuggle in some Bibles through a Christian NGO that visited the prisons. Eventually, my teammates were able to visit him; he would mention the scriptures every time, hungry for the Word of God. He was granted access to the music room in the prison where he was able to practice piano and guitar.

Somehow this prison, where he struggles to get enough food to eat and faces constant threats of violence, has become a better place for him than where he grew up. It has given him opportunities and a place to mature in the Lord. He continues to lead a group of young men that numbers seventy and continues to grow.

I have never met someone who devoured the Word with more hunger. Before we left the country this past winter, he smuggled a gift out of prison for all of us: a beautiful letter thanking us for our love and sending us his love, his copybook filled with handwritten scripture.

I share this story not to prescribe a way to do ministry. In fact, what strikes me again and again is the messiness of it all — all the mistakes. But, in spite of the craziness, all the sin and brokenness, I see God’s grace all over Rocky’s story. May that divine grace and glory and love continue to pour out over Rocky and the many others we all may come alongside.

In the words of Paul, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.”

 
A year ago, the prison had a huge gathering when a famous Bollywood star came to visit; the top warden asked Rocky to sing to an assembly of thousands of prisoners, the Bollywood guest, and the leaders of the prison. Rocky stood in front of them and sang, in English, one of his very favorite songs: the Christian song by MercyMe, “I Can Only Imagine,” along with some other worship songs in Urdu. How powerful it is, to know these songs were sung out to Jesus in front of thousands of prisoners.
 
Written by an EPC WO global worker
 
 

Community Life

Let the Nations Be Glad

Piper conveys a strong foundation for the need for missions in his book, Let the Nations Be Glad. This is a good read for anyone preparing for missions work or looking to see how they can bridge their work to God’s purpose. You can read an except here, or buy the book here.

Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus

Read the story of Nabeel Qureshi’s journey from Islam to Christianity, and the struggle in between, in his book Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity. 

Perspectives

Take a Perspectives class and learn about God’s mission, how the global Church has responded, and what the greatest needs in the world of evangelization are today – and how you can be a part of God’s story as he redeems people from the nations to himself.

Can a hungry belly hear the Gospel? | July 2020

Dear friends,

 

Over the last several years, I have helped run a clinic for Arab refugees who have flooded our Middle Eastern country. Once these refugees arrive, the support infrastructure is corrupt and overloaded as thousands receive little help with a $42 monthly stipend to live. Our Arab-church based clinic has been able to offer free medicine for basic chronic health needs; during COVID-19, we’ve also started a monthly food voucher program for local fruits and vegetables.

As we serve this community, we have wrestled with the issue of how to integrate relief work with sharing the gospel. We are surrounded by desperate needs, and wonder if people only listen to our message because they know they will receive something. Is it wrong for them to have mixed motives? Do I come before the Lord with mixed motives? I have been challenged to think about how a hungry belly can hear the gospel when you look in the eyes of such desperate needs. It’s striking one of Jesus’ most famous miracles was feeding the 5,000 while preaching the kingdom stories.

 
Is it okay for motives to be tainted and yet still open the door for the gospel truth of Jesus?  Recently, a friend was passing out the food vouchers on a home visit.  The Yemeni refugee woman’s eyes filled with tears as she said she had dreamed the night before her small children had a table full of fruits and vegetables after two days without food.  She said, “God truly knows me.”  For a Muslim woman to realize this opens a powerful door for the gospel.

Another Sudanese refugee man was sitting on the steep stairs which line the hills of an urban low-income housing area.  He looked up at me as I approached with bewilderment.  I gave him his hypertensive medication as well as food vouchers.  He told me, “I just prayed and asked God if he cared about me.  You came walking down these stairs and gave me these gifts.”  This man began to gently weep of the ways the Lord had answered his desperate prayer after months of unemployment and despair.  He and his wife have been studying scriptures with us for over a year.

Isaiah 58:10 challenges us to meet the physical need as a way to usher in the opportunity to be a light for the spiritual need.  There is a partnership.

 
“Feed the hungry, and help those in trouble. Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you will be bright as noon.”
Can a hungry belly hear the gospel? Of course, our Savior can break through at any time. However, when people experience the Lord as one who meets their most basic needs, the diminishing physical ache allows them to be able to engage with the spiritual need for the light of the Gospel!
 
 
 
By a EPC WO global worker

Community Life

The Path - World Relief

If you want to see an end to extreme poverty, violence, oppression, and mass displacement, consider joining World Relief’s The Path. The Path is a monthly giving community of like-minding people who are committed to helping the most vulnerable. Watch a video about The Path here.

Displaced People in the Middle East

Watch this video and learn more about how you can pray specifically for refugees in the Middle East. 

Support Syrian Refugee Relief

Join the EPC in working with church partners in Lebanon, Turkey, and Germany to not only assist refugees with physical needs, but also to share the gospel to meet their spiritual needs. Donations to this fund will help with the Syrian refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe.