heart language

Oh, 9,000, Give or Take…

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More numbers…

This time the number is the approximate number of miles from San Diego to our destination in the Asia Pacific region. 9,000 miles–that’s a long trip.

We leave tomorrow afternoon, Friday January 5th. We should reach our destination country after 9,000 miles and (Lord willing) 28 hours of flying, terminal hopping, and carry-on dragging. We’ll spend one night in the capital city, then take a 90-minute flight to another town.

Bill will be training language consultants/coaches in 3 different workshops. If our missionaries don’t learn the language and culture well, they cannot communicate clearly or reach Unreached People groups! So it all comes down to helping them reach fluency. A very high degree of fluency.

We’re very grateful for the opportunity to continue to be a part of seeing the gospel get to the Unreached.

Please Pray

We’ll update you from over there. For now, please pray for safe travel, good connections, and that we will be healthy, rested and alert when we arrive.

Thank you for partnering with us!

Reaching the Unreached Next Door

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Punjabi Sikhs

 

sikh_man_agra_09

America (and California in particular) is home to many Punjabi immigrants who are members of the Sikh religion. Sikhs are not Hindus, and are often mistaken for Muslims because of their turbans and beards. Sikhism is a monotheistic religion which was founded in the 15th century in the Punjab region of India, and it is currently the 5th largest religion in the world, numbering around 30 million followers–more than all the Jews, Baha’is and Confucianists combined!

You have probably seen Punjabi people in your communities. If you are so fortunate, you have tasted their food (spicy and yummy!)

They live next door to us… yet as a people group, they remained unreached (~1% Christian).

Building Bridges

As we mentioned in a previous update, two churches in California have committed to reaching the huge Punjabi community in their city. The first step in reaching those nearly 40,000 Punjabi Sikhs is to build genuine relationships, to learn their language, and to understand them at a deep, heart-and-worldview level. The goal is to develop real, long-term relationships; not just “being-friendly-so-I-can-preach-at-you” relationships.

Punjabi woman

Baby Steps

Bill just returned from a follow-up trip to Central California where he and another consultant met with one of those churches to help them identify the most strategic neighborhoods and strategies, and to determine which of the many dialects of Punjabi would be the most effective for sharing about Christ.

Join the Team Through Prayer

Would you pray for the Punjabis to come to Christ? Pray also for those who face the challenge of learning the Punjabi language and building cross-cultural relationships.

And pray for Bill as he coaches them in their language learning.

Because everyone deserves to hear in their Heart Language.

 

Photos from Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike Unported license: Yann (Punjabi man, 3.0 Unported license) and Raminder pal Singh (Punjabi woman, 2.0 Generic license.)