Bridging the Gap to the Unreached - Daryl Witmer | CGS 2021

Well, good afternoon. It's, uh, joy to be here with you, and, uh, it's been a real privilege to sit here and, uh, hear the, uh, the stories and the teaching that we already listened to. Been a real encouragement and blessing to me. Just briefly, um.

We've been in Colombia. We went to Colombia about seven years ago. Uh, we worked with, uh, a church plant for about five years in a Spanish, uh, community. And during that time, we, along with, uh, Matthew Morhardt and his family, uh, did, uh, not the not the five years, but for a short period of time, or about a year, did a lot of survey work across Colombia and visited with almost every mission organization we could think of that we could find to understand better what the situation was in Colombia. And, uh.

And, uh, part of the result of that, we relocated about two years ago to another part of Colombia, to the furthest south part of Colombia you can find. If you ever look on a map and you find Colombia, there's a bulk of Colombia, and then there's a little, little leg that goes down to the Amazon River. And we're down along the Amazon River. Probably, uh, some of you maybe could throw a stone from our house and it might hit the Amazon River. I probably couldn't, but, um.

And, and we can boat across to Peru and we can walk into Brazil. Um, and we do some of our shopping in Brazil and some of our shopping in Colombia. Um.

Been married for 13 years and we have six children. And that's an important part of my life because, um. Couldn't do the things that I'm doing without the wife that I have. And. I've learned more as, as time is going on, how important her perspective is on the on life. And as we share together and work together in a foreign world, foreign to us, we are the foreigners. Um.

I want to mention this briefly here.

I've been struck. And this week I was listening to several recordings. I listen to a lot of recordings because, um. That's one of the ways I am. I am edified and stimulated and encouraged by other believers of like-minded faith and was challenged as I thought about the church, um, and the local body of believers and whatever we are doing in Colombia, whatever you're doing in whatever part of the world that you're in is and needs to be an extension of that local body of believers. So the title here says, Bridging the Gap to the Unreached. As we look at this session of Bridging the Gap to the Unreached, we're talking about one body of believers working to build a bridge to a place to where a new body of believers can be.

That's an extension of the local body of believers that originally started.

Um.

I won't say this yet, too. That. I probably use examples from from our experience, uh, because that's the only experience that that I have. Um. But we're just one cog in the whole machinery of of life and in the piece of passing information and things that we've learned from one person to the next and ultimately from the Word of God. And there have been many people from many walks of life that have affected how I've interpreted the information and the things that we've learned. And I am thankful for that.

So maybe there's. There's two things. There's several things that we can get out of this, this, this time of, of, uh, looking at bridging the gap to the unreached. But one thing.

Is. It's been interesting to me how often this has come out today already, at least in the sessions that we sat in just recently, but even this morning in the group sessions of cross-cultural and what's involved with becoming cross-cultural and the spiritual qualities that you and I can have to help overcome cross-cultural problems. And before you start thinking about crossing borders, start thinking about you and your family and the habits that you have and how that affects your local body of believers or your neighbors and how they perceive who you are and how you think about them, our habits, and what we think is better than a different way of doing it. Or we'll get into that a little bit later.

But, uh. I hope there's something that all of us can take from from this, even if you, um. Are living here in in your own culture. But. In Genesis 11, we have the story of the Tower of Babel, and God dispersed the people. We can just try to imagine.

The next morning after God, uh, confounded the languages and however he did that, and maybe this family talked a certain language, maybe they they talked what became, um. Well, we we just don't know because of the the the languages morphing from one to the other. But sometimes I think the most remote indigenous languages may be the truest, the closest to to what came from the Tower of Babel as anything that we know. It's interesting because some of these languages are some of the most unique and precise languages that exist.

But the next morning after this happened, or however this happened, you can imagine maybe one family group or or a foreman and his crew was was trying to work at the plumbing or or whatever, and they were trying to communicate to the electrician or the the sheet rocker. Supposedly they they probably didn't have that then. And the extreme confusion that would result from that is people that couldn't communicate and they couldn't work together. Obviously. They couldn't. And so they stopped.

And that was God's intentions. And now today we have the exact opposite thing that we want to have happen so that we can work together to build this bridge so that the kingdom can be advanced, so that I can communicate to you and you can communicate to somebody else. You can communicate and they can communicate to somebody else something so they can learn who God is and. Live for Christ.

Um.

So we have language, but we have culture, and they go together and you you can't. Uh, um. You can't just focus on learning language, but also you're crossing the cultural barriers. We have many illustrations of that in the Scriptures. I had to think of Joseph. Um, he got transplanted into another part of the world he knew nothing about, and he survived. He even thrived. Um, we have Ruth coming from Moab, and she comes back to Israel and to her mother-in-law. It was back to her old roots. Felt comfortable for her. It was strange.

And she listened to her mother-in-law. Her mother-in-law said, "This is how you do this in this situation. Go do that. Okay, I'll do that."

I have I have a handout. And of course, the the danger of a handout is that you'll look at that instead of of listening. But, uh, it's also something you can take with you. Um, yeah.

Yes. One page.

And I will try to, uh.

Ask for questions at the end. Um.

There's something.

Need further clarification.

Just a little side note about culture or or understanding each other. Just remember recently, while you finished getting those papers to the back, um, I was talking with. With a a man, a good friend of mine. Um. Known for a couple of months now. And I asked him a question and he said.

His answer was an affirmative. Yes. And I and after he left, I told Rose, my wife, I said, if I had been translating that, I would have translated it as no. Because I knew that's what he meant. So talking about cultural and language barriers, how can you learn that eventually? What do you what do you do when they say yes and they mean no?

Um, so that's just one little little story. So I think we have these hand these pages are out. It starts out with the top definitions, and I want to work down through this and, um, look at defining the unreached, the gap between us and the unreached, and then at building the bridge. We want to look at at, uh, these definitions here, and maybe that will help to explain a little bit what we are thinking about. I'm curious and I don't know how to do this, but I don't know who I'm talking to. Um, so let's just ask this question. How many of you have ever traveled outside of the United States or Canada?

All right. Thank you. Um. A large percentage of you.

But. The unreached.

So. First of all, we have the most isolated groups, and we have them in Colombia and definitely in Brazil. As I mentioned, we're right next to Brazil. Uh, some of the Amazon Basin in Brazil is easier to get to through the town in Colombia that we are. If you're coming from the States, then it is to go through Brazil.

Um, isolated people groups with little to no contact with the outside world. And yes, it is maybe a little hard to believe, but I think there was actually a comment this morning. They do exist. Um, in fact, there's there's reason to believe that there's multiple groups in Colombia that exist like that, and even more in Brazil.

Um. Get to a little bit more about. Why? In just a bit. Um, partially reached. People groups who are in places that you can contact them and may have had experience with missionaries in the past. Now, um, they're one of the reasons, one of the things that put Colombia on our hearts, uh, ten years ago.

Was the fact that. There were many, many missionaries working in Colombia to translate scriptures for different indigenous groups, language groups. And as you know, whoever hears of Colombia, you think of guerrillas, you think of drugs, um, political unrest. And some of that is still true today. Um, back in the nineties, it got so bad that, uh, a lot of that got shut down. There was partial translations that never got picked up. And the question on our minds is, was what exists today?

Um, so there's a lot of partially reached groups. There's some people that have a translated New Testament, but they have no translated Old Testament. There's some groups that have, uh, translated Bible, but there's little to no Christians in them. There's some groups that have a translated scripture and one or two, uh, communities that have a a church of some type, but other communities far away of the same language language group, and they have no, um, no connection, no evangelism. The the the the church or the the existing, uh, church in that one community has not touched a community down further river or upriver.

Um, I think it says there are certain levels of syncretism. And so there's a lot of these places where they've had contact with maybe some some evangelism. And, you know, if you think about Catholicism, really it was mixing, um, Christianity with paganism. And you take a mixture. Of, uh, Christianity and paganism again, and you have more of the same in some of these these groups, uh, just not called Catholicism.

I want to say this quickly. This this relates to, um.

Maybe it relates to this point, but. As you think about a heart language, um. There are there are indigenous people who are losing their language in many, many places in Colombia. Um, there are some groups that largely speak Spanish. There are some that speak Spanish and their indigenous language. And then there are some that, um, that learn Spanish only after they are maybe when they go to school or as a as a older child. But. They're even the ones that have largely lost their indigenous language definitely have not lost their animistic quote heritage or their their way of thinking, uh, is not lost. I quote somebody else, but it makes made so much sense to me.

He's talking about how civilization in general has affected this particular people group close to us. He said this about them. They are not going back. In other words, they're not going back to exactly where they were before. But they haven't really left either.

They haven't really left either. And that goes across the their worldview, their way of thinking, their practices. All right. So that's partially reached, misreached. And this. Uh, there's there's almost a hundred indigenous languages in Colombia, but probably, uh, 60 percent of them are are really identifiable anymore. So there's there's just a large spectrum, continuum of of unreached to partially reached to misreached. Misreached basically just people have had contact with missionaries. Maybe they've had contact with Catholicism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons. Um.

Not, uh, yeah. The result of that is anything from syncretism, animism, atheism. Um, there's even cults that, uh, have have found their way into the deep parts of the Amazon. I'm not sure if part of that is because it's it's a.

The effort if their effort is to hide or if it's something that's somewhat attractive. I don't know how much they're proselytizing the indigenous people. I know that does happen, is happening. There's a there's a group called Israelitas, which is a strange mixture of of, um, Old Testament, uh, and. Unbiblical practices as well.

So that's the unreached, the gap. The barrier between us and the unreached. And maybe it's actually a ravine. Um, something very large. I think of a of a route between, uh, a road system between Bogotá and Villa Esencial. Bogotá is the capital of Colombia in the mountains. And as you come out of Bogotá and go to a town called Villa Esencial, it used to take many, many hours to travel that short stretch. And recently they built bridges over ravines, tunnels through mountains.

And I think about some of these deep ravines, 900, 1000 feet deep, and they put a bridge across. And now suddenly it's very easy to get across. I get that that type of a of a of a gap. So this gap is is obvious. Let's not forget, you know, we can talk about the practical reasons why there is unreached, but let's not forget it's a spiritual warfare. There is a spiritual reason why these these people are not reached. And it was interesting because this morning, uh, Brother Dale mentioned a few things that actually I I uh relate very directly to to what we found in Colombia. I just mentioned them very briefly. You have them there in front of you.

Um, protective measures, government policies. There's certain missionaries that would consider themselves missionaries, but they would say, we're not supposed to go, uh, into these places. They can come to us if they want to. Um, and would possibly even report to the government, be very connected to the government in in that train of thought, anthropologists, etc.

Uh, it's very true. The harmful, uh, the. Yeah, harmful contact in the past. Um, stories of actually some of the groups in Colombia, um, are there partly because of of fleeing the, um, so when the rubber trade, the rubber boom, and some of the extreme, brutal practices of enslaving them and punishing them if they did not perform, uh, some of these groups seem to have fled from that to push deeper into the jungle, further away from the rivers, or at least the main rivers. Um.

Cultural misunderstandings. I don't want to spend a lot of time there. Well, yeah, there is. This is this is important. Um, isolation caused by cultural misunderstandings from previous contact. And sometimes we get hung up on the idea of what is culture? What is culture? And we mentioned briefly before, and I just say it again, I just think I like to think of it simply as my habits, my customs, the way I do things that become a part of of the way I live and think, and or not think, but the way I act since birth. Thinking would come more into worldview. And and um I quote here, what is a worldview? A network of basic beliefs in terms of which every aspect of life is interpreted.

And so this becomes extremely important. And it's equally important with your neighbor, but it becomes extremely important. The greater the divide, the more easily there is misunderstanding because that worldview that your listener has interprets what you're saying based on what he already thinks and what he already how he has already perceived the world. And it's it's very critical. It's very important, but it's also easy to miss because we don't always think about how I think, and we don't always think about why I do what I do.

It's just the way. It's just the right thing to do.

Uh, geographical challenges, travel to them is is difficult. You know, almost every, every community in in the Amazon area requires air travel, boat travel, sometimes vehicle travel in between there, and foot travel.

Walking. Summary. The isolated are unreachable by traditional mission strategy. And I think this is one of the key points. You know, we go, we go into sometimes we go into missions with a preconceived idea of. Of what it's going to be like. And we get there and we find out we were wrong.

And I think it's become more and more apparent, more and more obvious that some of the traditional, um, stories or the stories of traditional ways of going into areas where we say it's a clean slate, we're going to start. Nobody's heard the gospel. We're going to learn their language, translate scripture, start a church.

We hear stories. We read about, you know, we could name a few of of stories that we read about even as early as, you know, seventies, eighties, nineties.

It's it's really changed. How it's going to be, how are these people actually going to become reachable? Um, so how can we build this bridge? So some of the things that we've thought about and experienced, looked at here again, where I don't have a lot of experience to talk from, but there's certainly some things that we've thought about, passionate about, and care a lot about. Building the bridge. The bottom of your paper there, I believe.

The bridge, building the bridge to get to the unreached. So first of all, I want to comment the edge principle. Uh, this this term is not not original with me, but the concept is extremely important. Um, find the edge of the church. And build out from that point. And so as we think about Colombia, that is our goal to go and find the edge of where maybe you can find a believer or you can find somebody that's willing to be discipled or mentored.

And and you can go into a long term relationship with that person, maybe a years. And and as you learn to to work together and think together, perhaps they can help form that bridge to get to places to where you are. And obviously, maybe it's not just finding a believer, but bringing someone to Christ and then mentoring them and teaching them to be a teacher.

Next thing here, multicultural. What is this bridge going to look like? And what does it look like? Multicultural. Building the bridge involves everyone along the way that is willing. Everyone along the way that is willing. I think this is incredibly important because as we've if we've worked in Colombia, and actually I remember, uh, I I didn't didn't remember so specifically until I was sitting here that seven years ago, we were here. Uh, um, I know I was here. It was a group of people from O Nations Bible Translations. It was the first time that I really talked about some people that some some people groups in Colombia that I wanted to to, uh, work towards learning to know and seeing what their needs were and if there was a way to to get into a a mentoring relationship with them.

One of them in particular is a perfect example for what what we've seen a lot of. And you can think about syncretism here and and some things that I found actually somewhat discouraging. But I think of a one man of a of a people group in Colombia that is a part of a network that he is endeavoring to translate the scriptures. Um, and.

And I'm not sure exactly how that's going. And I think it's a good thing. And I think it's very probable that that he will have a reasonably good translation in at least the work that he's doing. But I was very discouraged in trying to relate to him and his interpretation of scripture and what I guess I would call a synchristic gospel.

And so we have to reckon with that. And finding somebody that's willing and broken is the most important step. And then you have somebody to work with. Um, so we have the sending culture, maybe the United States, maybe a different country. Um, you know, obviously the if we're there in Colombia, we're the foreigners.

We have the host country culture. And so in Colombia, we've worked with various Colombians. And I have one. One good friend who, um, a a brother, he doesn't live where we are right now, but, uh, maybe that can happen sometime. But he has he has been very valuable and very helpful in creating connections and helping with this bridge building indigenous culture. Um, so there's people to relate to today in Leticia who hopefully will help form connections to some of the the people groups in Colombia that could work with in the future. All right. Teaching teachers. So this is maybe the crux or the most important aspect of this whole thing is.

And maybe this should be the the motto of every missionary. And maybe it is. But we need to focus on the few and focus on teaching teachers who then can go. And it obviously becomes even more imperative when you work in a place where if you go yourself, you could destroy all future work.

Teaching teachers, missionaries training people to go further into place is currently impossible to go themselves. All right. So obviously we have the verse and the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will also be able to teach others also. This is not just some idea that we came up with. The Paul talked about it. All right. Let's move on. Building the bridge. Um, I mentioned that that network of the roads that goes from Bogotá to Villa Esencial.

I think it was. I think it was in 2018. And it was. Actually, somebody maybe commented to me about in the United States. So it was kind of a a world news for a bit. There was a bridge that collapsed, a huge bridge. It was it was they were trying to build a bridge across a ravine that was 900 feet deep. And in the process of building the bridge, the bridge fell over on its own weight before they finished constructing it.

I think there were ten people. Well, one place said nine people were killed. And it was actually a miracle. It wasn't more people. There was normally 200 workers on that bridge, and most of them were in a safety meeting that morning.

A little bit ironic, but the bridge collapsed while it was being built.

What about the bridge that we're talking about? We don't want this bridge to collapse.

And one thing that has become very, um, yeah, that that that has become very dear to our hearts is just the the considering how important preparedness is to be prepared to go into this process. And I think about it even in a very personal sense, even after living in Colombia for seven years. And and I realize how much I have to learn to be more prepared and further prepared for what we're supposed to continue to do. God prepared His people for many years. I think it was just commented here in this building about Paul and how many years He was being prepared. We have Moses in the wilderness for 40 years and many other people, but we want not only to find out.

The point is not to find out how to go, but how to stay, how to stay. And so.

Okay, I was thinking. I was thinking that I needed to quit at 3:45, I think 4:00, at least at the end of the questions. Um.

That helps a little. All right. So let's let's go. If you have your Bibles with you, I want to just read this. Philippians two is thinking about crossing culture and becoming.

Learning to become. We talk about being bilingual. Maybe we should also talk about being bicultural. Um, somebody just mentioned that me recently about being bicultural, uh, about himself being bicultural. And yeah, we should become bicultural if we're going to work in another culture.

All right. Philippians two. And and I was just thinking about Jesus.

I'm just going to take the time to read. Let's see. Let's just break into the middle of this thing here. Verse five. Let's start with verse five. Let this mind be in you. Philippians two five. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation and took upon Him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of man. And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. So. Jesus left the world or the yeah, the world that He knew to come down to become like a man, to show us who God is.

Jesus, the Word of God, to communicate God to us. And in this passage, Paul is talking about humility. And and I think. And I and I think it's important to read and and valuable to to learn from other missionaries. And and I I like to read books about that. But maybe this actually is is a repeating a point that was said this morning. What's the one thing that is needed? Uh, and that point was brokenness. And I turned it here. Humility. Cultural learning is based in humility and unselfishness. Cultural learning is based in humility and unselfishness. Christ was humble. He was humble to to to leave the world and the highness that He knew and become like a man.

Humbly accepting that other people have good ways to do things too. And that is just the way it is. Whether we're in a foreign culture where things are more extreme, or even in our own family versus the other family that comes to church, or our family and our next door neighbor.

Cultural humility.

Um, you are a learner and a teacher. I think it was just commented on here, um, about. I think it was Brother Mark mentioned about being a learner and going into a community as a learner. You earn your right to teach in a community.

Remember, you are the teacher and you want to earn that right to teach, but you are a learner. You cannot teach until you've learned. Respecting local authorities and social structures. One thing we've tried to do is we go. There's actually, uh, different indigenous communities around us that are fluent in Spanish, and we have these some, um, we need more, a few more yet, but 101 Bible story books from Cam that are donated through Cam. And sometimes we go into these communities and it's kind of a contact point for for maybe not the first, maybe the second visit.

Um.

But before we go very far into the community, the first question is, where is the chief's house? And then that's important for other reasons too. But I like to just simply show him the book I want to hand out and say, you know, we'd like to go to each house and and hand this book out to the the father or the parent in the home.

And, um, and so we do that sometimes and do that while we're maybe actually trying to visit for another reason too. And but I think that's very important. Respecting the the, uh, the social structure and the local authorities as far as you can. Number the second thing there says, humbly enter with connections, building relations, building bridges or connections, enter with connections, bridging from relationship to relationship. And. And y'all probably know how much how important relationships are, especially in in some other cultures.

Sometimes we we miss that at first. And and I find that so interesting. And we've tried very hard to travel with other people who have been some of these places before. And and I just struck. And so there's this thing in the indigenous community around us that remind us of what some people call the Mennonite game. So who are you related to? Oh, is that your brother? Is that your cousin?

And, uh, and I've tried to stay away from that, but now I find that's very amusing to me because we go to these indigenous communities and I take one of my friends, uh, Enoch along and we go into this place. He hasn't been for 20 years and he's we sit down, we start visiting and and find out, oh, the head the chief's wife is my cousin or. And then often you find out later on that it was actually his second or third cousin. Or recently, a couple of weeks ago, we stayed in a house, you know, talking about misunderstandings, right?

And we were going to stay in his niece's house. Well, I found out after we were there that it was his second cousin's daughter. And so since it was a generation down, it was a niece, but it was actually a different type of a different relationship. Some of that is is is a combination of language and cultural. And the fact is both of these, well, especially Enoch is, uh, is bilingual between actually he's more than that, but between Spanish and the indigenous language. He also knows Portuguese.

All right. Let's keep moving here. The importance of cultural understanding. So so I think there's this one is very important to me. And often when we think about deciphering culture and scriptural principles, we talk about we let's not compromise scripture to save cultural practices. And I'm I'm 100% with that. And let's let's stick that because let's stick with that because the result of not doing that is syncretism. And that's incredibly important. But there's another part that maybe we've tended to miss. And that is it's very important again to decipher between culture and scripture, you know, scriptural principles because you you should not clutter the scripture with your culture and imposing your culture on them. Why?

They will reject the gospel because of your insensitivity and my insensitivity. And I think that's also very important. All right. Um, becoming fluent in the language is imperative to communicate the gospel.

Um. A lot could be said there. We know it's important, but I've been struck again recently listening to missionaries who have gone before. Hudson Taylor was one that was very, very adamant about that. He would talk about spending as many as 12 hours a day until he could communicate the gospel to these people. A man named John Payton. And, uh, actually I, uh.

I think I can I wanted to quote him. Um.

Here it is.

Among. Among the many difficulties the South Seas missionaries faced, no one can penetrate very deeply into the minds and the hearts of the people till he has learned to speak to them in their own mother tongue. A missionary is incapable of knowing the thoughts, ambitions, and deepest throbbing desires of the heart without first knowing his manner of speech.

John Payton. Do you know in Proverbs it says to answer before listening? That is folly and shame.

Communicate and don't just focus on learning the language, but learning to understand how they are thinking and what they are hearing when you're saying what you're saying.

So become not only fluent in the language, but lastly in this section, become bicultural. Jesus. Jesus knew very well how to live among men. He knew very well how to live in the heavenly realm. I know He was God and He was man. He's different than us. But I think there's a lot of parallels, a lot of things to learn from that. And we won't take the time to go any deeper into that. Building the bridge. So I spend a lot of time on that because I think that is something that that needs a lot of attention if we're going to get to these unreached places.

Just obviously number two here, identify the challenges. And I often think about Nehemiah and his crew there building the wall. Didn't they have like like one hand on the spear and the other hand working? Or did they sometimes have somebody guarding? I think that's how it was. And I think of that, the spiritual warfare involved. Um.

The challenge, the challenge of we've talked about the foreign aspect, cultural differences and challenges to be overcome long term. Be realistic about the length of time it takes to get there. You know, I don't know. We're currently relating to a couple contacts and one of them in particular, I think about where he could go and where all he could go. But this could be years until he could go.

Um.

And there's a lot of a lot of challenges in the current environment of the people that we relate to. There's in almost every place that's, shall we say, contactable or it's possible to contact. Um, there's already dependency issues. Um, there's other people that they have known that had white skin or had the name missionary attached to them and what they expected from that. Um.

And one thing here again, and this is something that that is I think about a lot is connect your vision with the real life environment where the need exists. I mentioned briefly that personally we've had our own ideas of what mission would be like. And all of you who have lived out of the country for a couple of years probably had one idea before you went and a different idea after you were there and what you expected the people to be like and what you expected them to to know or not know about scripture or what they how they perceived you.

Um, connect your vision with reality. All right. Maybe this next one, let's look at this briefly. Develop your strategy for the construction of this bridge. So the practical steps for getting to there. And so I just give you the example of of how we're thinking about the Amazon.

For us, what a practical steps looks like is very simply number one, help prepare North American teams to work with the people that can be contacted. That's one. Two, train and equip the indigenous people at the edge. And three, send or go with the indigenous people to the most unreached.

All right. Strategy. You're going to have to put a plan in place for language acquisitions. You're going to have to put a plan in place for cultural acquisition. And this, in a sense, is in an order of importance. Lastly, and most important, is put a plan in place to how to become a person of the word, immersed in the word.

That has come out some before, uh, this morning. So I think we'll move on. But that is incredibly important. If you can get that one right, some of the others will will fall into place. So build the bridge. Just go make it happen. And I often think about this verse that was brought to my attention a number of years ago in First John 4:17. It's the last part. As he is, so are we in this world. And I love that verse. And we talked about Jesus coming and becoming like a man to reveal to us the heart of God. As he is, so are we in this world. Whatever Jesus would be doing, how he would relate to that cultural cultural misunderstanding or that cross-cultural wreck that I'm experiencing a difficulty, how would Jesus relate to that?

Um, be go to the edge and work with people along the way. So we have this vision. We want to get there. But all along this way, we're meeting people, and some of them may get involved with building the bridge, and maybe some of it's just meeting and working with the people that God brings into your lives. Um, I think of people that we've done Bible studies with in Laeticia that may not have any connection to indigenous people, but maybe they do. Maybe they. And it's amazing what all I've learned through through that. Um.

Even though it wasn't specifically developing a relationship with a connection to the place where we're really targeting. At the same time, let's be focused. Um. Build a firm foundation with each disciple along the way. Uh, chronological Bible teaching. That's that's, uh, I've really valued that in in the Bible studying that we've done.

And finally, be flexible and adapt your strategy as needed. And I think this has become more obvious in working in some of the places that we've worked with and even in talking to other mission organizations in Colombia. Um, the places that are left to go have already tested existing strategies. And so I think if we're really going to get to these places, we're going to have to go in, yes, with a focus and with a vision, but with a willingness to adapt and adjust as we go along the way.

All right. So what can we take home today? And I realize we're probably talking to a broad spectrum of people. Um. And I want to try to just just I want all of us to have something to take with us. Obviously, prayer cannot be overemphasized. Prayer is such a is is the key.

These unreached people will never be reached without prayer. Um, and I think one prayer for these unreached people is that God would prepare them to receive the scent. Goers prepare laborers for the harvest. Senders prepare people to send and encourage laborers.

Um, preparing to go. And some of the things that I think about as I look back in my own life and and I've been struck with and and some of the people that that have come to Laeticia or other place where we used to live in Colombia, and maybe it was their first or their second time out of the country of the United States.

There's so much that can be done from wherever you're at to being in the place that God has for you so that you're ready for the next step. And and and I want to say this briefly as to fathers and families and parents. And I think about how are you and I raising our children to be students of the Word of God? Um, and and here let's just go briefly down through these points. But I think all of these points, some of the things, the people that have become the most useful in missions, it was their families that made it happen that way and the way they were raised in their homes. Obviously, we can overcome the challenges if if we if we didn't come from a home that that prepared us for that.

But be in the Word now and be busy with the people around you. Um, some of the experiences that have have have helped me so much in relating to people in Colombia are the interactions that I had in Georgia before I ever went to Colombia. And I remember needing to prepare to go to prison for Bible study. Sometimes it was weekly. It wasn't always weekly. And and being having that experience was huge. Uh, learn cultural humility now, um, even about the the way you live now. Um, and now this one I think is important and I and I value the way that my parents raised me in this. Learn to have a simple lifestyle now.

Then you don't have to try to give up so much. That actually came out here. Brother Mark mentioned something similar. And obviously you can start to learn a language. It's probably never been an easier time to learn a foreign language in the United States than today.

Um.

Prepare to send. And I want to say this briefly. Another illustration of sending missionaries that I like a lot. You have a missionary. Maybe he's going in down into the well to get something. And you have a group of people that are holding on to this rope and letting him down and then pulling him back up. And sometimes you get burn marks when you do that.

And and I know some of the senders at Wills Ridge at our church have burn marks in their hands. And I appreciate what they've done for us. And I think this is maybe something that has gotten missed in missions is understanding, appreciating the the role of senders.

Uh, and I think senders need to have a basic concept of what is needed for cultural language acquisition of the worker. And senders should understand the scope and necessity of their own calling. So we got to move on. But I just want to make that point. It is an important role that needs to be filled. And it needs to be the, um, understood and addressed, uh, as a a core, important role in the the whole building the bridge. Finally, I just want to end. Maybe I plead to churches, um, whether whether you're a church leader or you're involved in your local brotherhood, we need to be working at training teachers now. And I that is something that maybe we could all grow in a little bit or a whole lot.

There's encourage young people to stretch your own abilities doing kingdom work. One thing that I found in my own life in working with Church Plan in another part of Colombia was the benefit for myself in what I learned by taking.

Maybe by taking somebody else along with a Bible study. Maybe it was a brother in the church, a particular one, Luis Carlos, who I really he was it was a part of our church there in that previous church, uh, plant. And especially if it was somebody that he had a relationship with, he'd say, let's go together. And and, uh, taking somebody along as you go about your own work, I think, is very important in training teachers.

Um, recently, in the last point there about can you be available to study deep in the Word of God with a goer? Maybe you're a maybe you're maybe you're a maybe you're a church leader. Maybe you aren't. Maybe you can just study together with another young person that would like to go. And I was really blessed within the last six months as I was talking to somebody who was preparing to be a missionary and preparing for lifetime mission work. And he said that, uh, they were they were working out a schedule to where he could do Bible studies with his pastor just to that, just for that end, just to go deeper into the Word of God.

And that just blessed me so much that that was an opportunity that he had. All right. Um, yeah, the last point there says just encourage within your congregation the exploration of what cross-cultural indigenous church planting really looks like.

I think some of these things are questions that we haven't fully entertained until the last couple of years. Um, but it is an important one. So I'll just open it up briefly. Are there any questions? Comments? Other perspective?

Yes. Good. So so the question was, are there young people, especially from indigenous people groups that are moving into the city? And and is it possible to equip them and use them in Bible translation and have a more effective Bible translation? So as far as the first the first aspect of that question, yes.

Um, and there's several reasons for that. There have been people that have left the indigenous environment and came into the city. Sometimes it's because they want to. Sometimes it's because it's become unsafe where they used to live because of fighting between drug cartels.

Um, and some of them would like to live where they used to live. So yes, there are contacts that actually we've been able to connect with people who we wouldn't have been able to connect with otherwise through that. And so in some ways, that's been a really good thing.

All right. So so the second aspect of that question is something I would say we're still learning about. Could we call it, um, discipling? So in some ways, it sounds perfect. Discipling teachers to go back and and go to their people and evangelize. We have seen so many examples of how not to do that. I have seen, um, many, many mission organizations have done that in Colombia and has been a failure. So I think the next question is why? And I'm not quite sure what all those reasons are. I think we're still in the process of maybe identifying some of those reasons and figuring out, uh, what. But I think number one is simply just spend much more time with them.