A Time to Build

There is a time for everything . . . a time to build.
—Ecclesiastes 3:1,3 (NIV)

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
—General George Patton

When Jesus told Peter that the gates of hell would not overcome His church, I think He must have been warning Peter what he was going to face as an early church planter in the first part of the first millennium—building and overcoming.

That certainly describes what we faced during the final part of the second millennium—an era of great expansion as well as tremendous battle. By God’s grace, Pioneers grew faster and farther than we ever dreamed. In 1994, we were identified as the fastest-growing mission in the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association. We had grown to 360 missionaries and appointees and 141 international workers in 29 countries—amazing growth in just 15 years.

God warns us in His Word that the enemy would come to steal, kill and destroy, but He also promises that the gates of hell would not overcome His church. He has been faithful to His Word, helping us to fulfill the second part of our mission statement—to “initiate church-planting movements” wherever we work around the world.

In restricted-access countries where Pioneers works, our missionaries can’t just pass out fliers inviting people to attend a new church. They could be imprisoned or even killed—as could anyone who showed up for the meeting. Church planting can be a long process that begins with finding creative ways to enter these countries, learning the language and culture and spending time to build relationships with the local people. That’s why Pioneers mobilizes missionaries who are commissioned by their sending churches to follow the New Testament pattern of establishing churches.

The first step in church planting is entering the country—and sometimes that takes creativity. Jeff and Cindy Warner from Groton Heights Baptist Church in Connecticut, for example, lived in Croatia learning the language and culture while waiting for the door to open to Bosnia. They launched an innovative sports ministry that led to the salvation of several young Croat teens. Jeff convinced the Croatian government to start a national Croatian softball team, which he and Cindy coached, and Jeff went on to become the Croatian commissioner of softball. It’s not your usual mission strategy, but it works.

Once on the field, the next step toward planting a church is building relationships. Krista (not her real name) has been a part of Pioneers’ team to the Balinese people in Indonesia. A single woman, Krista travels twice a month on her motorcycle to a remote mountain village to share stories from the Old Testament. The people have been very open to her ministry, and against all odds she’s helping to plant the seeds of the gospel that will someday grow into a strong New Testament, mission-sending church.

Pioneers mobilizes missionaries who are commissioned by their sending churches to follow the New Testament pattern of establishing churches.

Taking the time to build relationships is important to most cultures around the world, and it would be impossible to build a church without this key step. Two of our team members serving among Tibetans in Nepal, for example, say that the majority of their work is relational. “We act out the life and gospel of Jesus through our friendships with Tibetans,” they explain. “One of the many ways to begin friendships is to meet a felt need. The Tibetans we live among are refugees and have few job skills of practical use in this developing country.”

This couple is helping Tibetans with language and job skills that will give them a competitive edge in the local job market. A few Buddhist monks even attend the husband’s English class, and one of the graduates of the wife’s cooking class has already opened her own bakery.

Pioneers workers in other countries also use various means to build relationships, all with the end goal of church planting—“tea debates” among Muslims in West Africa, a “Let’s Talk About Life” discussion group in Sarajevo, coffee shops in Hungary and Mongolia, a Mexican restaurant in Macedonia, men’s gatherings in Kuwait, English-language programs and many other creative means.

When a team finally plants a church, they have an entirely new to-do list as they encourage and mobilize national workers to “go” themselves, until all peoples hear the gospel. By the grace of God, Pioneers teams have planted churches in Macedonia, India, Kosovo, Lebanon, Benin, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Thailand and elsewhere.

Eastern Europe: Planting Churches Amidst Rubble

In 1992 we added the “secular world” as the sixth bloc of unreached peoples that Pioneers would focus on for church planting—peoples in Eastern Europe and the countries that made up the former Soviet Union. People in this bloc may appear to be religious from a cultural standpoint, but in reality they are “practical atheists.” A Croatian, for example, told one of our missionaries, “I’m Catholic, but I don’t believe in God.” For many people in the secular bloc, their family religious background is an integral part of their cultural identity, but they don’t profess any belief in God. To them, religion is totally irrelevant to daily life. A large percent of Europeans believe in astrology, good luck charms and fortune tellers, and animism in the form of magic continues to thrive on the continent.⁷

When the doors to Eastern Europe opened, the Lord helped us put together teams for Croatia, Bosnia, Albania and Macedonia. Our area director for Europe, Mike Johnson, and his wife, Diana, lived in Croatia for eight years when it was still part of communist Yugoslavia. There, they started an indigenous church-planting mission and also founded the Yugoslav Bible Institute. However, after several months of daily visits to the Zagreb police station for questioning, they knew their time in Croatia had come to an end.

The Johnsons relocated to Austria to work with a Bible school—and that’s where Bob Hitching, who by this time had become our board chairman, caught up with them. Bob knew that Mike was a pioneer at heart and would never be happy unless he was blazing new paths and opening new fields. He told them about a need in Bosnia, and when Mike and Diana headed there in 1992, no one knew that war was about to break out. Mike put on a bulletproof vest and maneuvered his way through U.N. checkpoints into Sarajevo. Fluent in the language, he was able to get himself into the most war-torn regions of the country.

What he saw and heard was horrifying. More than 200,000 civilians had been killed, and 80,000 women and girls raped. Appalling as it sounds, rapists would attack Muslim women, gouge out their eyes and then place wooden orthodox crosses on their dead bodies as a sign of their “Christian” victory over Islam. When Mike came back from those early trips, he mobilized and motivated his teams, who knew that God had given them an open door to share His love with two million Muslims who needed to hear it.

God began doing amazing things. Two of our couples who were already in Zagreb—the Warners, and Todd and Pamala Price—immediately headed for Zenica, a town of 300,000 that was 40-percent Muslim before the war and 80-percent Muslim after the war. Through their personal witness and friendship, they planted a church within six months and later founded the Bosnian Bible Society.

Another team member, Rob Farnsley, from Fresno, California, moved to Mostar and promptly broke an old missions rule that people in their 40s cannot learn foreign languages. Within a short period of time, Rob was preaching and teaching in the Bosnian language, and a church was planted in Novi Travnik.

Meanwhile, Ted and Netty Esler, a young couple from Grace Church of Roseville, Minnesota, arrived in Sarajevo, where they helped to launch a comprehensive strategy that impacted Bosnian culture at several levels. It wasn’t long before they helped to plant a church in the city, which was quickly handed over to national leadership. That church planted other churches in Sarajevo.

Still seeking to impact the entire culture, the team began strategizing and raising money for projects that would touch the entire country. One of the first was a playground, built in partnership with Kids Around the World, for the children of Dobrinja, the most heavily bombed part of Sarajevo. A playground may not seem like the most needed facility for a city recovering from war, but most of the local children had never played outside because there were so many land mines buried in the ground.

“Adventure Playground,” which covers nearly half an acre, made an immediate impact on the city and opened doors for the gospel in Sarajevo. In the days following the war, it was probably the only play area in Sarajevo, and was invariably crowded. On opening day alone, 30,000 children visited the site with their families!

The team came up with another creative idea to impact the community with the love of Jesus. They purchased a bombed-out building for a low price, removed about 70 tons of rubble and turned it into an English-language institute, computer training center and a facility where church members can be discipled in their new faith. Our niece, Mary Jo Fletcher, who was on the team at the time, played a strategic role during this foundational stage of the team’s ministry.

One of their most far-reaching projects was arranging for the national TV stations to air two films in the Bosnian language: Joni and The Hiding Place. As a result, the largest number of Bosnians in history heard the gospel of Christ at one time.

In neighboring Albania, our team also planted a church, which helped to minister to many of the thousands of refugees from Kosovo who flooded into Albania during the war.⁸ Most of the refugees were forced from their homes at gunpoint and fled with only the clothes on their backs. In Peshkopi, Albania, our team renovated a dormitory at a tech school to provide housing for 200 refugees. They invested $3,000 in painting, doors, windows, plumbing, electrical work and more, and in the process, built relationships with the refugees. Peshkopi has known only Islam or communism for five centuries, but in just a few years the Lord raised up more than 50 believers. Three are in leadership training, and a new church is emerging. The team’s goal is to purchase a building for a Christian center for worship services and also a school to teach English and computer skills. Unemployment in Peshkopi hovers above the 50-percent mark, so a training school would stimulate the local economy and be a powerful evangelistic tool. Within the next four years, the team believes the Lord will direct them to move on to another town, allowing the Albanian believers to continue as an independent church—self-supporting, self-governing and self-reproducing.

Kyrgyzstan: Starting From Square One

One of the most exciting stories of church planting and God’s redemptive power comes from the small land-locked country of Kyrgyzstan. In 1991, when the Soviet system fell apart and the Central Asia republics embraced independence, there were fewer than a dozen known believers among the Kyrgyz people and no known Kyrgyz fellowships. By the end of the 20th century, there were more than 2,000 believers in 45 churches, with an increasing number of well-trained, effective pastors.

Since 1994, Pioneers has been a part of the partnership that God has raised up to grow His church in this country, which many believe will become a powerful force for missions and evangelism for the rest of Central Asia. Pioneers workers in Kyrgyzstan are involved in discipleship, ethnomusicology, business development and a number of other initiatives designed to empower national leaders to reach their own nation—including seemingly mundane events such as neighborhood cleanups. One Saturday evening, Pioneers team members Kathy and Tom Sansera (not their real names) were working on their language study when there was a knock on their apartment door. One of their neighbors was inviting them to join the yearly clean-up of their apartment grounds—at 9:00 the next morning. Tom explained that they went to church on Sunday morning, so they wouldn’t be able to help. The neighbor woman went away disappointed—and Tom and Kathy wondered if they had made the right decision. Wasn’t God honored by their decision to testify to a stranger on His behalf, especially in this Muslim and secular nation? Then the Lord reminded them of the story of the Good Samaritan, and the Sanseras realized their decision would make them like the priest who hurried to his religious duties instead of helping a needy stranger.

The next morning, Tom ran down four flights of stairs to tell their neighbor that they had changed their minds. When she asked, “Why?” Tom had an opportunity to put his language study to good use. He shared the story about how a wounded Jewish traveler was helped by a despised Samaritan. The Kyrgyz woman listened intently to every word and then smiled. Tom and Kathy spent the morning picking up trash and sweeping the grounds with handmade brooms. By the time they finished, they had met every person in their apartment building. It wasn’t the typical Sunday morning church service, but I believe God was very pleased with Tom and Kathy’s decision. The friendships they made will surely help them reach their goal to plant a church in this Muslim country.

As part of our work in Kyrgyzstan, Pioneers also focuses on the Dungan, an unreached people group that lives in the mountains and valleys of this beautiful country. About 44,600 Dungan live here—a proud people who are famous for their hospitality and hold many ceremonies and banquets to preserve their culture. Most Dungan are Muslim, and there are less than one percent Christians among them. Sixty percent have never even heard the gospel. Our team’s objective is to translate the New Testament and portions of the Old Testament into Dungan, promote literacy so that people can read the Scriptures, and plant churches in the four major Dungan towns.

All of this begins one relationship at a time, of course. A Pioneers team member recently met one of the ten known Dungan believers, a young man we will call Sasha, who is studying at a local university. Sasha invited our team member to his village for a holiday celebration. “During the weekend,” our team member told us, “Sasha, six of his male relatives and I visited eight different Dungan homes in one day, eating and drinking tea at each home. They eat sweets first (pastries, candies) in one room, then move to another room and table where we were served meat, noodles, fish, bread, salad, pickles and more. At one home, there was a 20-foot table covered with five rows of bowls filled with pastries, raisins, nuts, cookies, and candies. I counted 27 different kinds of candy!”

Sasha is undoubtedly the only believer in his family, and the holiday celebration included a visit to the local cemetery, where family members conducted religious rituals that showed our team member firsthand how lost the Dungan are without Jesus. Foreigners rarely get invited to such celebrations, and so the experience provided valuable relationship building that will eventually help plant a church among this people.

Mongolia: Building the True Kingdom

“I am so thankful to God that someone obeyed and came to my harvest field,” a Mongolian Christian woman named Narangerel (not her real name) shared with Pioneers team members. Pioneers’ church-planting strategy is to involve national workers as much as possible, with the goal of giving them complete leadership and responsibility for the church. That day is coming in Mongolia, where just a decade ago you could count the number of Christians on two hands. Today there are probably 2,000 Christians in the country, including Narangerel, who shares her story:

<p class="chapter-long-quote">I was born and raised in Mongolia. When I grew up, there was not one church in my village of 20,000 people. Actually, there was not even one church in all of Mongolia. In 1990, God began to move. For the first time ever, the communist leaders allowed democratic elections. Mongolia opened to the Western world. </p>

<p class="chapter-long-quote">In the summer of 1992, a group of Korean Christians came to my village for a short time. There were only about ten people meeting at this time. When I returned from a year of working in another town, a friend showed me a New Testament and said that some people were going to the Jesus meeting. She handed me the New Testament, and I said, “What nice paper.” I read the introduction and saw the name “Lord of the Universe.” I thought, “Yes, I do believe that one God created everything. We didn’t come from monkeys.” That day was the first time I had ever heard the name Jesus. I had seen some movies and thought maybe Jesus was a Catholic priest. </p>

<p class="chapter-long-quote">A few months later, another friend invited me to the Jesus meeting. There were about 20 to 25 people there. We sang some songs and a young Mongol man spoke about the Holy Spirit and Satan. I had heard about evil spirits before, but never about Satan. I certainly had never heard about the Holy Spirit. </p>

<p class="chapter-long-quote">After the meeting, some of us went to a believer’s home to help him with some work. As we walked, they shared with me about Jesus and salvation. I didn’t understand much, but on that day, October 4, 1992, I believed that Jesus had died for me and that I wanted to follow Him. </p>

<p class="chapter-long-quote">Since then, I have been a worker in my church leading the children’s church. I became involved with Pioneers when I helped the 1994 summer team conduct children’s camps. I am a student at the Union Bible Training Center in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. My husband and I want to work in the countryside of Mongolia. Why? Because, like me a few years ago, too many people still don’t know Jesus. It is difficult today to believe that people still have not heard. Jesus said to His disciples, “Pray for workers to go into the harvest fields. The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.” I am so thankful to God that someone obeyed and came to my harvest field.</p>

Pioneers assisted in founding the Union Bible Training Center (UBTC), where Narangerel studied. The Center is an association of Mongolian churches and foreign ministries that work together to equip leaders for the emerging Mongol church. In three years, enrollment at UBTC grew from 27 to 117 students. Pioneers’ Mongolia Team leader served as director and later chairman of the board of the four-year school, which trains students academically and in practical situations where they put their “book knowledge” to work. Most students can’t afford tuition, room or board to attend the school, and their young churches can’t contribute much to the costs, either. In fact, UBTC charges only 15 percent of the actual cost to enable as many students as possible to attend. Pioneers launched a scholarship program to reward students who attain high academic standing and spiritual development. This is a strategic way to affect the future of the Mongol church.

In 1994, Narangerel helped with a Pioneers summer team working in Mongolia, and she met one of our American team members. They were married a few years later, and together hope to plant churches in remote areas of Mongolia.

Russia: From the Military to Missions

I wasn’t the only one to draw on my military background when I stepped into missions. To launch our ministry in Russia, God used a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel named Warren Wagner. For two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Warren was stationed in Central Russia as a commander of the U.S. Missile Inspection Group. During that time, he developed relationships with Soviet officials, including those working in the Udmurt Republic. This area was the heart of the Soviet defense industry and was sealed off from the outside world during the communist era.

Warren retired from the military with a burden to reach the people he once worked with. His wife, Kim, already served in Pioneers’ office in Sterling, Virginia, in the finance department, so when Warren retired, he joined Pioneers.

It was the perfect match: We wanted to initiate a ministry in the former Soviet Union, and Warren had all the right contacts to do so. His relationships with former officials, combined with his vision for using innovative techniques, helped him to establish the Russian-American Christian Professionals Institute (RCPI) in Izhevsk. Today, this outreach includes business consultation, TV programming assistance, care for orphans and classes in English, computers and drama. Pioneers missionaries serve in partnership with national workers—Russians, Udmurts, Tatars, and other native peoples—to evangelize and plant churches in Izhevsk and the surrounding villages. God has raised up four new churches in the area, including a fledgling congregation in a village in Central Udmurtia. More than 100 people have already placed their faith in Christ and are working to show His love to others who are lost.

One of the first Udmurts whom our team reached out to was a 17 year old named Andrei. Like any unsaved teenager, Andrei’s main goal in life was having fun. On weekends, he would serve as a disk jockey for dances at his high school, and he had friends all over campus. Then he met a group of American English teachers—bi-vocational missionaries with Pioneers who moved to his city in 1993 to minister with RCPI. Andrei was one of the first Udmurts that the team led to Christ. Today, he’s still attracting a crowd—only now he talks about Jesus instead of rock and roll. He has a passion for evangelizing, discipling new believers, leading youth work and taking a personal role in growing one of the strongest new churches in Izhevsk.

Middle East: A Voice in the Desert­­­­­­­

As I write this book, I’ve just returned from a trip to the Middle East with my son, John. We traveled to Sudan, Egypt and Lebanon to visit and encourage Pioneers teams, hear their testimonies, and pray with them. Sudan is in the midst of the longest-running civil war on the planet. Since 1983, more than two million people have been killed and another million have starved to death because of famine. The radical Muslim government in the north has declared a jihad, or holy war, against the southern part of the country, populated by Christians and animists.

The team we partner with in Sudan serves in the midst of extreme hardship and under constant threat of persecution. These 25 national workers and a handful of foreign Christians have a ministry of evangelism and church planting that includes outreach to refugee camps, a Christian bookstore, an orphanage and a medical clinic. The war has displaced four million Sudanese, many of whom live in appalling conditions in refugee camps where there is little food or medical attention.

Words cannot describe the heart-wrenching conditions of these people who have no hope in this world apart from Christ. We held two open-air evangelistic meetings in a camp on the outskirts of Khartoum, the capital city, which is located in the Muslim part of Sudan. Our team set up a stage and sound system on the sand, and more than 700 refugees listened as John preached about Abraham. John explained how the patriarch searched for the city that God had promised him, but lived in a tent all his life, only to discover that the city God promised was in Heaven. At the close of both meetings, many of these precious people trusted Christ for their salvation.

Helping to meet some of the needs of these believers is part of the way we assist them in church planting. In one refugee camp, where believers worship in the open air as temperatures soar past 100 degrees, we were asked to provide a new roof for the building, as well as benches and supplies for their one-room school. We supplied $10,000 worth of donated medicine for the team’s medical clinic, which is strategically located in a major city. The clinic is a great help to the Muslim people in the area and provides an effective outreach to them.

Needless to say, life for team members in Sudan is not easy. One of the team doctors, a single man, lives in a simple room in the back of the clinic, and the national evangelists live on just $175 a month. Part of our goal in traveling to Sudan was to encourage these faithful workers. Each morning, John shared a devotional with the team, followed by moving testimonies from former Muslims who have been transformed by the Good News of salvation in Jesus Christ.

Pioneers has teams in several other restricted-access countries in the Middle East, where they are praying and working to plant churches. In some countries, such as Kuwait, gaining ground for the Kingdom is a lengthy process. In other places, the church is growing dramatically. A Pioneers couple in one very restricted country in the Middle East has seen some dramatic conversions. Judy, the wife, is an American, and her husband, Ali, is an Egyptian believer (not their real names). Their goal is to reach the 1.3 million Bedouins who live in the deserts of the Middle East. Most are unreached by the gospel. Judy shares one of the exciting testimonies they’ve experienced:

<p class="chapter-long-quote">The man standing at our apartment door had all the indications of a very religious Muslim. I had never seen him before, but I did know the teenager with him—19-year-old Tahir, who had accepted Christ just two days earlier. </p>

<p class="chapter-long-quote">Tahir made the introductions: “This is my father, and he wants to talk to your husband...now.” </p>

<p class="chapter-long-quote">My husband, Ali, who is a Christian convert from Islam, had been working with Tahir for three months. Tahir was eager to learn and one of the most receptive people we’ve encountered. Earlier that week, Tahir had come to our apartment while we were meeting with Dr. Lee Bruckner, a member of Pioneers’ board, and John Fain, who at the time was director of field ministries. They were in our country to find out firsthand about our work and evaluate what type of workers would best assist us.</p>

<p class="chapter-long-quote">As they talked with Tahir, he made the life-changing decision to accept Christ and dedicate his life to Him. Ali had warned Tahir of the possible consequences of a Muslim embracing Christianity and even searched for a new job and living quarters for Tahir in another part of the country in case we needed to move him quickly.</p>

<p class="chapter-long-quote">All this was on my mind as I led Tahir and his father to the balcony to meet with Ali. Back in the kitchen preparing tea, I knew there could only be one reason for this unannounced visit. Within minutes, the secret police could arrive, if they were not already waiting downstairs. Tahir’s father might even have planned for his other sons to murder Tahir. Killings like this had taken place in the past, and the convert’s head would be placed on a pole for viewing. The local sheriff’s report would state that it was an “accidental death.”</p>

<p class="chapter-long-quote">Fear enveloped me. Silently I prayed, “Lord, anything is possible through You.” Still the monster of fear gripped my throat. I told myself, “Faith the size of a mustard seed—surely you can do that.”</p>

<p class="chapter-long-quote">Instantly my feelings melted into peace! I carried tea to the balcony and withdrew, watching the proceedings covertly. After half an hour, the father rose abruptly and left with Tahir. As soon as they were gone, I asked Ali what happened.</p>

<p class="chapter-long-quote">“Tahir told his father everything,” Ali said. “He showed him his Bible and explained his conversion. His father said Tahir had been a terror for years. He had been disrespectful, cursed his parents, refused to go to school, and did not want to work. He had vandalized the neighborhood and was a heartbreak to his mother. Finally, his father threw him out of the house. But he said for the last three months since I’ve been working with Tahir, he has changed. He is diligent, visits his parents often, and treats them with love and respect. His father couldn’t understand the change. After Tahir told him he had been learning the Bible, he began to understand.”</p>

<p class="chapter-long-quote">I was in shock! “Does this mean he’s not going to turn you in?” I asked Ali.</p>

<p class="chapter-long-quote">“He wants to bring his older son to learn about the Bible and how to become a Christian. He said, ‘Make him just like Tahir!’”</p>

<p class="chapter-long-quote">All the air went out of my lungs. Vividly, I recalled the night of Tahir’s conversion. Tahir had asked for a Christian name. “I will call you Andrew Tahir,” Ali had said, and Dr. Bruckner immediately added, “And Andrew brought his brother” (see John 1:41). These words had been prophetic.</p>

<p class="chapter-long-quote">Christ meets us where we are. Even though my husband has faith the size of Mt. Everest, the Lord still held Miss Mustard Seed in His hand that night.</p>

The repressive situation in this country intensified not long after Judy wrote that account, forcing this couple to escape at night out the back door of their apartment while the secret police waited for them at the front door. They fled overland during the night to another country in the Middle East, where they continue to minister to Muslims, always looking to build relationships with the goal of planting a church.

Another unreached people group in the Middle East is the Druze. Their religion is a mixture of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. They believe in one God who cannot be understood. Our team in Lebanon is ministering among the 400,000 Druze people. What a privilege to tell them about a God who sent His only Son—Christ, the Messiah—so that we can both know Him and love Him!

A few years ago, there were only two known believers among the Druze. Our team has seen a tremendous breakthrough in Lebanon, where 100 Druze have come to Christ in recent years, and many more have expressed openness to the gospel! There is a newly established Druze church, and members are actively reaching out to friends, family and neighbors. One worker shared this amazing report of God’s faithfulness:

<p class="chapter-long-quote">S is a 16-year-old who has been coming faithfully to all our meetings. He also plays percussion (the dirbakkeh) during our worship time. He has been a believer for over a year now.</p>

<p class="chapter-long-quote">In January 1999, his brother, N, woke up in the night nauseated and vomiting blood. They rushed him to the hospital and found that he had a bleeding ulcer in his stomach, caused by a very strong antibiotic he was taking to treat a kidney infection. N was at the hospital for six days, during which time he received seven units of blood. Through S, his mother and father asked us to come pray for him at the hospital. Three local believers and I visited him. He was in a two-bed room, and the other patient was a Maronite Christian⁹ who also had two guests visiting him. N’s mom, dad, and uncle were there, too. We visited for a few minutes, and then asked N if he wanted Jesus to heal him.</p>

<p class="chapter-long-quote">He said, “Yes, please, Jesus, heal me.”</p>

<p class="chapter-long-quote">We prayed for him with our thick accents, and the Maronites in the room were staring, not believing what they were seeing.</p>

<p class="chapter-long-quote">The next day, his father came to thank us and told us that N had stopped bleeding and was going in for an endoscopy later that morning. A few days later we heard what happened during the endoscopy. N, who was under local anesthesia, heard the doctor shout in unbelief. He called seven or eight other doctors to come and watch what was happening on the screen. It was the ulcer “zipping up” and healing right before their eyes! The doctors were stunned, saying, “This is from God. It can only be God.”</p>

<p class="chapter-long-quote">We have had a few Bible studies with N’s parents. N is now attending all our meetings with his brother, S. We are pretty certain that N’s father and brother have become believers.</p>

<p class="chapter-long-quote">Another family from a remote town has also come to faith. The father is a sheik in his sixties, and his son is also a sheik. I am amazed at what God is doing. Who would have thought that a Druze sheik and his family would come to faith in Christ? It is the Lord’s doing. What rest and peace we have in the knowledge that He is doing the work. We don’t have to keep up the pressure to produce. It is in His hands.</p>

These exciting stories of God’s faithfulness are being repeated all over the world in places such as Kuwait, Turkey, India, Uzbekistan, Hungary, Russia, Vietnam and unreached areas of Bolivia and Peru. We pray for unreached peoples and ask God—the Lord of the harvest—to raise up missionary laborers to go. He answers that prayer and sends them our way. They start or join teams that plant churches. And God continues to work miracles.

These victories often come with a high cost, as the enemy contests ground we have won. We’ve experienced the joys of seeing God’s church grow, and we’ve also shed tears of grief as we’ve seen families pay the ultimate price for the gospel.

Tom and Diane Lawrence, from Houston Chinese Church in Texas, came to Pioneers in 1984 with a burden for the unreached people of China. They already had a fruitful ministry to international students from mainland China who were studying at universities in Houston.

Tom and Diane were a natural “fit” for our very first opening in China. At that time, the government of China required that English teachers have doctorate degrees, which Tom did. He and Diane accepted a position in January 1985 teaching English in a remote northeast city in China. They were among the first English teachers to go to China. Today, China environmental standards are far from healthy, but in the days when the Lawrences lived there, the situation was even worse. Most cities in China are heated with coal in the winter, and for many months, it is virtually impossible to see the sky through the black haze of smoke.

Tom was eventually diagnosed with cancer, and he and Diane fought a valiant battle. Tom wrote in a prayer letter to their supporters:

<p class="chapter-long-quote">During those days [while teaching in China], I experienced malnutrition for an extended time. I would acquire congestion in my lungs, which I found I had to leave China periodically to recover from, and I frequently found myself in situations where I was breathing dense and unfiltered second-hand tobacco smoke. Under those conditions, it is probable that carcinogenic substances made a home in the congestion in my lung while my immune system was unable to fight back due to the malnutrition.</p>

On July 13, 1993, Tom went home to be with His Lord whom He served so faithfully. He was 49 years old. Just before he died, he wrote his supporters:

<p class="chapter-long-quote">It was right for us to share Christ with the young people in China, despite the cost. Many of our friends are and will pray for my complete healing. We welcome those prayers, and we are pursuing our lives with that hope in our hearts. However, we want to clarify that our faith does not hinge on God’s willingness to heal, but on Christ’s victory over death. We believe that we will be raised up together to share in Christ’s glory at the resurrection of New Testament believers toward the end of this age.</p>

Tom was not the only one who would remind us of that. Henry Kim, his wife, Mi-Suk and their three young children were so enthusiastic about their ministry to the unreached that they left for the field just six weeks after going through Pioneers’ candidate orientation.

Henry was born in Korea, and in 1988 emigrated to the United States where he earned masters degrees in divinity and missions/intercultural studies. When he and his family joined one of our teams in Central Asia, they were a valuable addition and looked forward to many years of service to the unreached. But after just eight months, they were forced to return to the U.S. because of Henry’s declining health. Their plan was for Henry to receive the necessary medical attention, and after a period of rest, return to the field. Henry was diagnosed with colon cancer, however, and underwent what the family thought was successful surgery. While Henry received chemotherapy, he and his family remained in the Chicago area where their home church, Korean Bethel Presbyterian, cared for them.

“I am beginning to realize that a missionary not in a mission field is like a fish away from water,” Henry wrote while in the U.S. “Central Asia was a place where I can experience freedom as a missionary. However, I believe that there must be a purpose why God has allowed me to stay here in Chicago. I am in Chicago. However, God, who is in Central Asia, will answer our prayers and continue His work there.”

It was Henry’s sincere desire to return “home” to the field to be in the place where God had called him, but in the Father’s sovereign plan, Henry was called to his Heavenly home. He was just 33 years old.

Like the Lawrences, Henry and Mi-Suk served in a part of the world with harmful environmental exposure—in their case an area where hazardous, and possibly nuclear, wastes were probably dumped by the former Soviet Union. A number of missionaries working in the same area also developed cancer around the same time that Henry did. We take comfort in the words from Psalm 116:15: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints” (niv).

Not every missionary pays with his or her life, but the costs can still be extremely high. Pioneers workers in resistant countries are not immune to the persecution that the local Christians endure, of course. The situation in Indonesia has been extremely dangerous for Christians in the past few years. In certain volatile areas, churches have been burned to the ground, Christian women and girls have been raped, and many believers have been brutally murdered. Our national co-workers have paid dearly for the sake of the gospel, including Pastor Seth and his family, who opened their home to a Muslim high school student interested in Christianity. The girl feared that her own family would put her in stocks if they found out about her questions—a typical treatment for people considered to be mentally unstable (including Muslim converts to Christianity). Pastor Seth was arrested and charged with abducting a minor, forced conversion and rape. Although there was no evidence to support the charges, of course, the community brought the case to trial, and Pastor Seth received a ten-year sentence. Two other pastors, their wives and the church secretary were sentenced to six years each.

The situation in Indonesia has also affected Pioneers missionaries. One of our families serving there was brutally attacked during a robbery in their home. The husband was stabbed three times, puncturing his lung and missing his heart by less than a centimeter. The entire family, including the two children who witnessed the attack, still have deep emotional scars. We’ll never know if this brave family was targeted for persecution because of their faith, or if they were robbed because they were foreigners.

One of our single missionaries in Kazakhstan miraculously escaped harm when two men forced their way into her apartment and violently beat her and her roommate. She later wrote to her supporters:

God continues to astound me with the depth of His grace. When I returned to my apartment to clean up the blood-splattered walls, floors and cabinets, I thought of the cross. When we think of Christ dying, we have a very sanitary picture of a little blood dripping neatly down His head onto the ground. But the cross was violent, ruthless, cruel. Jesus’ blood was splattered all over Jerusalem. He knew we would beat Him and kill Him, and He came anyway. That’s how much He loved us. That’s how much He loved me. That’s how much He loved the men who attacked me. That’s how big He is.

After such a traumatic experience, no one would have blamed this missionary for giving up and returning to the U.S. But she desired to stay, and she and her roommate even moved back into their apartment and are being used by God to reach out to those around them.

Like Paul, we know that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual forces of evil (see Ephesians 6:12). When our teams disrupt the centuries-old strongholds of evil, anything can happen. One of our summer teams in Sumatra, for example, prayed on top of Mount Merapi, the center of many regional superstitions and legends. The team asked God to bind evil, release His Spirit and flood the villages with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. On the way down the mountain, just as the team was crossing its volcanic crater and passing a few feet from the central gaping hole, the mountain exploded. It was the biggest eruption since 1976, and a town ten miles away was blanketed with ash half an inch deep. The sky turned so black that headlights and street lights were needed at midday. Miraculously, our team escaped death, although they suffered third-degree burns. Obviously their prayers were right on target; since that time, the number of nationals finding Christ has doubled every year, and the New Testament and the Jesus film are now available in the local language.

Our own family has not been exempt from paying the price for taking the gospel to the ends of the earth. Our grandson, Gary Paul Franz Jr., was born on the mission field in Indonesia with severe hydrocephalus. He was not expected to live more than a few days. His parents—our daughter and son-in-law, Carol and Gary Franz—had to give up their dream to serve as foreign missionaries because Gary Paul needed critical medical attention. Our beloved grandson lived to age of 29, and although he couldn’t talk, Gary Paul taught us volumes about God’s faithfulness, loving care, higher ways and how He still allows mysteries in our lives that will only be fully understood in Heaven.

There are many other Pioneers workers whom I could mention who have paid high prices for the privilege of serving their King. But even if they had known when they started how high the cost would be, I doubt they would have turned back. The very nature of being a pioneer means leaving the safe harbor and going into uncharted territory, which can be full of hazards—some even life-threatening. When Pioneers began, we knew there would be some workers who would lose their lives for the sake of the gospel. Our missionaries are all aware of this when they leave for the field and are prepared to pay the ultimate price, believing without hesitation that the harvest is worth the cost.

We’ll never know why the Lord chooses to take someone like Tom Lawrence (an experienced missionary) or Henry Kim (young and ready to take on the world). “God is God,” said Elisabeth Elliot following the martyrdom of her husband, Jim, when they were missionaries to the unreached Auca tribe in the jungles of Ecuador. She realized that we cannot explain God’s moves in nice, pat terms. He can do as He chooses. Even our attempt to provide a reason for martyrdom—such as the well-known quote, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church”—is simply our need to explain God’s actions. He certainly doesn’t need us to do that.

Tom and Henry were not be the last Pioneers missionaries to give their lives for the gospel. Nor will the other workers I’ve shared about here be the only ones to endure heart-breaking and seemingly inexplicable suffering.

Thankfully, we have this unshakable promise to hold on to: “Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him” (Psalm 126:5-6 NIV).

The devil does not have the final say—in this nor any matter. Our God is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, and He always has the last word. As Tom Lawrence wrote just before he died, our faith lies in the fact that Jesus has given us the ultimate victory over death.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing (2 Timothy 4:7-8 NIV).