UNREACHED
In Revelation 7, John shares his vision of heaven with members from every tribe, tongue, people and language standing in the throne room before the Lamb.
Yet today there are still over 7,000 unreached people groups around the world.
For the last six years, my family and friends have been on a journey to find, vet and fund the task remaining.
Come journey with us to the ends of the earth as we share the supernatural stories of God at work through the men and women he has called to reach the UNREACHED.
UNREACHED
A Special Update from the Middle East with "Kate"
Join us as we reconnect with one of our favorite guests from Season 1, Kate! She is a passionate missionary who brings her unique insights from a year spent in a historically rich city near biblical sites. Through her experiences, we explore the beauty and complexity of the Arabic language, its profound role in religious contexts, and the vibrant culture she has immersed herself in. Kate's reflections on the growth of the local Christian community reveal a tapestry of hope and aspiration as she seeks to expand her mission beyond the city's limits.
The spiritual landscape is fraught with challenges, particularly in regions marked by tribal governance and conflict. We address the bold endeavor of sharing the kingdom of God against such a backdrop, drawing upon personal stories where spiritual unity in Christ serves as a beacon of hope amidst division. Delving into the depths of scriptural reflection, we uncover how prayer and divine encounters can transcend barriers, illuminating the path with the light of Christ. Through Kate's journey, we gain insights into the transformative power of faith in overcoming adversity.
Our conversation takes a poignant turn as we confront the harsh realities of human trafficking through the story of a Ugandan woman caught in its web. This narrative exposes the exploitation that marginalized communities often face, prompting us to consider how we can contribute to justice and support initiatives combating modern slavery. As we wrap up the episode, we reflect on the enriching cultural exchanges and the extraordinary stories of faith shared by our guests. Engage with us on this meaningful journey, and find out how you can be part of the conversation by connecting on social media and sharing these stories within your communities.
Follow @unreachedpodcast on Instagram for more!
In Revelation 7, john shares his vision of heaven, with members from every tribe, tongue, people and language standing in the throne room before the Lamb. Yet today there are still over 7,000 unreached people groups around the world. For the last six years, my family and friends have been on a journey to find, vet and fund the task remaining. Come journey with us to the ends of the earth as we share the supernatural stories of God at work for the men and women he has called to reach the unreached.
Speaker 2:Hello friends, welcome back to the Unreached podcast. Dustin Elliott here, your host, and we have a second-time repeat, all-time top-downloaded, most-listened guest We've got Kate. We've got Kate back from season one and we are so fired up, if you remember, if you haven't listened to Kate's first episode, you have to stop and go listen to it. This young woman we got a chance to commission her to the mission field from our local church in Austin, texas. We had our missions pastor, don Ellsworth, here and Clint and I, and we got to talk to her just about what God had stirred in her heart and the progression of time and how she had prepared and studied and worked with this certain culture and people to get ready. And then it was time to go. And here we are the next year and we get to connect and we get to find out what has happened since then. So, kate, welcome back. We're so happy to have you.
Speaker 3:Thank you, so fun to be here with y'all.
Speaker 2:Let's get it going. Let's tell some stories we sent you. I think you were doing like life insurance policies or wills or something like that, and it was time to go. So what happened next?
Speaker 3:Yes, so I got to land in this beautiful city that I've now lived in for a year minus four days and have loved every second of my time here.
Speaker 3:It is a rich culture.
Speaker 3:It's incredibly old city, positioned in a very strategic and biblically significant place. So it's wild to be driving distance from where Jesus was baptized, where he was born, to see from hilltops cities of tremendous biblical significance and then to think at the same time wow, these people who I'm around, who I have neighbors with, who I'm buying things from at the store, whose language I'm learning, these people have biblical history running through their veins. This is deeply rooted here when the good news came here 2,000 years ago. It's crazy to think that now, 2,000 years later, the church is here and it's growing very slowly and very much the minority, but it is still spreading. Historically speaking, it's building back from times when it has been pushed back in at the beginning of Islam. Later on, you know there's different ratio changes that have happened in this land, but to know that the good news chose to came here first, yeah, it's kind of a fun thing to think about when I'm here, wanting to share the good news again, to say, actually he was here before and told you these things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no doubt about it. And so you've been planted in this beautiful city, you're in this significant area. Talk about your network there. What's happened with your team and the people that you've kind of started to meet, early on at least?
Speaker 3:So, like I said, the city is a beautiful place. It's a really easy place to land. I would say we can talk more about it later. My hope and dream is to move outside of the city here pretty soon. But it's been a wonderful place to land, in part because the family of God here, or as we call them, god's team, is pretty broad and diverse. The local body of believers here is also growing and the ones who have been here for a long time they've been here since the time of Jesus. So it's a complex and beautiful part of the body of God to be in and at the same time, the team that I've had shared life with them for the past year.
Speaker 3:We were here for an eight-month intensive training program before everyone then got sent out to other places. So that was four hours of Arabic a day. It was three hours of different cultural ministry sessions, things like that. It was quite intense, but it set me up in a way to where now I feel very confident in this place. I, language-wise, can get around. Sometimes it's humbling. You know, some days you feel really good. You know you're able to have full conversations about the Trinity and whatever, and then some days you don't know how to ask how much this bus costs, so it's humbling, but it's been a really sweet beginning ground and platform.
Speaker 2:So I had a long conversation with a Muslim guy in Florida at a conference one time and we ended up talking for like three hours next to the pool and just beautiful compare and contrast, you know, the Koran to the Bible. And one of the things that he hit on that really stood out to me was just the beauty and the magnificence of the Arabic language and he's like you call that a chair, he's like we have 30 words for that Like he just was very much in awe of the beauty of the language and you even said in kind of talking before we hit record you really have grown to appreciate the language. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Arabic has been around for a really, really, really long time and poetry is one of their proudest products. It's a very poetic language, just by nature and to your point. I was talking with a father of a friend of mine. She had me over for lunch. She's an Islamic scholar we can get into that more later and as we were talking he said one of the reasons why they believe God chose the Arabic language with which to write the Quran part of it is because it is so poetic and so descriptive. He used the example of the word love. There's about 40 different words for the idea of love, for the word love, and I immediately paralleled that to an example from a dear friend of mine that I've recently met here. She's from Finland and in the Finnish language they have 30 words for snow, and when something is prominent in a culture, you come up with a lot of ways to describe it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean you're learning their beautiful language but at the same time, you're building this bridge on love and maybe you're are you teaching them anything as well? Any good Texan words?
Speaker 3:A lot of American slang I have to throw aside, but the one that I've kept and taught them is the word yee-haw. I say it quite a bit just naturally and when they know they love it.
Speaker 1:They are so excited.
Speaker 3:Unfortunately they're getting there with the pronunciation. Some say hee-haw, some say knee-how, so we're really trying to get there, yee-haw.
Speaker 1:Yee-haw.
Speaker 2:I love it. I love it. So let me ask you this, as you've had some conversations with your Muslim friends there what have you learned about God? What have you seen from their point of view that maybe has given you a different perspective?
Speaker 3:A feature of living here, in fact a constant reality of living here, has been the existence of the war going on very close to us between Israel and Palestine, and one of the most painful parts is almost all of my friends here are Palestinian.
Speaker 3:They're fully, fully Palestinian, though they were born and raised in this country. They are very much close to what's happening and the things that I just see in the news typically, and so conversations start very quickly and very easily about the character of God, about the nature of the world, the nature of brokenness and pain, and that is not a tool I came here with was how to sit with someone in grief and how to just not wait for a hook in their words to bait it to this cheap bridge, to something that doesn't land with them, but how to actually just sit with them in grief, and one of the ways we've done this is through so much tears, so much wordless tears, sitting together with many friends of mine in cars, in parking lots, late at night in classes. The grief just pops up.
Speaker 2:Sometimes for hours, right? I mean, I think in the culture there's a cultural difference, whereas we try to move on pretty quickly from an emotional event and move into the next thing and kind of compartmentalize and now let's just put that over there and I'll deal with that later. Different right they want to sit in it. They want you to sit in it with them.
Speaker 3:Exactly. I've thought many times humorously about a class that I took at my church in Austin on lament, because I think as Westerners we need to be taught how to mourn, how to grieve, and yet this is something very, very normal here, very accepted and very embraced. And if you read the New Testament I think it would very much fit with the culture that we read about in the New Testament. Is these people who even in the Old Testament, right sackcloth and ashes, just grief is worn on their sleeve? And in the news we see the effects of that at times, what it means for grief to be acted out in the wrong ways. But all the more that stirred my heart to see what would happen to grief, genuine, true, deep grief if put before Jesus, seen by him and held by him. How would that change that heart If it could actually be expressed and then caught and then held and comforted.
Speaker 3:So when talking about grief with my friends, of course, we often come back to the character of God. I initially started asking friends what do you think God is doing right now in the midst of your former neighbors and your cousins and your friends being in a horrible situation, often scared for their lives? What do you think God's doing? And they would say he is waiting because he is testing us. God will allow horrible things to happen to people just so that he can see if they're good enough. And if they are, if they prove good enough, then they get the reward. They get heaven, maybe we hope and I heard this, and this is again in light of, I mean, every news story.
Speaker 3:I see every video that I see. These are people who look like my friends. They're people speaking the language that I'm learning. I don't need the subtitles on the video to understand what they're saying. It's something very close to this land here and close to my heart even, and so to sit in grief. That is that close and that constant and for them to have the only thing they can cling to being. He's testing us and we just have to get through it without complaining.
Speaker 2:I think of Job when you talk about that experience that's going on around you and them trying to almost earn their place in heaven, based on how they're handling the struggle, the trials that are before them, right, and I just think of Job, and I know the story of Job's in the Quran. I think he was called Ayub, he was a righteous servant of the law the way they kind of saw it and suffered for a long time. And so there is a story there, a lot of parallels obviously in the two texts. Man, what a freeing place to lead someone to if they can catch the concept of saved by grace through faith. And it's not what you do and it's not what you earn and it's not how you handle situations. To Clint's point, he says often God delights in watching us go through these things and wants to let us experience it because he's building endurance in us, right Back to James 1, which makes us perfect and complete. But it sounds like the main thing God's teaching you is patience and empathy.
Speaker 3:Exactly, exactly, exactly. And another point that I'll throw in there is intercession. Yeah, because it is the reality of Revelation 7, where not only will every tribe, tongue and nation be around the throne, but there's this beautiful picture where we're before the throne of the Lamb. Every tear is wiped away. It's just this completion that things will truly be okay, and I don't have to cheaply say that or I don't have to throw out this like things will truly be okay and I don't have to cheaply say that or I don't have to throw out this like, oh, it'll be fine, my friends.
Speaker 3:There's a phrase here alhamdulillah. It just means praise God, praise God, and it's inserted at the end of anything that could sound slightly complaining or grief-like. If you acknowledge, you have to say Alhamdulillah, praise God. To acknowledge, we can't complain. We have to stay positive in this cheap, surface-level sense. But I think about Revelation and it's an intimidating book to read and it's almost terrifying to read because it is so terrifyingly real, this kingdom of God that's coming and the reality that we'll live in. It's so real.
Speaker 2:How are you seeing God work in supernatural ways there? I mean, there's such grief and conflict and just such kind of hate for other peoples and unknowns, and why are things set up this way? How are you seeing God bring a different light into that?
Speaker 3:You're right, there is a strong heaviness here that feels very confining and very imprisoning.
Speaker 3:Even to a believer with the hope of Christ inside me, it can feel very depressing and very heavy living so close to such grief and, even before that, living around a group of people who are literally still tribal. Tribal ordinances govern this country and a lot of the countries around us, so there's a fragmentation here that when I look about the New Testament and I see how Paul spoke to a culture not too different from this one, talking about this unity in Christ and this extent to where there's not even male or female something so fundamental, but we're one in Christ. Else something so fundamental, but we're one in Christ just speaking to this supernatural unity that will be afraid of the spirit of it as the good news of the kingdom comes through this land. It's an idea right now and it's an idea that I tell my friends about, but it's one of my biggest prayers is that unity comes in a way to where even these huge scale, deep political conflicts that we read about on the news and that my friends are experiencing is something that can be mended, redeemed in the kingdom.
Speaker 3:One of my favorite things to do with my friends here is, instead of just saying direct facts about the good news of the kingdom, for example, or even telling stories of Jesus, which I do love to do, one of my favorite things that's come about through mostly sitting with people in grief has been creating a space in which they can approach Jesus and encounter him. It's typically looks like through prayer. So, for example, at my former apartment, I'm currently in my fourth home of the past year.
Speaker 2:Oh boy.
Speaker 3:But in my last apartment I had a dear friend over We'll call her Ahlam and she is a precious close friend of mine whose English is wonderful. So we praise God for relationships in which I don't need to use my fumbling Arabic. But as we're talking about grief in her life, of course it pertains to the war, of course it pertains to her family, it pertains to the pressures of just daily life, being a single woman in your 20s. Here I share about ways in which Jesus has met me, not just through the word and its truth and not just through the body of God through the church, but directly in prayer, impressions that he's given me, ways that he pulls my heart back to scripture, ways that he shows me pictures of things that inspire my imagination to truth. With him, and I invited her, I said would you like to ask him what he thinks about this pain in your life? We can take a second and close our eyes and listen and see what he says. And as I'm offering her this invitation, I'm praying desperately inside Jesus, protect this space, jesus, come to her, pursue her like you say you do.
Speaker 3:And as soon as I said it, her face changed, it fell and her brow scowled some and she stood up almost in a panic and she said I have to. You're right, I have to, I have to go pray. I should go pray, and speaking in the Muslim way of how our friends pray five times a day. And I said, oh, oh, okay, right now. Okay, unlike her character and so unlike her manners, anything like that. It was not her whatsoever.
Speaker 3:And this has happened time and time and time again with my friends. As soon as I offer this encounter with Jesus through the wings of prayer and sitting and listening or even opening the word, there is a switch that happens and they become not themselves. And it took me a couple times to realize it, but one time when I said, okay, friend, okay, I go into the kitchen to do dishes to give them privacy while they pray in my living room, and the whole time I'm praying like crazy. And again, this is after I'd caught on to what was happening from the enemy side of things. And I come out after a few minutes and she's sitting on the couch on her phone. So there's a weird reality of a spiritual interference that can happen to our friends when this offer is posed to them and I've seen it happen immediately and then lift immediately when there's prayer and intercession.
Speaker 2:Wow, I've never heard that said that way, like when that moment is presented and you've given that fertile soil, if you will, and that seed is getting ready to scatter, it's like something triggers and they are captivated. It's a muscle memory. But it's more than that right Of no.
Speaker 2:I to go, this is my way of dealing with that and that's what I'm going to keep doing. And man, wow, that's quite a story. So how does that? I mean now that you've seen it happen more. I mean, one time is an event, two times is something there. And you said, you've seen it happen several times now. So I wonder how we can be praying as supporters of you and the network of the podcast at large. What can we be praying for to pierce that?
Speaker 3:So I came across this verse a couple of years ago and you know when you feel like you've discovered a scripture verse for the first time and you get all excited. This, to me, has spoken a lot to the situation of when my friends all of a sudden, from a force not of themselves, are blinded. In a moment I think of this from 2 Corinthians 3, and I think about our Muslim friends when I read this. Even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts, but when anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Another translation says removed. The Lord is the spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
Speaker 3:So there's this picture that is so tangible and so real and I've seen that veil fall, almost as if it was a black curtain falling in front of their faces, keeping them from the goodness of God. And to see this jealousy of God. Right, psalm 18 comes up often, this passionate pursuit of a God who will come down to the depths of the sea to pull up his children. There is a pursuit here. He is not apathetic when that veil comes over their eyes and their hearts and their minds, he is angry and he's pursuing them.
Speaker 3:So when I'm in my kitchen in those times again, as I was realizing this pattern with all of these friends, I started to get really, really, really mad.
Speaker 3:And as it's continued to happen in different ways in different times, a quick prayer under my breath will see the circumstance change, saying Jesus, show up, jesus, be here, jesus, do something. And sometimes it comes with the actual shaking of their head of snapping out of it. Sometimes it comes with the conversation turning back to the goodness of God, but he does hear and he does jealously want their attention and their hearts just as much as I do, way more than I do. It makes me yearn for that moment when the temple veil was actually torn, at the time of the crucifixion right the earth and the veil was torn. I just want to be there in that moment when it completely ripped from top to bottom, and I can pray according to that for my friends thinking about this annoying, to say the least, veil, and I can put a lot of my fervor and my anger against it, because I think that's where the wrath of God would go to.
Speaker 2:So you've moved four times since you've been there. You are in a city, there is a community around you, but we know that you're not where you want to be. Yet You've kind of learned about another place that you feel like you're being called to. So what can you share about these kind of next steps for you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, years ago, before even moving to this country here, I was in the work of the Middle East and Muslims and got to make many trips over to this part of the world prior, and there was one city that I still have not been to, but it is a massive city with one of the lowest ratios of workers to local population there, and it's a place that the Lord has continued to put on my heart, and now I live closer to it and will hopefully visit in a couple of weeks. My heart and now I live closer to it and will hopefully visit in a couple of weeks but it's a place that has held a bookmark in my heart in terms of prayer and intercession and in terms of longing as well of what the Lord could do in this place. Just to speak more to that ratio, the city I'm currently in is a big one, but there's also a lot of foreign, cross-cultural workers here, like myself. The ratio is about one foreign worker to every 200,000 local friends.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:So if you compare that to Austin, sure it's not very much, but if you compare that to the Middle East, it's a pretty good ratio, Although still. Could you imagine if I woke up every morning and thought, okay, I have 200,000 people to go talk to?
Speaker 2:Overwhelming.
Speaker 3:Mercifully, the spirit transcends those ratios. But this other city that I hope to move to, the ratio is a little bit different. It's one for every 3 million. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:This is a city that has had its fair share of a lot of pain over the years, has tremendous biblical significance as well, and the potential move there is one of those many things that in my life reminds me of Psalm 127, unless the Lord is building the house, its labors are going to strive in vain. Slightly paraphrased, but it's one of those places that my parents don't want me to move to. I don't want to move to. It's not comfortable. The weather there has been described as if someone's blowing a hairdryer in your face and then just throwing sand in between you and the hairdryer.
Speaker 3:But when I think about these promises of God that have felt even stronger to me living here in the Middle East, these promises of restoration of literal streams in the desert, of hope, an actual hope that doesn't have to be deferred, when I think about those things, copy and paste it onto this other city. It grows my eagerness and my longing all the more. City, it grows my eagerness and my longing all the more. If only I go, say, I go a couple weeks from now for a weekend. I pray and that's the only time I ever go. I feel very strongly that I want my prayers or my presence or whatever sacrifice I can lay down to be for the city and that's one of those things that only the spirit could prompt and pull, because I just described many logistical reasons why it's not pleasant to be there. But there's something that happens when the promises of God met with the affection, the adoration of the people here that I have met and of these cultures, when those two things come together. I just want to be right there for that reunion, right there, when those two things come together.
Speaker 3:I feel excited for the potential role in that city. It is one of pioneering work. It would be an adjective to throw on that it's a newer place. It's ironic, it's an incredibly old city but it's a newer place where the goodness of God hasn't been known for a really long time and it's scary to consider a role like that. But those roles are often the most glamorized ones, right Like in the global body of stories that we hear from the churches it spreads.
Speaker 3:Those are the exciting ones and what I'm trying to learn more and more here and now is the power of what Daniel got to do in Babylon. He was in captivity and from inside Babylon he was faithful to God and he prayed and he didn't do much before he got the attention of the king unfortunately negatively, but he got the attention of the king and that steady, daily faithfulness. I think of moms, honestly, when I think of this type of faithfulness that just keeps going. That's what I want to grow in, that's what I want to do. He's given me this vision and I have this hope to be one of the very, very few Jesus followers in this other city. But that's going to be pointless if there's no faithfulness in the small things, right.
Speaker 2:No doubt.
Speaker 3:So something I've learned so much about my life here is, while I'm studying Arabic and I've been doing so full-time for a year, it is still a beast of a language.
Speaker 3:People say it's like emptying a bathtub, or maybe a pool, with a little teaspoon, one teaspoon at a time. Yeah, with a little teaspoon, teaspoon at a time. Even after all of this work for language, I know the best thing that I can do for my friends here isn't a perfectly articulated argument of telling them the goodness of Christ, but it's going to be through them encountering him, which maybe I'm there to facilitate it, maybe I'm not, but it'll certainly be through prayer, whether mine or the prayer of others. And the type of prayer that I mean is the kind that the friends who carried the paralyzed man through the roof right in front of Jesus. They were up there cutting a hole, just probably yelling at each other trying to figure it out, lowering this man in front of Jesus without words that we can see, in the middle of a sermon, and just saying do something, jesus, do something. This person that we love, this brother of ours, do something.
Speaker 2:Let's get real for a minute here. First question I want to ask you is have you felt like you were in danger at any point?
Speaker 3:There were times where missiles were flying over us a couple months ago and we were hearing them getting shot out of the sky. Those are sorts of things where you think, okay, this is probably going to be on the news tomorrow, but I rolled over and fell right back asleep. There's been a piece of Jesus in living here. That's been really kind. There is the fact of living in a city any city, same as I felt in Austin, walking down South Congress as a single woman by myself. Sometimes, sure, you have some thoughts, but for no particular reason. No, I have felt quite safe here.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of different forms of human trafficking and slavery and indentured servitude and obviously even it's really bad with the sex trade and things like that. But there is some trafficking quite pervasive where you are, which typically takes the form of bringing somebody from another people group in, putting them into a job where you pay them a very low wage. You basically set up a system where they owe you money to get out. They can't make enough money to ever pay you. You take their passport away so they can't get out, and they basically become a worker for you. Talk about how you've encountered some of that since you've been there.
Speaker 3:Yes, I started to see different groups of women placed in different places. Maybe they were cleaners at a gym, maybe they were employees at a certain salon, typically from Southeast Asia or from Uganda, almost always from Uganda, and the first friend that I made a connection with from that group was a Ugandan woman. At my gym I had lost my phone because I don't think maybe this is to the point of me feeling really safe here. It's because I don't often think about things too often and I left my phone on the bench. And half an hour later I come back up to find my phone and I see her and she's sweeping and I say hi, friend, have you seen my phone? At first I tried to speak with her in Arabic quickly to find out she doesn't speak Arabic and she tells me she left the phone with reception. So I thank her profusely and it didn't take long for us to build a very close friendship.
Speaker 3:I just visited her last week in her house. She lives in a refugee home, though she's not a refugee, but she lives in a refugee camp downtown with Sudanese, palestinian, many, many people in a really rough situation. I get to bring her food. We get to talk about Jesus being from Uganda, she's very familiar with Jesus, but culturally she comes from a place that's very mixed. Her father was Muslim, her mother was a Christian and she doesn't exactly know where she falls. And yet she's come here and experienced horrible, horrible treatment due to her role and due to the way that she's visually different. And we walked down the street together a couple of weeks ago and she was practically skipping and she says Kate, when I'm with you I just feel free. And that made me really sad initially to know that me walking down the street as a woman who, of course, I'm a minority here, but I'm also a very privileged minority, and people when they hear I'm from America, they respect it instantly. And for her, coming from such a different background, we've both been put here, we've both found ourselves in this city where we are struggling with the language and we're far from family. But our circumstances are radically different and I know the road ahead for her is not easy.
Speaker 3:I've been to the many places that she's lived since being here, each one of them harder and more infested than the next, and this problem of human trafficking is very strong here and it's been a gift to get to share the reality of it with some of my Arab friends and I'll share. No, this woman cannot leave here, and if she tries to leave, she'll be in prison for six months and then forced to pay her plane ticket home. This is a problem, and to see the hearts of my friends get stirred for this as well. I'm very thankful that there are some organizations here doing this work. But I've thought about you guys, I've thought about friends that you've interviewed before, and I've thought about many friends that I know have done work in Uganda. So if this is a platform to ask for more economic development in any sustainable way in that country, oh no, you're hitting home here.
Speaker 2:You're hitting home here because we've been working hard in Uganda for over 10 years. It makes me think of like Thailand and Myanmar, where we also do a lot of work there. It's why we also work with organizations who are going out and putting in you know JVI, putting in justice hubs and bringing legal help and bringing military or former military professional help into those situations. But, man, friends out there listening, if you're not involved in some capacity in supporting organizations that are fighting human trafficking today, like I just encourage you to find a way into that. Justice Ventures International, jvi, which I just brought up, is a great one. Global Child Advocates is one we support. Ashley Heiligman's been on before, which is working in Thailand and Myanmar, and I just appreciate that.
Speaker 2:Kate's bringing a real world example and think about what she just said. This woman's living in a refugee camp. She's in a small, tiny little space with multiple other people, no dignity, no opportunity for bettering her situation, and her situation's gotten worse three or four times since you've known her over the last year. It's not moving into a better situation, it's getting worse and that's the reality for thousands, in fact millions, of people around the world today and, man, we have such a responsibility to heed that call and get involved. You started to hit on this earlier about your Palestinian friend who brought you over to speak to her father, who wanted to basically share, from an academic perspective, their majority religion, and really they were trying to recruit you right. So tell us what you can about that story.
Speaker 3:Marissa, if I had had some experience from my time in the States living with Afghans, would be told constantly that, sister, you would be such a good Muslim, or countless other things that I could tell were coming from such a sweet place of care for me and of honoring of me. I once held hands with one of my Afghan friends and through tears we both communicated sister, I love you and I want you in paradise with me, what they call heaven. I want you with me, I want you to be part of this family, and we both held hands, crying, not knowing how to get over this impasse. It's a tricky thing of having such deep relationships with friends from such different worldviews. There's tensions to hold, but this Palestinian friend of mine here we will call her Noor. I've been friends with her for a long time and she's another one whose English is fantastic. She read War and Peace just for fun. She's amazing.
Speaker 3:So we've been talking about theological things for a long time and I was at a cafe with her and shared the story of the prodigal son. And that's one of the many stories that, when you hear it through Middle Eastern lens, it is revolutionary. It's a story of a boy who ran away. Shamed, his family ends up in a pig pen, which is the worst of all places for a Muslim to imagine being the shame is incomprehensible. And he walks back to this father rehearsing a story, practicing, muttering to himself along the road, and when he looks up he sees his father, the patriarch, running to him. Every element of that blows apart the Middle Eastern frame of reference.
Speaker 2:No doubt.
Speaker 3:She was sitting from the cafe trying to stop me saying no, no, no, that's crazy.
Speaker 2:No way. No, that would never happen. Gives him the signet ring, gives him his robe. He's running. He wouldn't run, no way.
Speaker 3:It's insane. And what we determined from that story was wow, the grace and goodness of God is way louder than our shame. And after that story she said you have to meet my father Now. I knew that her father was an Islamic scholar, so I thought oh man, here we go. So I went to her parents' house and she had prepared lunch for me. So we sat down and ate, just me and her, for a while. And after about three hours of lunch I thought well, maybe he's busy today, but that was just the warm up.
Speaker 3:And he comes in, a very kind man, very tender. His English is not as good as his daughter's, so as we're speaking, it's half Arabic, half English. And when you speak of religious matters you don't use the local dialect, you use this higher form of Arabic called Fusra. That is really rich and poetic. So he's talking and I'm getting half of it, and for the rest of it I'm trying to listen to Noor to see what he's saying. But he goes through all the talking points that Muslims typically do the deity of Christ or not, the reliability of scripture or not, all these different talking points, and this is one of those moments that I am praying under my breath the entire time, not thinking that in that moment I'm going to say something that will change his mind. His career is in this work, but as I'm looking at Noor sitting in the couch between us listening, I'm just wondering what's going on in her head as she's hearing, for the first time, no-transcript, and as we slow down the conversation again.
Speaker 3:That was another three hours later. He told me that he respected how much I listened and that I said some things that would make him think. Now again, only the Spirit is going to make any change from whatever I said. I don't even remember what I said, but that was a very interesting place to find myself in. I didn't expect to be there that day. What?
Speaker 2:are you thinking when you walk out of there? When you walk out of that, I want to think that you're thinking this is why I'm here, thank you for that at bad God. That's, that's why I'm here, right.
Speaker 3:With some exhaustion.
Speaker 2:Yes, Understandably, understandably. I'm so happy for you that you got that opportunity and you were able to sit in that moment and yeah, who knows, who knows if something changes in his life or in her life or in both, or if you get another chance to continue to speak into that prayfully you do, but just for those at-bats and just that you're there making yourself available to love people in that way. I have such great respect for you for that.
Speaker 3:I would love to share one more story of hope before we wrap up, please. I would love to share one more story of hope before we wrap up, please.
Speaker 3:So this dear friend I mentioned before, ahlam, who has heard the good news many times and has experienced the veil from the enemy that keeps her from it. We had a great conversation earlier in the year and as we talked about faith and religion which is not a taboo topic here it's weird if you don't bring up religion. So as we're talking about it, I asked her when's the time you felt the closest to God? And she said there was a time in university where things were really difficult and a lot was going on. But he felt really close to me and then she looks around her, makes sure no one else is listening and kind of whispers to me. It was weird, but he felt like a friend to me and my heart broke and soared all at once to hear that she had had this experience of closeness, connection, longing for relationship with God, and she loved it. But she was also scared of it. That's not terminology used whatsoever in her religion. So to share with her afterwards, I think that's exactly what it's like and we read together these stories of how he no longer calls us servants but friends. And I asked her do you want to talk to him, do you want to engage in prayer? Can I pray over you? Can I pray with you? Would you want to talk to the God who is your friend? And she didn't want to speak.
Speaker 3:That night we were in her car so I prayed over her instead and just prayed simple truths of the love of God over her, inviting his loving presence into that car, and when I looked up she was in tremendous, deep tears. It's an incredible thing that I have to remember all the time is such a privilege that we carry that we know his character, we know what he's like. We don't know all of it, but man, we know what he's like. He is so gentle and he has compassion on the harassed and helpless, those who are sheep without a shepherd. And we've enjoyed that presence and we can share that joyful presence with people. Not just points, not just arguments, but we share the joyful presence of God with them. That was a fun night.
Speaker 2:Would you do me a favor Now? You know we always pray at the end of the pod for everybody, but could you in some capacity pray that prayer you had for her in her car and ask God to be in the car with the listeners and in the office and on this run that they're on right now, wherever they are, just let that fly. Yeah, let's pray.
Speaker 3:Jesus, you are. Yeah, let's pray. Jesus, you are the one who sat with sinners, who ate with us, who came to our houses, sat at our living room table and dined with us, and your kindness and your gentleness is the only thing that's going to make us holy, the only thing to help us in this path of righteousness that we crave. We want to be near you, god. We want to honor you with our lives, and I know it's not going to be my best of intentions, it's not going to be my momentum or my effort that does that. It is the gentleness of God that will sustain me.
Speaker 3:You say in your word that goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our life and, jesus, we just invite and embrace that aspect of your presence with us, the presence that longs to be with us, and you've proven that in many ways. In the light of that presence, jesus, everything else has to go, fear has to leave. In your name, jesus, self-proving, effort, striving. You've given us a light yoke and an easy burden, and that's what we want instead. So we want to sit here and enjoy your presence, jesus. So, wherever we are, would you give us right now, in your spirit, a taste of your goodness a little bit more, an overwhelming taste, or a little bit? We just want more of you and we have tasted and seen that you're good, so we trust you, amen.
Speaker 2:And amen. And instead of ending instantly, I'm going to ask a question because I know the listeners will want to hear this Can we count on you to come back for another season and do this every year?
Speaker 3:We'd love to, maybe from this other elusive city I keep referencing. That would be great.
Speaker 2:Maybe from the other elusive city I think you've referenced one as the mountain city and one as something else. So, hey, we'd love to keep having you back and keep journeying with you. Um, you are there, you are at the ends of the earth, you are reaching the unreached, you are part of God's supernatural stories, you are one of the men and women he's called and it is just too cool, um, to be a part of your journey. So thank you for sharing it with all of us. Thank you so much, all right, god bless my friend with all of us. Thank you so much, all right, god bless my friend. Wherever you listen. Also, share with your family, your friends, your church, your life group, small group, d group, wherever you do life. And if you want to connect with us, find us on Instagram, at unreachedpodcast, or email us at unreachedpodcast at gmailcom.
