Focus

Rat intestines for lunch, anyone? Wear a matching shirt with your host family. Sit on the floor for hours. Find creative ways to communicate when there is no shared language. Tag along on a hospital visit, a wedding, visiting neighbors, worshiping in outlying villages, helping sell grilled meat. These are just a few of the new experiences that participants in the new Isaan Doorways Program have had in recent months!

In 2022, we set a new strategic focus for our work through 2028. This strategic focus, the Kingdom Multiplication Vision, is something with which we are diligently engaging to see people come to know Jesus. This episode of Focus serves as a way to update you on the progress we are making, and also to highlight the room for opportunity that we have together in our work of sharing Christ’s transforming love with the world.

Jen Hoover, her husband, Daryl, and their sons serve with EMM and VidaNet in Costa Rica. This Focus is looking at a beautiful reflection written by Jen about another employee with VidaNet and how Jesus' light shines through her.

A soccer club has provided Genie* with amazing opportunities to connect with kids and share the gospel. She has had the chance to lead the end-of-club devotional/encouragement and was able to share a lesson about how we are all created unique and special to God. This was a special moment she will remember with much joy.

Sarah prayed, “Dear Lord, if it is in your will please allow the door to be opened so we can go into her house and pray for her and her family.” Just as soon as those words had come out of Sarah’s mouth, the little girl Sarah was praying about, and her mother walked by. It was God’s perfect timing....

“That would be the worst job in the world!” EMM worker Elizabeth* thought to herself the first time she heard of “recruiting full-time intercessors to join overseas church-planting teams.” She pictured the full-time intercessor locked up in a room from 9 to 5 with lists of all the problems in the country, reading these lists out loud to God over and over again. But now, she calls it the best job in the world!

Sarah Ariola has now been in the Gambia for several months, and she is experiencing living in community in West Africa on a new level. She and the rest of the EMM team pretty much do everything together. They even share a meal in one bowl called a "community bowl.”

Throughout this month, God has been showing Ana Borntrager that living overseas is not a big profound thing; it’s simply navigating mundane life in a new context. She finds it amusing how, as Christians, people tend to put missions up on a pedestal. For Ana, it’s about learning how to relate to the people around her, navigating the basic necessities of life, and sharing everyday experiences.

Exciting changes are happening with Carissa Sherer as Hope for Home is preparing to move to its new location in the town of Parramos. The moving day is February 12, and it will be quite the ordeal, as they move 13 children with special needs, as well as all of the items necessary to care for them.

Despite having heard the gospel for many years, Biak remained a committed Buddhist. An intelligent man who likes to learn, he explored aspects of Christianity at times, but he was not convinced ... until 2024.