From the Field
part one
{On Saturday I send out a “Saturday Story.” This is simply a break from the regular Scripture-based daily devotional. Sometimes there is a moral to the story, sometimes it's just a story. I’ll mostly leave that to you to decide. I hope you enjoy it and your weekend.}
Back in the mid 90’s the church I was pastoring adopted an unreached people group in partnership with the International Mission Board. What that meant was we agreed to regularly pray for this people group and seek ways to help bring the gospel to them.
Since we, nor anyone we could find, knew much about them, we decided to partner with one of the IMB missionaries who worked in the country and do a research trip. One of the men in my church, Tom, and I made the long trip across the world and met up with the missionary in the capital city of the country. This particular country is made up of a long string of thousands of islands. The people we were seeking out information on lived on one of them. To get there we had to take a small Fokker F-50 turboprop from the main island to a small airstrip nestled in between some mountains on our island destination.
We hadn’t announced our intention to visit or what were doing. We had no idea where we would stay and there was no specific itinerary. Therefore, we were surprised to see a man standing by the fence that separated the runway from the road leading into the small city where we embarked holding up a cardboard sign with our names on it.
He explained without explanation that he was going to take us to the hotel. We hadn’t made any hotel reservations, but since we had no other plan we played along. He drove us a short distance to a small inn where the rooms were more like individual little concrete block cabins painted in pastel colors. The three of us, Tom, the missionary, and I shared one small room. I slept on a cot, allowing my older brothers the “comfort” of the two small beds.
There were three small cities on the island, as well as several villages scattered about. We formulated a plan that involved visiting each of the cities to discreetly ask around about the people group we were interested in and prayer-walking.
Prayer walking is a term used to describe the idea of praying while walking around an area. The intent was to try and gain insight into a mission field while praying for it. Some have defined it as “praying on-site with insight,” or “praying nearer to pray clearer.” We had been praying for our adopted people group, but seeing them in their own culture and experiences would help us to better know the kinds of things we could and should be praying about.
Our goal was to see as much of the area as possible and meet as many people as possible in the short time we had. We wanted to gather information that could be used by the missionaries to develop a strategy for evangelism and church planting in the future.
Before our first evening on the island was finished, the local chief of police showed up. He was asking probing questions about our visit. He asked his questions in a non-threatening but clearly suspicious manner. He accompanied us as we walked down to the hotel restaurant by the beach. The restaurant consisted of a table under a grass gazebo-style open hut. I never figured out where the kitchen was. The chief invited himself to join us so that he could continue his probing questions.
He asked us how we were going to get around. Did we have a driver? No. Well, it would please him to volunteer to be our personal tour guide. He just happened to have a car that was big enough for us and our luggage.
The chief, seemingly satisfied that he had politely cornered us in a way that he could hospitably keep his eye on us, excused himself. He would, he said, talk to us tomorrow about our plans to visit other locations on the island as we indicated we would be staying here for a day or two.
We needed to ditch the chief, but how…
To be continued next Saturday.
Cliff hanger!