E-Connected Archive - Summer 2008
Southeast Asia's Unengaged
Not familiar with the term ‘unengaged’? Read more here.
One region with a high number of unengaged Muslim peoples is Southeast Asia. But, as this account from one of our workers shows, some seeds are being sown...
I’m sure we can all remember where we were on Boxing Day 2004 when we heard the news of the tsunami. Little did I realise as I sat watching the reports on TV that a year later God would lead me to work with some of those who were most affected.
In response to the tsunami a Frontiers team already working in another part of the island decided to move to a village in the province most devastated by the tsunami. An office was quickly opened in the area to sustain long term community development through projects in agriculture, education, media and health. The people there were ‘unengaged’ and had been closed off to the outside world for decades before the tsunami due to ongoing fighting in the surrounding jungles.
One would think the tsunami, which took the lives of 150,000 people in this province alone, would have been the most traumatic thing they had been through. But as stories were shared and people opened up their hearts, it became apparent that the conflict and oppression that had taken place during the previous decade had been harder for people to deal with. They reasoned that the tsunami was the will of Allah therefore they had to accept it. But the conflict was man’s doing and had caused much unwarranted pain and suffering.
Our heart as a team was to see a people so full of hurt and pain know the true nature of the God that weeps with and for them. Essential to this was learning their language and culture and living amongst them. So when I joined the team in 2006 I went to live in the home of a young widow, ‘Naomi’, and her four children.
A journal entry of mine from April 2007 reads:
“I’ve been chewing on a passage out of Isaiah 58: ‘satisfy the desire of the afflicted’ for the past week, and wondering what that looks like and what all that entails in this place. The desires of the afflicted are great here, as are the numbers of those afflicted.
When I returned from my trip Naomi told me she had had a dream with me in it. In the dream I was returning from the ‘kabun’, or garden, and was carrying long vegetables, like green beans the length of my arm, in a basket for her. At first we sort of laughed at it… but then I started thinking that maybe God is speaking something to her, and to me. I have been asking Him to speak to her in dreams and this may be the beginning. I told her that and she agreed it may be true.”
Our team may soon be forced to leave this province; but through our projects we have seen the people gain helpful tools to develop better their communities and sustain them for generations to come. Although the work of sowing the seeds of the gospel and seeing fruit may take years to come, we know that God’s word does not go out in vain and therefore we stand on that promise.