Joel & Lydia1 joined the OMF Mekong Minorities team with one goal – the glory of God expressed through many churches among one of these precious people groups.
But after being detained in 2018, they were no longer welcome to serve among that people. Heartbroken, they and their 12-year-old son, Calvin, left their home of four years to recover and ask God, ‘Now what?’
Graciously, the Lord led them to a new location, where local missionaries needed Bible and ministry training to engage the smallest, remotest, and most neglected people groups in the region. Not only were these 15 ‘nations’ unreached, as far as we know before 2018 no person, church, or organization had a plan to bring the gospel to them. Joel’s gifts as a Bible teacher and his cross-cultural ministry experience were vital to finishing this task. However, if their son Calvin struggles to grow in the Lord, connect with friends, and succeed in school, the family will never thrive, and may not survive serving cross-culturally for long.
A creative solution
Enter the Modular Study Group. Each month, Calvin and his fellow students study maths, science, and English for three weeks at home followed by a week together in the classroom. At home they prepare assignments, do assessments, write essays, perform experiments, and study under the direction of teachers living in a nearby city. In the classroom week, they go deeper in their studies – and enjoy interacting with each other and their teachers, learn in groups, and study the Bible during chapel time together. The students – who cover high school ages from 12 to 18 – love this learning structure. For them, the study group is a monthly week of fun ‘camp’ with friends with some schoolwork sprinkled on top. They truly are growing up spiritually, socially, and academically, and their families are finding life on the frontiers to be more possible and sustainable.
From 158 to 3
For nearly four years now, Joel has trained around 80 local missionaries to take the gospel to the hardest places in the country. The number of people groups having never encountered the good news of Jesus is down from 158 to only three, and the Modular Study Group is one factor contributing to this remarkable progress.
¹ Names changed for security reasons.
