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To learn more about the Reese family and keep up with their ministry:
• “friend” Eric Reese on Facebook
• “friend” Ramona Reese on Facebook
• email Eric
• email Ramona
• go to www.reesefamilyonline.org. Click on the small American flag in the upper right corner for the English version.

Specific prayer requests from each family member:
• Eric asks for safety and wisdom as he ministers in the favellas and for successful surgery on his right knee.
• Ramona asks that she stay sensitive to the Holy Spirit. Pray that friends at her daughters’ school who have not given their lives to Christ will develop a personal relationship with Him.
• Gloria wants prayers for school and good relationships with her friends. Also pray for two classmates who have not given their lives to Christ.
• Alicia asks for prayer for friends who are not saved and for her teachers.

Forgotten people

By Will Stuart

She peeks around the broad frame of her grandfather, snatching glances at strangers come to visit. Shy, she edges away, disappears, then — back against the wall — takes courage and slides along it until her hands rest on the blue chair and she is out in the open.

She keeps a distance. I smile and photograph her. No response. I smile again, turn the camera so she can see her image and motion for her to come look. Still no response. I turn back to the conversation and listen as her grandfather, the chief, tells the story of his people.

It is a familiar story. An indigenous people pushed to the margins by immigrants. Watching forest transformed into pasture and cultivated fields — and the animals disappear.

Finally losing their land. Blending into the dominant culture. Taking names in a language not their own. Forgetting their own language.

Then fighting back. Gaining recognition. Regaining some of the land. Proudly working it. Allowing the forest — and its animals — to return.

It has been a struggle.

It is a story that can be repeated among people after people, on continent after continent. These are the forgotten. The unengaged. The unreached.

Their story — the story of 3,800 unengaged, unreached people groups across the globe — is not just one of struggle. It is also one of lack of opportunity. None has heard the Gospel of Christ.

I think about that as this grandfather — and chief — tells their story. What will it take to tell the greatest story here? There are so many barriers: language, culture, race, geography, history, suspicion. Then I think of the Gospel story and how, under the warmth of relationship and the willingness to enter into other people’s stories, those
barriers can melt.

There is a shadow across my lap. The granddaughter is standing beside me. I turn the camera for her to see. She leans against my leg, places her hands on my thigh and stretches to look. She smiles, reaches up and strokes my beard.

“Look at her,” says her grandfather. “She never touches anyone. Not even me! She’s all over you! You must have the same blood.”

We all have the same blood, I think, no matter how different we look.

Koli people stir North Carolina church to action

By Alan James

SOUTH ASIA—It hangs from the ceiling near the auditorium of Englewood Baptist Church in Rocky Mount, N.C., like an overgrown spider web. It’s frayed and tattered in spots, with blue netting where it has been repaired multiple times through the years.

Pastor Michael Cloer runs his fingers along the fishing net, admiring the craftsmanship. As he inspects the net, he doesn’t miss an opportunity for an impromptu object lesson.

“You look at the individual pieces and they don’t look like much, but together they are strong. … It’s a great picture of the church,” said Cloer, who received the net in February 2011 from a Koli fisherman when his church took its first overseas missions trip to South Asia.

That Koli fisherman is now a follower of Jesus.

A couple of months later, a second team from Englewood returned to the same spot where Cloer had met the fisherman. By the end of 2011, the church will have sent several teams to engage and reach the Koli people with the Good News.

CHOOSING THE KOLI

At the 2010 annual Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Orlando, Cloer said he became convicted that the congregation had not done enough to help reach people groups like the Koli — those unengaged with no active church-planting strategy among them and unreached with less than a 2 percent evangelical presence.

“The Spirit of God just spoke to my heart and said, ‘What are we doing about [unengaged, unreached] people?’” Cloer said.

“We had been praying for them, just as a whole, but that’s as far as we were going. I came back and … began to pray, ‘God, where do you want us to go?’”

The church soon was committed to ministering to the Koli people.

Against a backdrop of modern conveniences and technological advances, the Koli people — with their colorful boats and waving flags — represent an old way of life committed to hard work, tradition, and idol worship.

Fishermen struggle to make a living in polluted waters in a time when modern life seems to have passed them by.

Most of the younger generations hunt for new opportunities to escape the Koli’s old way of life, while clinging to the worship of more than 300,000 gods. Of the more than 283,000 Koli that Englewood is engaging, fewer than half of 1 percent are evangelical.

“We saw a people group who were mainly fishermen, and the Lord immediately struck in my heart,” Cloer said.

“God told us to be fishers of men; these are fishes, let’s be fishers of men among the fishermen.”

In the summer of 2010, IMB challenged Southern Baptists to adopt 6,426 unreached people groups based on that year’s research. At this year’s SBC annual meeting in June, IMB President Tom Elliff narrowed that focus to the approximately 3,800 unengaged, unreached people groups.

The Koli are now engaged with a church-planting strategy — and the work has just begun.

Church members won’t have to look far to find challenges.

On the streets they’ll find a variety of idols — ones surrounded in fresh flowers on cab dashboards or those swinging from the rearview mirror. Some will be displayed on posters along shop walls and encased in concrete shrines. In some homes they’ll find a cross, a statue or even a picture of Jesus, but locals view these as mere additions to their idol worship.

“To the Koli, Jesus is just another god,” said Claude,* an Englewood member whom the church is supporting to lead follow-up work among the Koli with his wife, Lynne.* The couple plan to live in South Asia until the end of 2011.

“These people who live in these Koli villages along the coast are in total spiritual darkness.”

But there has been some progress.

Shortly after Englewood began sending teams to the Koli villages, nearly 20 people made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ.

“We had men and women pray out loud in front of other people: ‘I want Jesus Christ to be my Lord and Savior; I renounce all other gods but Jesus,’” Cloer said.

“We’d go back the next day, that individual had thrown out all of their idols into the street.”

The response has been an encouragement, but it also has served as a reminder of the follow-up work the church still has to do.

During the first trip, one Koli fisherman made a profession of faith. He agreed to have a Bible study at his home. But when Claude and a team returned a couple of months later, the fisherman had changed his mind. He told the team another villager had attacked his wife for her faith, and she had been prevented from using the well.

It’s slow work, said Kaleb,* an IMB representative among the people of South Asia.

“This [people group] has existed for thousands of years, but Satan has had a hold on [them],” Kaleb said. “When we go into these areas and make these big pushes just to get the Gospel out, we see Satan’s attack.”

The level of commitment needed to make a dent among people groups like the Koli is high, Kaleb said.

“I know lots of people back home who say they want to reach the nations,” he said, “but they’re not praying for the nations. They’re not going to the nations. They’re not sending others to the nations.

“Until we become doers of the Word of God and take this message to the nations, then nothing is going to change.”

Kaleb admits being pleasantly surprised when he first spoke to Cloer about Englewood Baptist Church working among the Koli. Cloer asked Kaleb how many teams he could handle and what it would take to get the job done.

“When I heard that, I realized they are in it,” Kaleb said. “Their hearts were committed. Knowing that churches like Englewood are out there … makes me feel like I’m not out here alone.”

“WHATEVER IT TAKES”

In the coming months, Cloer hopes to mentor fellow pastors in the U.S. in how to begin work among other unengaged, unreached people groups.

Though Englewood is larger than the average church, Cloer knows his congregation — and most other churches — can’t do it alone.

“I was led by the Lord, ‘Why don’t you ask other pastors to join you in this?’” he said.

“We hear it from the national platform … but it’s another thing for a brother to look you face to face and say, ‘Brother, why don’t you get involved?’ “

Cloer said after his time on earth is done, he hopes he will have helped reach 1 percent of those people groups unreached with the Gospel.

Just like that old net hanging from the church ceiling, Southern Baptists are stronger when they are together than when they are separate, Cloer contends.

“I believe there will be someone from every people group standing around the throne of Jesus,” he said.

“To think that we could have [that] opportunity … it’s going to be worth it all. It’s going to be worth whatever it takes.”

ENGLEWOOD UPDATE

Since they began work among the Koli people in the spring of 2011, Englewood has seen approximately 35 professions of faith. They continue to build relationships and seek opportunities to start their first Koli house church.

By the end of the year, the church plans to rely more heavily on local Christians who live near the Koli. Through these partnerships, Englewood will train local believers to share the Good News in Koli villages, provide discipleship and start churches.

“I went in … thinking we’re going to get this done this year … [but] … this is [on] God’s time table,” said Allan,* who has led multiple Englewood teams. “It may be a number of years before we get a solid Koli church going. We’re here until the work gets done.”

Englewood’s pastor led a team of fellow pastors from the United States to South Asia to pursue embracing unengaged, unreached people groups. To learn more about how your church can embrace a people group, go to call2embrace.org. For more information, call IMB at (800) 999-3113.

*Names changed

Southern Baptists challenged: ‘Don’t drop the cross’

RICHMOND, Va.—“It’s worth it all. It’s worth it all,” said the Christian worker of the sacrifice made by three of his colleagues killed by a gunman nearly a decade ago at Jibla Baptist Hospital in Yemen.
Emotions remain raw and close to the surface for this man, who fondly remembers the slain workers as “some of God’s greatest servants.” Fighting back tears as he spoke, the worker paused unexpectedly while retelling how his colleagues lost their lives.
“A man came in with a gun under his arm and …” he said, his voice cracking.
On Dec. 30, 2002, the gunman entered the hospital and shot and killed Christian workers William Koehn, Kathleen Gariety and Martha Myers — all employees at the hospital.
“They gave their lives that Yemen might hear the Gospel,” the worker said.

He recently shared the story in Cairo, Egypt, with Bryant Wright, president of the Southern Baptist Convention. The two were standing in a British cemetery where Oswald Chambers, who wrote the devotional My Utmost for His Highest, is buried.
The worker planned to make a simple presentation of the 4-foot wooden cross to Wright and Southern Baptists.
But getting through the presentation wasn’t that simple. This particular cross has its own story.
It was handcrafted by Koehn, who was known among his friends, colleagues and many local Yemeni people for his woodworking skills. He sometimes used those skills to craft toys for Yemeni children.
“They gave it all … that challenges me a lot,” said the worker, who continues to serve in the Middle East with his wife and children.
“They didn’t stop until [God] was done, and then He took them home,” he said. “And that’s what I want to be — my utmost for His highest.”

Wright, pastor of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Ga., would present the cross a couple of weeks later at the SBC annual meeting in Phoenix.
Starting next year, the cross will be displayed on the campuses of all six Southern Baptist seminaries, beginning with Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in Mill Valley, Calif.
The cross bears the words “Don’t drop the cross” and “Rev. 7:9.” The Bible verse references “… and there was a vast multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language, which no one could number, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were robed in white with palm branches in their hands.” (HCSB)
Today, there are approximately 3,800 people groups with no active church-planting strategy among them and less than a 2 percent evangelical presence. Southern Baptists have been challenged this year to “embrace” those unengaged, unreached peoples with the Gospel.
“I just want Southern Baptists to understand where we’re poised,” the worker added.
“We are at a place and a responsibility and a blessing. If we truly grasp [the price Christ paid on the cross], there’s nothing that will stop us, nothing. Because if God is for us, who can be against us?”
Watch the “Don’t drop the cross” video at http://www.imb.org/main/downloads/flashvideos.asp?filename=/files/133/13387/13387-74988.mp4.
To learn more about how your church can embrace an unengaged, unreached people group, go to www.call2embrace.org.

For more information about this year’s Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, visit www.iamsbmissions.com.
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FIRST PERSON: Missions trip changed my family’s worldview

By Mike Young

My wife, Stacy, and I believe that the best investment you can make in education is to go with your child on an international mission trip. Raising four children on a relatively modest income does not allow us to put much aside for college educations or retirement. Yet we believe, if it is God’s will, He will provide a way for us to be able to accompany each of our four children on an international missions adventure before they begin high school.

In the summer of 2010, our then 14-year-old son, Tim, and I had the opportunity to travel together to South Asia as part of a volunteer team from Parkway Baptist Church in Moseley, Va.

The investment of time and resources already has produced fruit in Tim’s life and for God’s kingdom. The dividends have already been huge!

The journey
Trip preparation required that Tim and I read books about missions and culture. We also practiced sharing our personal testimonies and led our group in devotions. Tim stepped out early and represented youthful enthusiasm well (as long as there were good snacks at each training session).

Traveling side by side for 25 hours (each way) gave Tim and me plenty of opportunities to get to know each other better. We shared anxious anticipation, excitement, laughter and many entirely new experiences along the way.

Sensory overload — every view was filled with people. Every breath was laced with that unique South Asia aroma. The noise of car horns, rickshaw bells and people shouting filled our ears.

Culture shock — walking through busy streets and marketplaces gave us an opportunity to see life lived in ways we’ve never experienced. We struggled to process all we encountered as the locals gathered to check us out. Because we were obviously foreigners, our presence drew much attention. Many wanted to know about us. The most capable English speaker in each crowd would engage in dialogue. After pleasant greetings, we were able to ask about their faith and ultimately share about our faith in Jesus Christ.

In the days that followed, we visited towns and villages. We shared the Gospel with individuals, families, small groups and large crowds. We visited tea stalls, temples, markets and homes. We showed the JESUS film to several hundred people in the courtyard of a Hindu temple and in the common area of a small village. We were asked by leaders to leave another village before showing the JESUS film because “there will be trouble here tomorrow if you show the film.”

Enormous task
Tim and I were able to process the encounters together and with our team. We were excited to share Christ but overwhelmed by the enormity of what would be required to truly “make disciples” in this land. Hundreds of locals responded to our presence, Gospel presentations, the JESUS film and the tracts we distributed. But the question that lingers for Tim — and for me — is what one local asked: “Who will come and tell us more?”

My heart swells with pride when I think of my son sharing the Gospel with folks in a village on the other side of the world. I still marvel at his question for a Hindu swami: “But when do you know you’ve prayed enough?” I smile each time I think of the crowd that was attracted to his muddy soccer game. Every father should experience moments like this with his son or daughter.

There are peoples, places and cultures that can be most effectively reached by men who are willing to set aside the American dream for kingdom pursuits. I challenge men in this country and around the world to measure their manhood against a biblical model rather than contemporary culture. Men must set the standard and lead by example. When men become spiritually alive in Christ, they will invest significantly in their own spiritual growth as well as the spiritual growth of their wives and children.

New view
At the conclusion of our father/son missions adventure, the men on our team joined me in praying over Tim; seven men praying over one young man. We agreed to encourage him and stand with him in his walk with Christ.

We know that Tim’s view of the world and his faith were forever impacted by our trip. We don’t know what God’s plan is for his life, but Stacy and I pray we will release him to whatever that call might be.

For the rest of our lives, Tim and I will share a special bond and great memories of traveling together to the other side of the world.

Tim’s younger brothers — now 10 and 12 — have pretty adventurous spirits and are looking forward to their missions adventure with Dad. At just 6, who knows how his sister will react.

In our home, we now have a greater level of awareness regarding missions. We pay closer attention to what is going on in South Asia and around the world. We even invited some international students from the Middle East to join our family for Thanksgiving last year. Tim now has personal experience and a new boldness to talk about spiritual things in secular environments, even in school in a world history class.

Now, the world is smaller and God is bigger for Tim — and for me. His mom is a little anxious, but I am excited when I hear him say, “I want to go back and talk about Jesus with people who have never heard of Him.”

Mike Young is founder of Noble Warriors, an organization focusing on men’s ministry, and a member of Parkway Baptist Church in Moseley, Va.

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• Email Mike Young
• Email the photographer

VIEW AN INTERACTIVE TIMELINE: Explore Southern Baptists’ legacy in Vietnam through the eyes of emeritus missionary Sam James.

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New hope dawns for Vietnam

By Don Graham

Tears streamed down Sam James’ face as he stared into the abyss outside his airplane window. Somewhere in the darkness below lay the country he risked his life — and the lives of his wife, Rachel, and their four children — to save. But unlike so many American men and women who came to Vietnam, James wasn’t a soldier. He was a missionary.

It was April 1975 and Saigon would fall to North Vietnamese forces within a week. James had spent the past few months bargaining with God for more time, but there was no more room for negotiation. Two weeks earlier, his family had flown to a safer place; James would join them there.

“I had a tremendous urge to try to stop the plane and go back to the place that I loved so dearly. …” he says. “I remember lying in bed at night and saying, ‘Lord, if you just let me live until tomorrow morning, I’ll get out. … And then the sun would come up, the birds would sing and everything looked nice. And I’d say, ‘OK Lord, [give me] one more day.’”

Waves of doubt — and regret — flooded the North Carolina native’s heart as his plane circled Saigon and turned toward the South China Sea. How could he abandon the Vietnamese people after pouring nearly 14 years of his life into theirs? What would happen to the newborn churches he helped start? Or to the Vietnamese Christians who filled them, some of whom he had led to faith?

Torn apart
These converts weren’t notches on a belt to measure evangelical worth. To James, they were family. They had laughed together over dinner at each other’s homes while their children played outside. They had carried one another’s grief when the horrors of war came close and the sadness seemed too great to bear. James had taught them, baptized them, discipled them, counseled them, officiated marriages and led funerals for them, all the while sharing the most sacred and intimate aspect of his life — a relationship with Jesus Christ.

But God had a plan to safeguard the seeds that James and his fellow missionaries had planted through years of sweat and sacrifice. Their efforts freed thousands from a centuries-old cycle of spiritual slavery to ancestor worship and Buddhism, spawning dozens of new Vietnamese churches.

Only one of those churches — Grace Baptist in Saigon (today, Ho Chi Minh City) — would survive the dark years that followed Vietnam’s communist revolution and eventually give birth to a vibrant network of Baptist churches that are today making Christ’s name known throughout Vietnam.

All of this was possible, James says, because Southern Baptists were willing to answer God’s Great Commission call. Their prayers and giving supported more than 50 missionaries who served in Vietnam between 1959 and 1975 — including the Jameses. In 1969, Southern Baptists also provided the $50,000 needed to buy the land and building for Grace Baptist — where the church remains today.

“When the end came and South Vietnam collapsed, this church was here,” James says. “And it became the identity of Baptists in Vietnam. … 48 years later, this church building stands as the home of the [Vietnamese Baptist] convention, as a training center for the [Vietnamese] Baptist Bible Institute, as the home of Grace Baptist Church and as a source of church planting in this country.”

Communist crucible
But that victory came at a heavy price. The decade that followed South Vietnam’s collapse was a crucible for Vietnamese believers suddenly forced to survive in a society that demanded loyalty to the Communist Party. And Hanoi’s Marxist ideology made little room for faith.

“We were threatened, we were questioned, interrogated and some people in our churches were persecuted. Some were put into jail. Some were beaten,” says Huy Le, who today pastors Grace Baptist Church.

Huy was just 6 when the North Vietnamese army captured Saigon. He vividly remembers the moment when he knew the city was lost — besieged by the incessant drone of helicopters, bright red tracer rounds cutting “beams of fire” through the night sky and the rumble of North Vietnamese tanks outside his bedroom window.

Huy’s father, Chanh Le, embodies the genesis of Southern Baptists’ work in Vietnam. Chanh was the first Vietnamese led to Christ by one of the first Southern Baptist missionaries to Vietnam, Lewis Myers. Chanh was subsequently discipled and baptized by the first Southern Baptists missionary in Vietnam, Herman Hayes. In 1970, Chanh became Grace Baptist’s first Vietnamese pastor, succeeding Sam James. Chanh turned down multiple opportunities to flee the country before its collapse, choosing instead to shepherd his congregation as they endured countless interrogations, harassment, forced-labor “re-education” camps, food shortages and economic depression.

“[Our] faith in Christ was the reason for us to live,” says Huy, who began pastoring Grace Baptist in 2010 following his father’s retirement after 40 years of service. “Thanks to God’s grace, we could suffer and keep our faith.”

New revolution
Today Grace Baptist is again facing revolution. But instead of political dissonance, this new wave of change is driven by economic aspiration. Vietnam’s government is opening the once-isolated nation with the aim of transforming it into Southeast Asia’s economic powerhouse. And as better education and more lucrative jobs lure young Vietnamese from rural rice paddies to urban offices and factories, the standard of living continues to rise. According to Vietnam’s General Statistics Office, the average monthly income more than tripled between 1999 and 2008 and the nation’s average urban population jumped by at least 25 percent.

Reaching this young, career-focused and typically more materialistic demographic with the Gospel presents new challenges for churches like Grace Baptist. Much like their Southern Baptist counterparts in the United States, Huy believes Vietnamese Baptists must be willing to change in order to remain relevant to future generations, repackaging timeless truth in more contemporary ways.

“Young people have more opportunities … and, at the same time, more temptations,” Huy says. “In the past, people had nothing … and they longed for some god up there to lay their hope on. Now, people have so many things to follow.”

But as more Vietnamese move from poverty to prosperity, some are already recognizing that money isn’t an end unto itself.

Smashing idols
Lam Quach is a 35-year-old husband and father of two rambunctious boys who lives in a modern home not far from Grace Baptist Church. Despite a successful career as a manager at a Saigon chemical company, Quach knew something was missing in his life. He heard about Jesus through a friend, and with guidance from the wife of a Vietnamese Baptist pastor, Quach and his wife, Hanh, believed.

“I believed there was a great God who was over everything … but I didn’t know anything about Him,” Quach says. “It was only when I began to experience prayer and experiment with the Christian life that I really began to understand who God is and read the Bible.”

Perhaps the most tangible expression of the couple’s new faith was their decision to destroy an altar they’d used for ancestor worship, a common fixture in Vietnamese homes.

“It was just a little altar with two pictures. One is the god of the earth … and the other was the god who brings blessings,” Quach says. He invited Pastor Huy to their home to help remove the altar. Huy read from Psalm 115, illustrating the differences between false idols and the one, true God.

“I took a hammer and smashed it to pieces,” Quach says, explaining that he wanted to make sure the altar would never be used again, by anyone. “I felt like I’d been set free.”

Quach and Hanh now attend Grace Baptist where they were baptized in the fall of 2010.

New openness
Vietnam’s economic ambitions have also helped win unprecedented freedom for religious groups, particularly in Ho Chi Minh City where police shakedowns might draw the eye — and ire — of the city’s growing international business community. In 2008, the Vietnamese Baptist Convention was legally recognized by the Vietnamese government, a move that legitimized the church’s presence in the country while allowing greater freedom to share the Gospel. Though the government still tightly regulates religious activity, Grace Baptist’s church-planting network is spreading to villages formerly bound by bureaucratic red tape that seemed unbreakable only a few years ago.

Dien Nguyen pastors An Phuoc Baptist Church in Cai Lay, a town roughly 50 miles southwest of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam’s Mekong River Delta. Last year, Nguyen approached authorities in the Tien Giang province for permission to start new churches in four nearby villages. To Nguyen’s surprise, An Phuoc Baptist was instead authorized to work anywhere in the entire province — a chance to reach more than 1.6 million people with the Gospel — no strings attached.

“This was a miracle,” Nguyen says. “We didn’t dare to even dream about it.”

But such miracles are still only a beginning. Despite the legacy of missionaries like Sam James, today evangelical Christians make up less than 2 percent of Vietnam’s 91 million people. Most have yet to hear the Gospel.

“I believe there is hope for Vietnam,” Huy says. “It’s just not easy. Some … have said that [our] people have hard hearts. That might be true, but there are seekers out there. … The question is whether churches are willing to take opportunities to win these people.”

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• E-mail the writer.