How many friends do you have? How many Great Commission friends do you have? How many ministry partners do you have in Asia? Well each week and month this is our Asia Impact Team’s (AIT) plan to develop contacts in the 50 countries in Asia, connect with some of them to see if we can partner for movements, a few we begin equipping ministries leading to multiplying their discipling and church planting efforts. Just this last month John connected with several partners in Japan, a key leader in Laos, and several groups in South Asia. And last month was kind of slow because it is summer. Along with those connections we have on-going contacts with world-wide networks of people like Global Church Planting Network, Lausanne Network, and Global Alliance for Church Multiplication (GACX).
But once in a while our whole AIT team meets for a strategic summit, for planning, encouraging, and to update our progress. In July we all met in Orlando Florida to develop a strategy for our various ministries in South Asia. We also had some fun taking an airboat ride in one of the swamps which reminded me that we do not take a break for summer, it just gets hotter (but you also have to keep an eye on alligators).
Nearly every month and sometimes weekly we have an online connection with some contacts. And sometimes our contacts come to our area. John was very pleased to meet with Dr. Khamdeng, the head of the Laos Evangelical Church, the largest church organization in Laos and it is recognized by the Laotian government. John was able to meet with this couple in Rockford Illinois and take them to Anderson Japanese Gardens to highlight John’s connection to Japanese and Asian culture and our area. He told me that their church network in the last year mobilized all their 250,000 members to do one-on-one evangelism. As a result 22,000 people accepted Jesus as their savior, 6,800 were baptized and 120 new churches were started! Wow! Thanks for praying, we had a wonderful visit! And I made another contact after being with Pastor Khamdeng in the process!
FOCUS ON SOUTH ASIA
Back to Bangkok! Last year we had a Strategy Summit with 12 leaders from a south Asian country. This summer we have another Strategy Summit with 25 leaders to build on the 4 priorities for mission involvement. We will be facilitating 4 working teams to develop concrete goals and next steps for the next 2-3 years. Please be in prayer for God’s wisdom and faith from August 5-12. In our next newsletter we will let you know how well we all did.
FOCUS ON JAPAN
Thanks for your prayers for the last several months as John and Elaine and a Japanese pastoral couple work at getting the Sonship spiritual formation curriculum and mentoring systems into Japanese. We are grateful for the support of the Serge International organization for their assistance in getting this done. We just finished Lesson Four the other night meaning we are one-quarter the way done already! John will be meeting the pastoral couple this month in person in Tokyo. Continue to pray for the hard work and hard “heart work” that goes into this major project.