Dear Family and Friends,
Hopefully you’re all doing well and enjoying springtime after a long winter!!! Since our trip to Jordan in March, we have been continuing our search for knowledge about the Kingdom of God, and more directly how it relates to Muslims through a year-long internship-type adventure. Our group in Iowa City consists of 16 people, married and single who are committed to moving overseas to tell those who haven’t heard about the Kingdom of God. We’ve been learning Jesus stories and trying to meet Muslims in Iowa City to bring up spiritual conversations while sharing our lives with them. It has been very challenging -a learning process to say the least- but rewarding too as God is doing mighty things here!
June 20 through July 2 there will be six of us, Lord willing, that are going to put this into practice overseas- in Pakistan! The first three days will be spent in northern Pakistan where we will meet with a team who has been there several years and has done a number of various development projects. The focus for the rest of the trip will be the Seraiki people group. There are approximately 30 million speakers of the Seraiki language throughout Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan with 18 million in Pakistan. There are currently no known believers and no foreigners focused on these people, which make them an unengaged people group with very little chance at this point to hear about Jesus.
We will have three goals while we are there: the first will be to survey the area and some teams who are already well established to see if this is a place God would have us go long-term; the second goal is to visit a few district capitals in Pakistan where millions of the Seraiki people live to see if there are any special trades, crafts, or other things that would help someone coming from the outside find a professional trade to work among them. For example, there is a people group in Pakistan that produces mango trees, so a foreigner could come in and start a dried-mango export business to bless the people. We would be doing bits of research to see if the Seraiki have any niches to aid a foreign worker in obtaining a visa so they could share truths about the Kingdom of God while working there. Our internship group has been learning and living together for the past year here in Iowa City, and now we get a chance to do it overseas and possibly form a team with each other- this is our third goal.
This past year, we have been learning a lot about God’s characteristics, the power of prayer and stories Jesus told. One story we have learned is the story about the persistent widow (Luke 18) who continued to ask a judge to give her justice, and although the judge did not care if the widow was given justice, he gave it to her because she kept asking until he couldn’t stand to listen to her any more. God is like the judge in that He has the power to give us justice and grant mercy, yet He loves His children and desires for there to be justice in the World. When we continue to ask Him we firmly believe He will grant our requests because He sees our persistence. Pakistan is an area of the World that needs justice desperately and we can hope for good and for someone to do something, but in the end God’s truth is the answer. We might not have many chances to share God’s truth on this trip because of the language barrier and the short time we’ll be there, but we are hoping to help other people get there so they can share His truth. Would you pray for our survey and our team persistently so that in the near future the Seraiki may be granted justice to hear the truth about the Kingdom of God?
Our team is collectively raising $15,000. Please prayerfully consider if this is something God would have you take part in. Please make checks out to: Parkview Church, and return to us at: 1802 Calvin Ct. #3 Iowa City, IA 52246. (Put Pakistan in the memo line, not our names).
Grace and Peace,
The Bishops :)
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