From Every Nation
The From Every Nation Podcast is designed to encourage and equip the next generation of missionaries to take the gospel into the world. Join us as we interview missionaries to hear first hand about their life and ministry. Learn firsthand what strategies, barriers, and opportunities they faced on the field. The FEN podcast also equips you today, for the missionary work the Lord has planned for your life. The FEN podcast is the official podcast of the Tom Elliff Center for Missions at Oklahoma Baptist University
From Every Nation
The Manns: Obedience Leading to Gospel Transformation Pt. 2
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What happens when two college sweethearts leave behind a thriving American ministry to reach an unreached people group in Southeast Asia? Greg and Sarah’s journey to the remote mountains of Thailand began with a quiet, persistent conviction from Scripture.
Through tearful prayers, hard questions, and a willingness to obey, they followed God’s call to the Palong. From creating solar-powered audio Bibles for an illiterate population to discipling a former drug addict whose family helped turn a Buddhist temple into a church, their story is a powerful example of how God works through ordinary people in extraordinary ways.
This episode offers honest insight into the joys and struggles of pioneer missions, and a compelling invitation to step into God’s global mission today.
Welcome to From Every Nation
Speaker 1Welcome and thanks for listening to the From Every Nation podcast, the official podcast of the Tom Ellef Center for Missions at Oklahoma Baptist University. I'm Kyle and I'll be your host as we learn to live as those sent out to spread the gospel. Welcome everybody to another episode of the From Every Nation podcast. We're so glad you're joining us again. I've got Greg and Sarah here with me again. If you didn't catch the first part of our interview, make sure you hit pause, jump back, catch that interview. Really great conversations about how they came to know the Lord, their call to missions and kind of how they ended up in Thailand, where we're going to jump in right now and start talking about your first years and your first 15 years kind of on the field where you were there doing church planting. So you're in the States, you apply with the IMB, you get appointed, they give you a one-way plane ticket and you land what's day one like and kind of start walking us through the story.
Speaker 2Oh, my goodness, Day one was not what we expected. For sure it never is right.
Speaker 3Oh, I don't even know if we should share this story, greg, should we, absolutely, absolutely, if we should share this story greg, should we, absolutely, absolutely so we went with four kids ages what?
Speaker 2five, four, three, one and a half, three and one and a half so we were the family that got on the plane and everybody was scratching their head, thinking lord, don't sit next to me, don't sit next to me and actually our kids did awesome.
Speaker 3They were fantastic I was loaded with suckers and benadryl. That's right.
Speaker 2We got a couple of good compliments afterwards from folks on the plane but we landed in Thailand, and just being in Thailand was, in and of itself, driven by the Lord. Of course, our people group was primarily in Myanmar, which was formerly called Burma, in China and, of course, in the northern part of Thailand. Well, they were in the northern part of Thailand because of all the conflict happening in the country of Myanmar, the longest running civil war, and so lots of conflict, a lot of blacklisted areas, and so foreigners couldn't even live in those areas at the time. But people were coming across the border with the hopes of finding a better life on this side. So that gave us access. So we landed in the northern part of Thailand, there and in the city of Chiang Mai, and interestingly enough, we were in a hotel while we were doing some house hunting there, but landed at a hotel, got there that evening.
Speaker 3This is the first day, day one right on the ground Of course the kids had slept a lot of the plane flight, but we had not because some of the kids yeah, we were keeping an eye on them.
Speaker 2And so we were just whipped.
Speaker 1I mean exhausted yeah.
Speaker 2And so we were in the hotel room we had connecting rooms, you know and about two, three o'clock in the morning, I'd say, we get a call from the front desk and, you know, one of the folks down there the hotel staff just called, said Mr Mann, your two boy, they go up and down elevator and we're, like what you know, we're scrambling out of bed, you know, just trying to think oh, what in the world's happening. So we run over there. Sure enough, the boys had somehow and this is a four-year-old and a three-year-old somehow- gotten out of the room.
Speaker 1Of course, of course.
Speaker 2Going up and down the elevator with you know and of course you hear all sorts of things that just cause fear in your heart. You know about things happening overseas, and so we were already on high alert, you know. But to know that our boys were going up and down the elevator in the middle of the night, that just took it all to a whole new level.
Speaker 1What legends.
Speaker 2Yes. And you know, come to find out that God had placed us in a country where the Thai people just absolutely love kids. Yes, and and so that was a blessing. In hindsight, you know, to know that they really do just this love, love family and love kids.
Speaker 3Yeah so first night for day one. So you know that first week we're like what were we thinking?
Speaker 2What have we gotten ourselves into Like and we didn't have a home and we're in this hotel trying to find a place we got sick, it was just you know All the change and transition and food and new things.
Speaker 3But you just push through that. We had to learn to laugh, that was our thing. You have to learn to laugh about things when you first arrive on the field. So we always had, you know, things that would frustrate us or annoy us about the culture, and we'd just look each other at each other and be like welcome to Thailand. Then we just laugh and just go on and it was good to be able to just have things like that just to help us to to get through those those tough early days.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's funny.
Learning Language and Culture
Speaker 2I'm glad you all shared that Day one.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, I can imagine them just having a blast.
Speaker 3Oh yes, they thought they were on top of the world. They did At the same time we-. The elevator was a glass elevator, so they could see. So they could see. That's what they were so excited about.
Speaker 2Mind you, we went to bed that night, you know hearing a Thai impersonation of Elvis down in the lobby, of course, and so it was very surreal here we have this Thai Elvis down there. You know singing Blue Suede Shoes.
Speaker 3you know Crazy we have our kids going up and down.
Speaker 2I guess, they wanted to hear Elvis. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, why not? While looking on from a glass elevator. That's exactly right.
Speaker 1What better thing could you possibly?
Speaker 2imagine as a four and three-year-old.
Speaker 3Yes.
Speaker 1That's great. So tell us, walk us through the story then, of those first couple terms it sounds like in Thailand, and how you were able to get the gospel to those lost, hidden peoples in the hills.
Speaker 2Absolutely. We started out, of course, you know your first term is just focused on language and culture.
Speaker 3And so we were committed to that.
Speaker 2Our organization's committed to that. We wanted to learn it. We're very relational people and so we wanted to talk to people and get into their lives.
Speaker 2And, of course, our greatest intent and heart was just to communicate the gospel. We wanted them to know the best news on earth. And so lots of time and lots of patience, lots of learning, as Sarah mentioned, just to laugh at yourself and to be okay with that and understand that it's a time of learning and that you really wanted to go deep in your understanding of culture and of religion and of the people themselves and, of course, of the language. So we began that journey and all the while, we began making trips up to one of the closest areas where we could engage. Our people Went to some of the villages and just began forming relationships, and that was about two hours north of Chiang Mai.
Speaker 2There was only a couple of different locations in the northern part of Thailand where the king had given them land where they could grow crops and build their lives and their families, and so we began doing that, and so it was a really good time of just learning and observation and studying their culture and learning how just to be there and maintain and have a presence there, which meant your identity as a person inside that country, a foreigner.
Speaker 2You know, how am I going to stay here? To? How are the? How am I going to be perceived by the people and how am I going to communicate to them what I am doing here and why I'm so interested in being in your village and talking to you, and so on and so forth, so that that that that was part of the learning curve as well. Sarah and I, we were part of a foundation there where we could be a part of community development and projects, things like that, and so that was our ability to be in some of those villages and was a wonderful, wonderful opportunity, just not only to meet human needs but also be about the missionary task and so.
Meeting Jomsang
Speaker 3So some of the things we did were, you know, either teaching English in some of the schools there or in the villages there, working with helping getting clean water for the schools and doing different wells, building bridges into villages that would flood and they couldn't leave the village when the rainy season came All sorts of construction projects and really utilized a lot of volunteer teams who shared the passion of getting the gospel to this particular people group as we began making it known who they were and what their needs were.
Speaker 3But it was teaching English in a village called Mejon Village, where we met a young man named Jomsang, and that's where it all pretty much began.
Speaker 2And even one step prior to that meeting a guy by the name of Atit and Atit was a guy who was interested in English and we began sharing the gospel with this young man, and he actually put his faith in Christ as well. But he had been drafted into the Royal Thai Army and shortly after he became a believer he was deployed down to Southern part of Thailand, and so we didn't get a chance to disciple him. We were like, oh, our first believer here.
Speaker 2But just before he left he introduced us to Dom Sang, and this was the young man whom God used in incredible ways just in the life of his family and his village, uh, his community, other prolonged villages and really um just uh, among his people group as a whole, uh, both inside the country of Burma and outside, and um, and so we met Jomsang again, got to share the gospel with him. He was a guy that the Lord had prepared and was eager to accept Christ. His life was on the verge. He was married, but his marriage was on the verge of divorce. He was still addicted to drugs. That was an area of the world known as the Golden Triangle, so it was 360,000 square miles of overlapping mountain ranges where there were lots of drug refineries and the drug trade was just rampant in the area and so very few people did we meet.
Speaker 2That wasn't somehow affected by the drug trade in that part of the world. So a lot of brokenness by the drug trade in that part of the world. So a lot of brokenness as you can imagine. But in the middle of all this, god chose to see this young man come to faith and began using him in an incredible way.
Speaker 1So how did that start unfolding? So you all are discipling. Remind me his name.
Speaker 3Jomsang.
Speaker 1Jomsang and begin kind of starting to plant churches how, where, what?
Speaker 2does that look like? We just began in a pattern of Matthew 10, just going, and he was very favorable to our message.
Speaker 2Of course, and just rooting ourselves in his village and not trying to not try. We did have relationships in all the different villages, but really focusing and honing in on his level of interest in spiritual things. And so, as, as we began discipling him and just seeing his love for the word, his hunger for it, teaching him, we just go up, drive to his village. Uh, he would, he was, there was an agrarian society, and so they would have fields that they would, uh, they would plow and harvest and till and plant seed and and so, uh, they have these little rest homes on the side of their hills, and it was always in the mountains, they're a mountainous people.
Speaker 2Uh, and we, just there midday, just as he was taking breaks and take the word and drive our four by four up there and just sit down, open the word, study it together. And from there he just began having a desire just to take the gospel to his people and, beginning with his family, his oikos, he began sharing the gospel and just, miraculous story after miraculous story of people being saved, beginning with his wife had previously had an encounter with Christ. She went into the city to study, and yet it was kind of a dormant faith and yet, yeah, so she began to express her faith in a more open way and rededicated her life and followed up in believers baptism, really kind of sealing her, uh, her walk with Christ. But then, um, his father, amazing story of just deliverance and, uh, during this time, we were creating resources and were creating resources in their heart language.
Speaker 3Yeah, so the Palang people do not have a written language.
Speaker 1Okay.
Audio Bible for the Palaung
Speaker 3So what we felt like the Lord was leading us to do was to get the Bible in an audio format for the Palang people, so that those who could not read could hear the word of God. So for about eight months we worked with a company called Faith Comes by Hearing, and we gathered together about how many people, would you say, we got about.
Speaker 2Well, we were supposed to have 25 readers, People who could read their language. They're using Thai script you know, but we couldn't find that many people.
Speaker 3I think it ended up being about 12 people and from 8 in the morning to sometimes 8 at night. They worked so diligently and for about eight months we worked on that recording of the New Testament and, by God's grace, about eight months into it we've completed that and we were able to put the New Testament in the Palaung language on solar devices that we would take into the mountains of Burma, which is now called Myanmar, and we would trek to these villages give the scripture. And it just opened a wide, wide door for the gospel for the Poh Long people and, as a matter of fact, that those solar paneled little devices, one of those was given to Jomsang's father.
Speaker 2And Jomsang's father was. He was formerly a Buddhist monk, and so he had learned how to read Pali script, but he couldn't read his own language which was using Thai characters, and so Jomsang began teaching his father how to read Thai script.
Speaker 2At the same time, he took this solar power device, this MP3 player, and every day he would go out to the fields and he would begin, you know, tilling and harvesting, planting seed. But he would take that device and he put it in the front pocket of his shirt and he would listen to it day after day after day, and really for months didn't hear anything from him, didn't know what he was doing, didn't even know he was doing, didn't even know he was listening to it as frequently as he was. But he would go out and particularly had a fondness for the gospel of Mark, because Mark demonstrated Jesus's power over sickness and disease and death. And so he was listening to these stories. Well, one day I was discipling Jomsang in his home and sitting in his living room, and then his father comes in the room, he hangs up his bag like he usually did. He walked into his little bedroom there and then he came back out and he said today I want you to know I put my faith in Jesus.
Speaker 3And we were like what, what just happened? You know what?
Speaker 2do you mean? And he said you know, I was alone in the field listening to the word of God, and if Jesus, that Jesus had power over all of these different things, then that was a Jesus that I wanted to follow. And he knelt down there right on his own right.
Speaker 1Alone with the.
Speaker 2Holy Spirit put his faith and trust in Jesus and, from that day forward again, radical transformation in his life. This was a man who would walk around the villages in a drunken stupor, half-dressed. He would beat his wife and then he would pray to the you know and have the witch doctor come and seek her healing you know, and so it was an amazing transformation and as the village began watching this transformation happen, of course persecution began.
Speaker 2And they began, so much so that they wanted to kick his entire family out of the village. At this time, his wife was not yet a believer, and so they had all these different amulets and charms and spirit houses still in their home because of the wife. And I remember Nam-Na the father, coming to me one day and he said, Greg, last night I had a dream. He said I need you to help me make sense of it.
Speaker 3I was like I don't know if I can do that or not.
Speaker 2I said but let me hear the dream. And so he shares this dream and he tells the story of him feeling like he was hovering above his home in the village. And it was. It was bright, it was shiny, it was almost glittery, and and he felt this warm feeling come over him. And he then he said I stooped down in my dream and I was looking at my house and I got a closer look and I noticed all this trash just around the house. And he said I don't know what to make of it all. And I said well, what do you think it means?
Speaker 2And he says. Well, he says, ever since we have put our faith and trust in Christ, he says it has been a testimony throughout all the village. He says, but because my wife has not yet believed, we still have all of these different amulets and charms, and spirit houses in our.
Speaker 2he says I think we need to get rid of them. I said, well, I think that would be a great idea. And um, and during that time the Lord was convicting his wife as well. And uh, his wife came to faith and put their faith and trust in Jesus and I can remember them calling us one day remember Sarah up to the village and they said, greg, we want to get rid of all this stuff.
Speaker 2And we backed our four by four pickup truck up to their house and literally, carried their spirit house from the side of the house put it in the back of the truck all these different amulets and charms and we went down to the local dump and just dumped it there and that's not typically what they would do, but they wanted to. They. They didn't want to give it to somebody else, they didn't want somebody else to to utilize it, they just wanted to throw it away and it was a very I can just remember villagers looking at this. This take place in the village.
Speaker 2And again persecution began to arise and again wanted to kick them out of the village. They called at one point an elders meeting. So all the village elders were gathered together and the topic was should we kick them out of the village? And John Sang said he was so angry when they even mentioned the idea of it because of all the benefit that he was providing to the community. And he said that through his daily time with the Lord, the Lord told him just to sit still and I will act on your behalf. And John said couldn't understand it. He says but in the meeting he said I wanted to say this and say that and justify. You know this and that. And and I can remember the night of the meeting afterwards John's saying came to me. He says Greg, you'll never believe what happened in that meeting. I said well, what happened?
Speaker 2And you said the Lord told me just to sit still. And he said that's exactly what I did. He said I wanted to talk. He said I just sat still. He said during the course of the meeting. He said everybody was just saying all these, all these untrue things about us and how we've caused disruption, how we did this and that, and you know how we we don't deserve to be here and they're not, we're not belong and we don't belong in this community. And he said during the middle of the meeting.
Speaker 2He said one of the elders of the village stood up in the back of the room, a Buddhist man, and began to recount how the King of Thailand had let this people group come and live in their country, as different as they were, and gave us land and gave us the ability to live within his country.
From Buddhist Temple to Church
Speaker 2And he said if the king of Thailand can do that for us, shouldn't we give the same allowance for this family to come and live and stay in this community? Wow, and through a Buddhist man, the Christian family was allowed to stay in the village and of course God began to do amazing things through that one family. And of course God began to do amazing things through that one family. Now you had a son and a wife and a father and a mother, all of which were believers and a shining light in the community. And, one by one, we began to see just gospel transformation take place in other people's lives, their family members. Then it spread to other villages and, of course, ultimately, as we began gathering together the believers, uh, we began to see church take place and they began to identify as a church within this community. And right in the heart of the village there was a, a temple a Buddhist temple.
Speaker 3A Buddhist temple, mm, and now it's a church. Amen, and so, god, god began to this place? Uh, you know, just traditional religion and their family and the hearts of some other people with just the glorious gospel of Jesus.
Speaker 3And you know as missionaries church planning, evangelism it's messy work, it's hard work. Sometimes you share Christ and you see some fall away. Sometimes you see that seed planted and you see growth and but just as a missionary, you just have to be faithful, just like here in the States when you share the gospel. Be faithful to share it and allow God to deal with the results of that. But just the faithful planting of the seed is so important and so we're just so very blessed. And when I mentioned earlier just some of the greatest years of our lives, when you see lives transformed by the work of the Holy Spirit, it's a miracle and it has nothing to do with us. It is all to do with the Holy Spirit's work in their lives.
Speaker 1That's great. So two things I want to touch on. First, I don't want our listeners to miss I think we've said it, but I want it to be clear. We've already talked about the importance of the Word of God in our lives, and your lives is getting called, but that's exactly what happened here with. Jomsang and his family is. The Word of God changed lives. Yes, it wasn't you all, wasn't what you all were saying or doing, but he's sitting in his field just listening to the Word of.
Speaker 2God, and it is powerful enough, and sufficient to change the lives in the hearts of men.
Speaker 1Amen, Right Amen, Right Amen. And through that the Holy Spirit comes and convicts. And they took hold of what sounds like the Great Commission. That's right. They started sharing, because you don't turn a Buddhist temple in a village to a church overnight.
The Palaung People
Speaker 1Yeah, that's right, and so there had to be ownership of the gospel and broad seed sowing and people coming to faith. What a powerful testimony, yeah, yeah. So that was the first thing. The second thing I think I got ahead of ourselves just a little bit. Tell our listeners about the demographic of the people. What is their world religion? What do they practice? What are their cultural beliefs? We've touched on it, we've talked about Buddhism, these amulets and things, but help our listeners know a little bit more about that.
Speaker 2Yeah, the Palang people are a number of about 1.1 million people, a little bit more about that.
Speaker 2Yeah, the Palaung people are a number about 1.1 million people. Again, they live in southwestern Yunnan province, china, shan state, myanmar, primarily in the northern part of Thailand, and historically animistic, which means that they believe in the spirit world. Everything is inhabited by spirits, and so animism really hinges upon their appeasement of these spirits. You have good or benevolent spirits, and you have these evil, malevolent spirits, both of which you have to appease, right? So I want to please, or appease, the good spirits, because I want them to continue blessing my family, and that realizes itself in very practical ways I got good crops, we have good health, our family is still intact, right, we're making money, and so I want those spirits to continue blessing me. But at the same time, I want to keep the evil spirits from hurting me, and so I appease them as well by making sacrifices and various things like that. And so the animism is at the heart, but they have this veneer of just Buddhism because many of them live in the country of Myanmar, which predominantly is Buddhist, or Thailand, which is predominantly Buddhist, which predominantly is Buddhist, or Thailand, which is predominantly Buddhist, and so you have all of these different celebrations and festivals and rituals that they do as a part of that, but at the heart of it, they're controlled by these animistic beliefs. And so that is the context, the spiritual context in which the P'long people.
Speaker 2They're rich in culture, they maintain their own distinct language and dress as a people. They're rich in culture, they maintain their own distinct language and dress as a people. They're an agrarian society, and so they work in the fields, primarily growing all sorts of different things corn and beans, and tea. They're traditionally known as tea growers in Myanmar and have some wonderful black tea, and so that's the Plong people in general.
Speaker 2And again, they came into the northern part of Thailand because of all the fighting and conflict taking place in the country of Myanmar, and so a lot of horrific stories, a lot of painful stories of people coming across the border and fleeing the military. They would often be drafted, you know, as porters or forced to serve as porters in various military, and if they didn't comply, then all sorts of evil things would take place just to their village, to the women, forcing them to flee, and so just a lot of brokenness in that part of the world. And certainly among them. They're traditionally illiterate people and so low education, poor, impoverished situations. And yet for all of those different things, they maintain a level of joy that is just infectious.
Speaker 3So the poorest of the poor in all of the hill tribes of Myanmar, I would say there's 135, wouldn't that be right? 135 different ethnic minority groups in Myanmar alone, and they are known to be the poorest of the poor.
Speaker 1So are the Palaungs still in unreached people.
Speaker 2Yeah, I would say they're still unreached Again 1.1 million people but I think we could say right now that there's probably close to 2,000 or so believers and so still unreached, but gospel progress, and so a lot of work being done, not only by even folks continuing our organization but also by other Hill Tribes who have now caught a vision for reaching out to the Palong People who, for the most part, were in their backyard and they didn't even know they were lost.
Speaker 2uh, hill tribes that were traditionally, uh, christian, uh, you know long-standing work from people like jo frazier and adnarm judson, and so even some of the lisu people, carrying a burden now for the prolonged people and reaching into places.
Speaker 2Uh, pockets of lostness all throughout the country of myanmar and sean state. So that's exciting work, but, yes, I would still classify them as an reaching into places. Pockets of lostness all throughout the country of Myanmar and Shan State. So it's exciting work, but, yes, I would still classify them as an unreached people, but where significant gospel progress is being made Amen.
Speaker 1That's great. So I want to wrap up our time and give you an opportunity to kind of talk about South Asia in general. So you spent 15 years in Thailand church planting among the Palang, but your role is different now, and so you're the affinity leader for all of South Asia. I want to give you an opportunity to kind of talk to our listeners about what is South Asia, what are the statistical realities of South Asia and how can they get involved.
Asia Pacific Mission Opportunities
Speaker 2Yeah, sarah and I serve as the AGLs for the Asia Pacific region of the world, and within that region there's 2.4 billion people and lots of diversity, lots of religious diversity, but also just in terms of ethnic makeup, and so you have everything from Mongolia in the north all the way down to Indonesia in the south, from Myanmar in the west all the way out to the South Pacific Islands in the east, and so large area, geographical covers.
Speaker 2I mean it makes up a significant population in the world, population in the world, and but you have everything from the heights of of of an ultra wealthy to the impoverished poor, like the Palong and everything in between. And so mega cities, you know you have. You have Tokyo, yeah, top 10 of the world's largest cities in that part of the world, and yet you've got some of the most impoverished villages in that part of the world, and yet you've got some of the most impoverished villages in that part of the world as well. You have everything from mountains to deserts, to hot to cold, to islands and lots of water, to large bodies of water, and so a very diverse region of the world, and yet in the middle of that we have somewhere over 1,000 unreached people groups and about 480 or so unengaged, unreached people groups, and so the work is still large.
Speaker 2But just to think, I mean, this part of the world has some of the most difficult to access places like China and North Korea, and those are places that we don't have access to, but those two countries alone make up two thirds of our entire population.
Speaker 1Wow.
Speaker 2And so when you think of places like this, it takes very creative, you know, means to be able to engage places like this, and so you think of non-residential missionary engagement strategies, or you think of digital engagement strategies, and so the challenges are numerous in this part of the world, and yet the gospel continues to go forward.
Speaker 1Mm-hmm. So how can listeners get involved? How can they learn more? Where can they go to get involved in your part of the world?
Speaker 2Absolutely Well. Number one, I mean, if you have contacts with missionaries over in that part of the world, best possible people to talk to just about the work going on there and catching a vision for it. But certainly all across our organization we have specific people within our organization that you can talk to with assessment and deployment, who highlight both the job opportunities and some of the needs that are current among those countries in Asia Pacific and certainly among those thousand unreached people groups and unengaged unreached people groups as well. And so I would encourage them to start just by contacting the International Mission Board and getting a feel for those job opportunities. And again, those job opportunities are all driven by the field needs and so, as missionaries serving on the ground and researchers on the ground recognize and do these profiles on these different people groups, it highlights the needs among these people. We send those back to our home office in Richmond Virginia. It's a great place, a great starting point for people who are interested in serving in that part of the world.
Speaker 3Yeah, as Greg mentioned a few minutes ago, we have over 480 unengaged, unreached people groups and it's just, it's so exciting for me to think even now, for some students that may be listening, that they may be the ones that are called to one of these unengaged, unreached people groups. And so, yeah, just like Greg said, reach out to the International Mission Board. We have many different pathways to come and serve short term, long term, midterm, short-term, long-term, mid-term and you'll be partnered with other missionaries on the field that can support you and walk alongside you so you don't feel alone. And, yeah, we would be thrilled. We need people to come. We have lots of lots of need, I think.
Speaker 2One example of that is a current initiative that we have as part of the International Mission Board called P3000.
Speaker 2And so focusing on those 3000 plus people groups in the world that are still unengaged and unreached, with the gospel year program, where we want 300, what we call missionary explorers to take, to take initial steps to engage these unengaged, unreached people groups, and and so that's on the IMB website as well, imborg, and just encourage you to, if God may be prompting you as you're spending time in the Lord, in the word, and the Lord has convicted your heart with the call he's placed on your life, take those first steps.
Engaging the Unreached
Speaker 1And a lot of our listeners know. But just in case, somebody is listening and they don't unreached, meaning less than 2% of the people group population are believers in unengagement. There are no evangelical believers engaging them with the gospel, so they have no access to be able to get the gospel. They're not like us in the States where they can walk down the street and run into four different evangelical churches within four blocks, but there's nobody there who has the gospel that can share with them so that they can know Jesus.
Speaker 2That's exactly right.
Speaker 1So that's why these projects like P3000 are so important, because the IMB is finding students, finding young 20s, and sending them to these people to find them right and gather data and report back and create strategies to help reach them Absolutely. So it's an awesome, awesome opportunity, and those are all over the world. Amen.
Speaker 2That's right, not just in Asia Pacific, that's exactly right All over the world.
Speaker 1Yeah, so that's great. So I really appreciate you all taking the time to come and talk.
Speaker 2Such a joy.
Speaker 1It's been a lot of fun, I know our listeners are going to be so encouraged by the conversation and we look forward to staying in touch and seeing you all around, and so again, just thank you so much and we appreciate it.
Speaker 3Thank you, Kyle.
Speaker 1So that'll do it for today's episode. We're excited to wrap this up. I can't wait for you all to listen to it and hear the feedback from what you all learned and picked up as you all listened to the man's interview today. So we'll see you all next time. Bye, thanks for listening to this episode. The Tom Ellef Center for Missions exists to equip the next generation of missionaries at Oklahoma Baptist University. Regardless of your major, you can come to OBU, get a world-class Christian education and get equipped to take the gospel to the nations. Our prayer is to send students from the local church through OBU, to the world with the gospel. For more information about us or the Ellef Center Scholarship, follow the link in our description and come visit us at OVU.