The Kunis's: From OBU to the Unreached Pt. 2

What happens when God redirects the comfortable path you've planned? For Justin and Wynonna Kunis, it meant trading Oklahoma youth ministry for leading mission work in Asia and North Africa—a transformation neither could have imagined when they met at Oklahoma Baptist University in the 1990s.

"If you had told one or both of us that we were going to spend most of our adult lives overseas, one or both of us would have turned and walked down the aisle the other way," Wynonna confesses. Their journey reveals how God often works gradually in hearts that are willing, even reluctant at first.

Their story powerfully demonstrates that ministry isn't about our plans but about service. As Justin taught his youth group: "We don't come to be served, but to serve." This principle has guided them through eighteen years of cross-cultural ministry and countless lives transformed by the gospel.

What unexpected journey might God be preparing for you? Sometimes the greatest adventures begin with the plans we never imagined for ourselves.

Transcript

Kyle 0:00

All right, everybody, thanks for jumping in with us on today's episode of the From Every Nation podcast. I'm here again with Justin and Wynonna Kunis, and so if you didn't catch the first half of their interview, make sure you jump back and do that. Hearing them talk about their call to the nations is really powerful and really encouraging, so make sure you go and do that. But we're going to jump right into their one-way ticket to the field and how the Lord used them on the field and just kind of talk through the various ministry opportunities that they've had. So one of you jump in and kind of talk us through how'd you end up in East Asia and what'd you do.

Winona 0:42

That's a great question. We had worked in the church and worked in missions and we had, as a church in Oklahoma City, adopted a small people group of about 19 million people.

Justin 0:54

That's not small.

Winona 0:55

Oh, it's a big, a large people group of 19 million people, and they were a minority people group in China, and so we had begun working with them.

Winona 1:06

We'd gotten to know all of the workers on the field and all the teams and all the people that as they were trying to reach this people group, and so, as the Lord just confirmed in our hearts, it was time for us to go. We knew that we were going to go and work with this people group. The question was where One of the things we really wanted to do was just to learn, just to learn about how to raise a family on the field, how the hard work of learning language on a field, just the hard work of just being a frontline worker, and so we wanted to really fully do that, and so we joined a new team that was just forming and it was us and one other family. A new team that was just forming and it was us and one other family, and we were going to take one section of that 19 million people group. There was one dialect of 1.6 million people and it was just going to be our family, and we were going to take that and take that on.

Justin 1:57

So, yeah, we we had had quite a bit of experience in this part of the world from the church side, like taking groups over, as we'd said in the last podcast that we were there multiple times during that season. So we kind of understood the ground pretty well and I feel like one of the things the Lord allowed us it was gracious of the Lord to allow us in that season was, I think we went in with really good expectations set for our first term. You might get someplace and you go to the field and your expectations for your first term are to, you know, see a movement of churches started or see, you know, a hundred people come to believe or a thousand people come to believe or whatever.

Winona 2:38

I don't know what the expectations might be, and you say, boy, I'm going to do a lot for God, I am going to make a big difference.

Justin 2:43

Actually, I think the feelings are almost like a romanticized view of what this thing is going to be and what God's going to do with me in that area. So I think we had sort of had that whittled off pretty well, because we'd actually been there quite a bit and we really went with our expectations set. I think, if I remember correctly, our expectations were that we wanted to learn the language. We wanted to learn the language well, in our first term. We wanted to learn how to lead our family, how to live overseas and actually how to live as part of the local community. So how do we raise our kids, how do we eat, how do we live in community with the people that we're going to reach? And I think, third, our third goal was that we would simply have maybe two or three close relationships that we were walking in some kind of discipleship type relationship with, that maybe they'd come to faith or something through our work. But there'd just be a handful of people that we would be working with in some type of discipleship relationship. And then the fourth one was just that we would want to come back Like I think those I remember going into our first term setting like I think this should be our goals for our first term.

Justin 3:59

I think a lot of folks when they go to the field they don't have Because maybe, especially if you've not been on the field and you have these ideas, maybe you've read the stories and these things about what we can do you go with maybe almost overinflated ideas of what the first term should be about. We had our goals set. Pretty most would, in fact, I think people did challenge us at that time. Those goals seem pretty low, but I think they were accurately set, at least for us and in that environment. What we found actually in your first term is the Lord does much more work in you and on you than he does actually through you and preparing you for much more that he wants to do with you later.

Kyle 4:40

Can you flesh that out a little bit?

Justin 4:42

Yeah, I, you know, looking back now, we've been overseas, working with overseas folks for 18 years and there's this. I think there's actually something really unique that God does in the first term. So that's the first three to four years of a person or a family when they leave the States or leave wherever they're at, and they go cross-culturally and fully invest themselves among a people. It's this unique shaping time that I almost don't find any other place in the Christian experience where that happens, Because, I mean, there's multiple reasons, but the biggest one is you've left everything that caused you to be you. Yeah Right, you left every—.

Winona 5:30

Everything you're good at yeah.

Justin 5:32

Everything you think you're good at, like every support structure that you had. Maybe you came from a fantastic church where you had great preaching and great worship every Sunday, great mentors there. Maybe you had like a plethora of Bible studies that you'd go to, christian friends that you went with. Maybe you had a job that was fulfilling, or I don't know, but you had all of these things. You had family around you that, oh man, we need to. How are we going to? You know, take care of the kids tonight so mom and dad can go out on a date. You know, oh well, my parents can watch the kids.

Justin 6:04

You know, like all the support structures, from the simple things, like support structures around you, from like deep internal things, like the way I view myself, why I feel good about me, like all of it gets taken away, like all of it and you actually go and you enter a place, like for us, we entered this place that we actually sort of already knew. We found out, we didn't really know it very well and we're going to engage 1.6 million people with the gospel and we can't buy bread right.

Winona 6:37

We can't feed our family. We can't feed our family. How am I going to tell them about Jesus? How, in the world?

Justin 6:41

am I going to start a movement of churches among 1.6 million people that live across six counties? It's impossible in us, right? It's impossible in us. So what God is doing, though, is he's stripping everything away. I think this is what's unique about that moment, that first term it's as though God strips everything away from us, and all that's left, all that's left for us to feel good about ourselves, for us to lean on, for us to trust in, is him. Is him.

Winona 7:08

Complete dependency on Christ.

Justin 7:09

Yeah, yeah, he drives us towards complete dependence on him and it's again I've looked at lots of different paths that people take through spiritual development, spiritual growth. I think it's fairly unique right, spiritual development, spiritual growth. I think it's fairly unique right that this thing where we willingly leave a culture and invest ourselves at that level deeply in a culture and leave all these other things behind, that God begins to shape us. I'll give you an example of that in my life, in our first term, we're learning language. We go in, we dive in into deep language learning and again, if you listened to the first podcast, you'd heard us talk about all the things we were doing from the church side.

Justin 7:50

I mean, I was traveling all the time. People were coming to us asking us for help to build their missions programs. Like we were doing a lot. We had a whole church that we were leading in a lot of really significant ways. And like my world was pretty big at that point in time and it got really small to like how do you pronounce the word post office? I remember sitting in class one day and this guy's teaching me how to say the word post office and I just couldn't get it and he's like it's right in my face and he's he's like pronouncing for me, he's like he's pinching my cheeks to get my mouth to shape the right way to say that this word post office and I and I walked away frustrated, right. You know, like I used to do things I used to, I used to actually have purpose in my life.

Justin 8:32

I was self-sustaining, I was functioning, I was a full contributing member to society and now I have this punk kid with bad breath poking my face trying to get me to say the word post office, and it was. It was really frustrating and that whole season actually, I felt my life get really, really constricted and small. And uh, I remember one, one moment in that same season uh, I think we were a year and a half or so into that season I sat down and had lunch with a guy who was years ahead of us and, man, he was just unpacking the strategy he was thinking about developing to reach his people and I walked home from that lunch I remember thinking I was amazed but this guy's strategy was fantastic. And I remember walking home being a little low, maybe even depressed, I don't know in my own spirit, and coming home and talking to Winona uh, talking to Winona, um on, uh, that day, and just actually sitting down and going where am I? Like?

Justin 9:30

I remember I saw in that guy a way I used to think, but I didn't even know if I could locate it anymore. Yeah, I was so deep into this like, like I'm learning language, learning culture, really not being effective at anything that I kind of lost myself for a good period of time. But that's the good favor, good grace of the Lord to actually shape people in that season. Really, we found like in our own lives first and then we've seen that repeated over and over and over again in new folks to the field Like if we'll surrender to that, if you just allow God to do that work in you and come out going no Lord, you need to shape me.

Kyle 10:11

I'm not.

Justin 10:12

you're going to work in me first and then, if you'll allow like, we'll serve you. And again, you make him the center of the story, not yourself the center of the story. And yeah, that's the path towards a successful first term, not yourself the center of the story. And yeah, that's the path towards a successful first term allowing the Lord to shape you.

Winona 10:28

I would say on, just on, for me, as we finished, as we were working through that first term and doing the difficult work of learning language and culture, the Lord, just and really relying on him, dependency on him, the Lord gives you these sweet gifts and these really kind opportunities just to know him more. I'll never forget the very first time probably in our third year, second or third year I sat and met with a lady, a young teacher, and I got to share the gospel with her in the local language and I went through the whole gospel. She asked questions and at the end of our time she came. She came to believe, she prayed and asked Jesus to be Lord of her life. And I walked away from that meeting and I just wept and I was so overwhelmed.

Winona 11:13

Lord, how in the world could you use me to do this, to share the gospel with this young lady for the very first time in a language that's not my own? How gracious and how kind that you would allow me to do that. And it really just. It really caused me again to say yes, lord. Whatever you asked me to do in my lifetime, the answer's yes. And if it's to do hard, if it's to do something hard or something easy, it doesn't matter. I'm really willing to serve you with everything I am, and so just that opportunity to share with somebody who had never heard of Jesus before was overwhelming to me.

Kyle 11:52

Wow, so you mentioned earlier y'all had a platform. You were running a business. Can we talk about that? What was that? What did you do?

Justin 12:23

Our platform in that season of work there among our UPG. Our UPG was very rural and so they were 1.6 million people and they were hidden in villages tucked behind mountains. There were small market towns where people would come down and have market every three days, and then they were spread over six counties, six county seat towns. So six cities, small cities, I think, if I remember the numbers right, maybe 72 market towns and then hundreds, if not thousands, of villages where they were.

Justin 12:55

So the company that we started to try to engage that with was a not-for-profit, a small rural community development platform, and we did all kinds of projects on it. We tried some things that didn't work. This is really funny. We thought we could probably go in and actually help, because they're all farmers. We could maybe teach them to do some better agricultural techniques. And so we went out and we rented this piece of test plot of land and we went to some training and and some people taught us how to, oh, fertilize the ground, how to test the soil and get the right fertilizing, the right row, and so we planted this test crop. We borrowed land from a farmer and we planted this test crop of corn beside there and we, we did all these little rows and we did them different ways to test, to see how to get better yields and then maybe to teach them so we could help them get better yields out of their corn, our corn, all of it died like it was, it was all terrible and at the same time, while we were there to like help this farmer learn how to farm, he had corn like all around our field, like growing up huge yeah he was teaching you, that's right

Winona 14:12

that's right, these city boys couldn't be farmers. It was absolutely, absolutely ridiculous.

Justin 14:15

So we tried some dumb things. We thought, okay, we'll try to do some of that, but that didn't work, obviously. But what did work? What we could bring, we could offer is educational development and some health and hygiene development and even some kind of for like college issues, some life skills, job training type things. We kind of settled in to offering those kind of three training service type product. That was the product we offered. So in education we would do these are all rural areas but they all had to pass the same countrywide exam that had English on it and the students out in these areas got limited to no access to good English speakers. Even their English teachers were not very good English teachers.

Winona 15:08

One of the projects that we did is we brought professors from California Baptist University in to do a training for all the teachers in our six counties, and so for 10 days we had over 100 teachers from these rural counties come in and these CBU professors taught them how to teach English, and then in the evenings they'd all go out to dinner together and build relationships and they'd get to talk about all sorts of things, and so that's an example of one of the things that we did.

Justin 15:34

That was like a gateway project actually because now we had relationships with English teachers in every one of the cities, every one of the market towns, in every one of our counties, among our people, and so literally we could go to almost any market town in the area and have a relationship and have an open door. So we did some stuff like that. We did health and hygiene things where we would go into a village and we would do height and weight checks with children and we would walk into some villages and there'd be over 50% of the kids would be malnourished. They would come back in the next day and we'd do kind of a simple training on how the folks in that village could feed their kids better with just what they had. They didn't have to buy anything new, what they had. How could you feed your kids in a healthier way to cause them to flourish? And then even some life skills training.

Justin 16:25

There was a college campus on town. We lived in a small town at that point in time among our people group and there was a small college campus out there. We got pretty invested on the college campus and we actually started doing kind of job skills, life skills, how to budget. You know how to do an interview, how to do a job interview, some of those kind of things with students. That kind of became our sweet spot of what we do.

Justin 16:52

So we tried some things that didn't work and then we found the things that we actually could do that added value to the community. One of the things we also did through our development company we brought in for that little university that was out there a little college Teachers College is what it was called out there. We actually brought in all their English teachers, like they wanted foreign exchange English teachers, and we became the source for all of their teachers. So we actually brought in recent grads, you know recent college grads who had a heart for the nations, and they sort of came in and joined our team and were paid by the university at that point in time. So some really neat things happened in those days as well.

Kyle 17:30

That's cool. What were some of and what were some of the biggest highlights, I guess, during that time in East Asia and some of the things you saw the Lord do that just—.

Justin 17:44

Yeah, our time in East Asia is probably split into two halves really. The first half was in this rural work among this unreached people group that we've kind of already been talking about. The second half was actually we moved into a leadership, training and development role in a in a mega city. So we saw both really the most urban I don't know of anybody who lived in a town smaller than we lived in, uh, in our country and then we moved to a big mega city, uh, with 13 million people in it. So it kind of saw both uh parts of ministry I think. So kind of almost talk about those in two sections really.

Justin 18:16

The first one, again, it was what we call zero to one church planting. There were a couple of believers out there when we got there and we met them quickly and began to pour into them, but largely there was no nothing happening out there. We would walk around all the time during our first term just and walk into villages where they had never heard the name of Christ before. There was one time we were going, we were scouted a ton during our first term, so we went out scouting, looking for towns. We were looking for this one town called Dong An. It's just a dot on the map. And so we rented a van and we drove out to this place had my kids, winona and the kids were in the car, and we went out to this place had my kids, winona and the kids were in the car, and we went out to this little dot on a map.

Justin 18:59

When we got to the dot on the map, there's no Dong An, but there were some people gathered there. It was just the road, which wasn't big, but it was a paved road, and then a dirt track off into the fields, you know, parallel to the road there or perpendicular to the road there. And we got out of the van and said, hey, where's Dong An? And they just pointed down the dirt track. So we actually, okay, got back in the van and started going down the dirt track. It kept getting narrower and narrower and narrower rice fields on either side, until it just kind of dead ended into a river. And then on the far side of the river there was Dong An. And so we're like, oh, okay, well, how do we get to Dong An? We look down the riverbank there and there's this little flat-bottomed boat on the riverbank there.

Justin 19:41

Yeah, and there's an old man sitting on the boat and a rope tied across the river and so I guess that's how you get to Dong An. And so we walked down the riverbank, got on that little boat and he pulls us across and pulls us across. We got off the boat on the other side and we start walking up the riverbank and there's this little temple, like a very crude because it's a small town like a shrine, a little concrete box temple there where they were worshiping the spirits in the river and water, because it brought fertility to the land, Because they're farmers, they need water, so they're worshiping the spirits and the gods of the river. And then we walk, I'll walk on up the hill and we kind of turn. I remember we turned to our right and there's these looking, looking down the kind of the one street of Dong An. And in the entrance to this one street where these two gigantic prehistoric looking trees almost standing like like standing like they're gates, like guards to the city, Around the base of each one of those trees there's all kinds of red ribbons tied in incense sticks you could see where they were burned and old candles that had been burned. All of it was evidence of them worshiping the spirits in the trees that did stand like guardians to the city and then. So then we walked through this one pretty short street, one town, with houses on either side and you could look in to the left and the right. You could look in and on the back wall the house was a little shelf with, like, the family idols there on the shelf and where they were worshiping the ancestors, so really big worshipers in Dong An.

Justin 21:17

As we walked through town, like, this huge crowd of kids followed us along. We actually learned later that we were like the very first foreigners to ever step foot in Dong An, which was not uncommon for us at that point in time. We were pretty far out and so we walked through town. These kids follow us all the way to the other end of town. At the other end of town there's another crude little temple that not faces the fields, where they were worshiping the spirits of the fields right and worshiping the spirits of the river and the water. They worship the spirits of the guardians. It's worshiping their ancestors, worshiping the spirits of the field man. They're worshiping like crazy, they're worshiping people, and we stand there just next to this little temple and we just start engaging this crowd of kids who's following us and we spoke pretty decent language at this point in time and so we start sharing with them about Jesus in the language.

Justin 22:07

And so I'll never forget, there's this little girl just over here to my left, probably about nine years old, about our daughter's age. At that point in time, and as I'm sharing with them about Jesus and who he is, she just calls out to me, she just yells out like in her language. She yells out we don't know, we don't know. See, they'd never heard, They'd never heard about Jesus, and they didn't even know the name. The name didn't make any sense to them. Even the name in their own language didn't make sense to them because they'd never heard.

Justin 22:35

So I kept talking about, I kept trying to explain okay, this is who Jesus is, he's God's son and that he loves you and he loved you enough to die for you. Man, just tell them the gospel. Right there, right there in this little town, as I start talking about God's love for them, there's this other little boy, I think he probably maybe 12 or 13,. He's a teenager, preteen, little, precocious. He yells out I want to start talking about love In their language. Love in their language. He yells out we love Kobe, yeah, yeah, I'm glad you understood that. Kobe Bryant, right, yeah, Kobe Bryant. And so he'd heard of Kobe. So, okay, we talk about NBA. That was pretty common in that country. There were big NBA fans. So we talked about Kobe and we talked about a few other players, kind of pivoted back to the gospel.

Justin 23:19

We shared all we could about the good news there with that little group of students in that town, in Dong An, that day, and we walked back through the town, you know, past the houses under the trees, back down the riverbank by the temple overlooking the river, and we got back on that little flat-bottom boat by the temple overlooking the river.

Justin 23:41

And we got back on that little flat bottom boat and my heart was just, I don't know kind of just churning Like I was frustrated. Actually in that moment. I was really maybe even a little bit angry in that moment and just the scripture that the Lord brought up to me again in that moment was Ephesians, chapter 2, verse 10, 2, verse 13, rather 2, verse 13. It says for those who are far off have been brought near by the blood of Jesus. And as we're sitting on that little flat bottom boat and this man, like this old man with his hands. He'd been doing this for years and years, decades, like starts pulling us, sliding us just silently across that water. Like I thought, how is it possible? How is it possible that 2000 years after Christ gave himself for the people of Dong An that they could know Kobe Bryant but they don't know Jesus Christ?

Justin 24:28

I thought, it was frustrating to me in that moment, and so I think a lot of what we did in our first term was actually just finding places like that to share the good news. And we went. There were 72 market towns, I think, in our six-county area. We went to every one of them, went to every one of them, we prayer, walked and we were looking for open doors, looking for people of peace and looking for open doors to share the good news, and we found some of those. We actually in Dong An. Eventually we went back and we did some projects in Dong An and then we saw a family actually came to faith in Dong An. So, yeah, we did a lot of that in our first term.

Kyle 25:07

Yeah, Were this people group that you all are talking about and working with. Were they primarily animists? They were Okay.

Justin 25:21

In that part of the country they have a lot of like animism mixed with just East Asian ancestor worship.

Winona 25:24

There's no pure religion.

Justin 25:25

There's no pure religion. It's all an amalgamation of multiple different things.

Kyle 25:29

So what did you all find were the best ways to reach these people? What scriptures or what avenues, I don't know? Was there a commonality that you found, or was it just, you know, always a little bit different?

Winona 25:46

One of the ways we shared with people was through the creation of Christ story, because we started at the beginning, because they had no knowledge of Christ.

Kyle 25:54

And so that was super helpful. You can't just jump into a gospel. They have no idea.

Winona 25:58

Well and I don't you know, the story of creation to Christ I think that's the second story talks about angels and demons and it kind of the fall and I remember when I first learned that I thought I don't really need this part. But actually in the East Asian context you do need that. They have no problem believing in the spirits and in all of those things. So, honestly, storytelling and helping people to understand their own worldview even a little better through the lens of scripture and the lens of truth was a way that we entered and honestly, just having relationship with people, spending that time with them, inviting them into our family's lives, we had multiple times. Our home was always very open to whoever would like to come in and we always had local people in our home for meals, for just to hang out, just to spend time with our family.

Winona 26:49

One of the first things I remember was I had a young lady who said she'd observed our family and she said I never heard adults tell a child they loved them before. And she said I'm so moved by the way that you love your children, even when you discipline them. She said I've never known love like that. What is that about? So it opened the door for me to just talk about God's love for us, how he loved us and so that we can love others. Um, and she watched. She had watched our lives and watched how we lived through that, lived that out, um, and that was impactful to her. Um, we really spent a lot of time um just trying to be um available to people and in the community with people through telling stories, through our work, uh, sharing the gospel. We shared the gospel a lot with people and if you could get into the past, I'll say this, if you could get to the point where they would listen to you and understand and engage with you. They were very open to believing. So we shared a lot.

Justin 27:51

I think one of the biggest things I learned in that, particularly in our first term, was that gospel engagement like this among the unreached, particularly among people who've never had any access to the gospel before, is slow and it's messy. I think all of us kind of read the stories of you know somebody wandering around in the mountains and they run into a guy who says, oh, I had a dream and I've been waiting on you to come. And you come and you tell them the gospel, they believe, and then everybody believes and a movement begins and like those are true, like we have friends, that's actually happened too. So so those are true, but they are also not common, right. So so that was not our experience at all. For us it was an experience of like a slow slog right, of getting rejected over and over and over and over again, of some believing and some falling away and a church forming and then that church losing leaders and that church like being busted apart by a cult, uh, by a cult that came in to to kind of just destroyed the church, um, other, uh, small groups that we'd started. Where you're, you're, you're, you desperately want, um, somebody to become a leader in that, in that body and they just take two steps forward and three steps backwards, like over and over and over again and like wrestling with the questions.

Justin 29:15

I had one guy that I would just work with so much I poured almost like five or six years into and weekly with time with him and wanted him to become a believer. He just never really emerged as that and I'd be going, I'm constantly praying, I'm like, okay, lord, is it just time for me to move on from this guy and invest that time in someone else? And then he would do something that would like hey, by the way, I shared the gospel with these eight people and we got two of them who are ready to believe and be baptized and so, like it's never a straight line, like it's never I won't say never. I mean there are those stories and I think the Lord has. Probably, if you dig into those stories, there's a lot more.

Justin 30:02

You know, not straightness about that story, but for us, I think we learned, specifically in our first and second term, our area, in that unreached area just the need for perseverance, the need to be able to hear and understand and discern God's voice on a daily basis on who I talk to and who I don't talk to. Do I continue here or do I stop here? Do I need to open up something else? How do you want me to spend my time To be able to discern and understand God's voice? Again, that idea of prayer and what do you want to do? God like coming in into that and the process is messy, really, really messy.

Winona 30:33

Justin met probably the family that we worked with the most one day as he got off a bus and needed a pen and he walked into a stationary shop and began to share with this man as he bought a pen and just talked to him. It was in a hurry, so he didn't spend a lot of time, so he bought the pen and he left and when he came home he said I think we need to go back next time we're in that town and see this man and his family again. So the next time we were in that town, we had the kids with us and we all four went into the stationary shop and this man and his wife was there and we began to talk with him and as Justin talked he said I'm a Christian and we've come here.

Justin 31:11

My language wasn't very good at that time, so I wasn't sure I said it right, yeah.

Winona 31:14

He said I'm a Christian. And the guy got his eyes got really big and he said I'm a Christian too, and Justin was like wait, I must've said something wrong.

Justin 31:22

Did I say Buddhist? There's not supposed to be any Christians here.

Winona 31:25

Yeah, we, we, we'd never heard of one there. And so the story unfolds that this man, um several years back, had been in the capital city working while he was in college and someone had shared the gospel with him and he had rejected it and finished college. Years have gone by. He goes back to his hometown and he begins to look on his computer about religions and research all the religions in the world, and he comes to Christianity and he says, he decides, christianity is the only one that has a God of love. I'm going to be a Christian. And the next month Justin walks into his shop and befriends him.

Winona 32:05

And so Justin began to walk him through actually what the gospel was, what truly was he a believer, and disciples him, he ends up baptizing him and then just begins this process with him.

Justin 32:18

He had never met another believer other than that first guy who? Shared with him years before. Wow, until I walked into his shop. That's the spirit pulling these things together. Like Peter and Cornelius.

Kyle 32:29

Yeah, you can't plan that, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Justin 32:30

And so the need to be able to respond to the spirit like that. I remember walking out from his shop the first time I met him. Nothing special about the encounter I'd had a thousand encounters like that with people but just something in my spirit said, hey, go back and talk to that guy, right? And so we did. And then that was actually. We spent a lot of time working with that family. His wife eventually came to believe. We planted a group in his house and those kinds of things, but it was a matter of, yeah, just listening to the Spirit. Eventually, yeah, it helped to understand the gospel. He repented and believed and we saw him baptized.

Kyle 33:02

So yeah, so, looking at our time, I'm sure there are tons of things that we continue to talk about when it comes to your time in East Asia, but you did say at one point you were invited not to return, yep, and you ended up somewhere else. So let's talk about that for a little bit. What was that time like? What was it like to not get invited back?

Winona 33:27

It was definitely not expected, and yet we saw the signs. So I think, as things begin to be more difficult living in this country, we knew that it was a matter of time, though it was not how we thought it would be. So we were actually back in the States putting our youngest child in college when we found out here at WU, here youngest child in college, when we found out Hair W, hair W that we found out that we were not going to be able to go back in.

Justin 33:54

And.

Winona 33:54

I think that just began a process for us and for so many of our friends, of lament, of sadness, of walking through. What does that mean for our lives? Of walking through what does?

Justin 34:08

that mean for our lives. We, yeah, there was definitely. There's definitely since, in the immediate, like when you realize, oh, like we can't go back in, because we had friends who would go back in and had problems in exact our same situation and we knew our names had been kind of revealed on certain lists and things like that. So we had the authorities actually came to our friends in country and asked questions about us. So pretty good indicators. We shouldn't try to go back in and like there was a real sense of loss and, yeah, a sense of like, oh well, lord, what was the last 14 years even about?

Winona 34:42

Why would you call us to come someplace, and now we can't go back?

Justin 34:46

Yeah, and just a sense of okay, what, what was all that about? And, yeah, I think we walked through a several months long, I think uh, process. This was in 2020. Um, we were here in the States it was during COVID and, uh, we were we're just walking through this season of like, okay, lord, what was what was all that about and what were you doing and why, what are you doing now? Um, and I remember I was actually kind of in that season wrestling with what do you, what is this about?

Justin 35:14

And I was listening to a um, a sermon by Tim Keller on um, and he was talking about loss. So, when things are lost and I'll never forget, this one quote really framed that whole thing for me Tim Keller, I think he was quoting somebody else, I don't remember who but said you can trust the Lord in seasons of loss, because he will never remove from you something. That is not a loss to keep and a gain to lose. A loss to keep and a gain to lose. Right, if we had held on to our work there in East Asia, like it would have been a loss. If we trust God and his sovereignty, it would have actually been a loss and actually it's a gain when we lose it, because he's taken it from us, and so it would have been a loss if we kept it, and it was gain to lose it.

Kyle 35:57

Because to have kept it would have essentially been disobedience, because there was something else for you to do, yeah something else for us and something else for the people.

Justin 36:04

Actually, as soon as we knew we had left and we actually some of the hardest phone, calls we've ever made were to actually call our local friends, local pastors and their wives inside the country there and tell them we weren't going to make it back and we're sorry. We hope the Lord would allow us to reunite someday somewhere. And we had those conversations and almost immediately, particularly one family there was probably our closest family that we worked with there. They immediately, in the whole city, all of the workers were gone out of the city and this is a big mega city, 13 million people and all of us were gone and they. He immediately he said he began to get together with other pastors, other house church pastors in the city and say hey, guys, like it's our time, like we need to keep this going, we need to be going up into the mountains and doing this work.

Justin 36:56

We need to be going out to this people group and continuing to serve. We need to actually send our people to live out there in places that we actually couldn't live as foreigners, that we actually couldn't live as foreigners and so actually has I think you know, a few years on now has actually seen an increase in the amount of work that was happening because the local church picked it up in ways that maybe we were hindering them in picking up.

Kyle 37:20

You must increase, but I must decrease. Yeah, there you go, that's right, and I'd say for me.

Winona 37:24

I think through all of that season of loss and going. Lord, what about this person? What about these years that I've given you? What about all of these things? Whatever the objections were, the Lord reminded me ever so gently. This is not your story. The story is not about me. I'm not the star of the story. The story is about Him, and this is His story, not mine. He is at work, he is doing things. I get to join and be a part, but I'm not the star of the story.

Kyle 37:53

He is.

Winona 37:54

And so that was really helpful for me, as I, you know, as I, as I thought through that loss.

Kyle 38:00

Wow. So then how long were you in the States, and then how did you end up where you are now?

Justin 38:08

Yeah. So we were in the States for three years during COVID. We served at the home office for a three-year project there. During that three years we learned that we couldn't return to our country and we kind of were wrestling through all of that during that time and I think, because we knew we couldn't return where we had been, we knew that whatever the Lord was going to have for us at the end of that three years was going to be completely new. It was going to be, I mean, a whole new adventure, like whether that was wanted or not, right, we were probably going to have to go somewhere If we're going to go back overseas. It was going to mean learning another language, another culture. Organizationally, it meant were going to go back overseas.

Justin 38:47

It was going to mean learning another language, another culture, another culture.

Justin 38:49

Organizationally it meant probably going to somewhere that we didn't have all the history and relationships that we built up, even organizationally, so that was another set of loss.

Justin 38:59

You know, in those ways and honestly, as we worked through that time, our kids were out of the house now and they're actually through college and we were starting to think about, well, maybe it's just time for us, maybe we've done that when we gave that season overseas and maybe it's okay for us now to consider let's come back to the States and let's pastor a church. I mean the idea, honestly, of me getting to preach the word in my own language to the same group of people every week, like it was really attractive. I mean it's yeah, when you even work and teach believers overseas, you're teaching in a different way because you want to push them to the front. You know you want them to pastor. So you shadow pastor from kind of behind but like actually, oh, let me take a pastor and like exercise pastoral giftings, you know, really attractive. And so we thought about that and I think I think I was ready to do that.

Winona 39:56

I was kind of. I was kind of all right, this is what the Lord is going to do with us next. Yeah, we actually sat down to start like buffing up the resume and kind of going, okay, maybe we're going to start thinking about where to go and we'd actually never looked for a job.

Justin 40:06

We'd never looked for a job before, so it was our first time. Okay, what's the process for that?

Winona 40:09

So we so, as we sat down to start doing that and we just started to begin to, we began to pray about that and the Lord just said not yet no, and the thing that we kept coming back to was to reconsider the nations.

Justin 40:20

I was really frustrated at that point in time, like we really literally sit down, we've decided this is what we'd been praying about. It didn't really have any clarity, but we were getting a lot of feedback from people like, oh man, what's on your heart to do? Just do it. Because they were good. You're right, you know, just, man, do you go overseas, take a church. Both are good, like, do what you want. You know they're both good. That's not the worst advice, but but we just we didn't have peace about either and it's like, okay, well then, I think this is what we're going to do. Sat down and do it. It's like the Lord just put the brakes on us and said no, I'm not going to. You can't think about this stuff right now.

Justin 40:54

I was frustrated because I wanted to think about what was next. I was ready to move, right, we had about a year left in our assignment, our three-year assignment, and I was really frustrated and I started just, I had to go back to the Lord. I had to go. Okay, lord, you won't let us do this. Why? What do you want me to learn? What do you want me to do? And I think, slowly, both of us in our own ways, just really felt like the Lord reaffirmed us that we need to reconsider the nations, and he started to refresh our calling to the nations.

Winona 41:24

Yeah, I think our desire began to be where are? Where? Are there still people that have yet to hear? Where is the greatest need? Where is the greatest lostness right now in the world? And he just really affirmed in our hearts that we were called to the nations and our lives. He really told us really what he was about and that we just had no option but to say yes, lord, we'll go. We'll go wherever you want us to go. Even after all these years and learning a new language and learning a new culture, none of that was going to matter, other than just being obedient to him.

Justin 41:57

I was really interested in cities and the challenge of cities as the world urbanizes largely. I was really interested in that as a missiologic problem even, and so we just started looking at cities across the world, like medium-sized cities really, because you have global cities, mega cities that will always be mega and always have, like Dubai or Paris or London, that are always going to have this kind of global reach. But where are this kind of medium-sized cities that are going to explode over the next 80 years, right, and we started looking at several of those. And was there any of those in the world that needed a team leader? And so we looked at multiple of those across the world and the Lord led us to this one city in North Africa and we started looking at the demographics of it. We started looking at the leadership structure around it organizationally and some of the vision there for that city. They didn't have a team, hadn't had one for a long time there, and just the ability to go in and kind of rebuild a team and think about how to reach an entire city, and it was something that really interested me. It kind of sparked, almost made me come alive again in some ways thinking about things like that. And so, yeah, through a long process, we thought, okay, yeah, we can do this job.

Justin 43:11

I really thought we could do this job, but something in me kind of held me back. I think Winona was ready to go, I think she was ready to do it, but something in me just I didn't want to start over again. I didn't want to learn a new language. We learned one of the hardest languages already in the world. I didn't want to go learn one of the other hardest languages in the world to learn, and so I just didn't want to do that at this stage of my life.

Justin 43:35

And so I felt like the Lord really needed to almost knock me down, I guess, for lack of a better way of saying it. So we looked at the city, really felt, wow, we could do that. It's even exciting to think about the possibilities in this city. But we took a. We said, well, we're going to take a vision trip over there, and we were actually both of us were were praying and we were asking the Lord, lord, we're willing to do this, but we need to absolutely know that this is it If we're going to give ourselves the next 20 years to this like we have to know, like this is you?

Justin 44:06

And again, I just need the lord to knock me down. So we're there, we visit the city. It was all great. I mean, it was all like we walked around going yep, yep, every box checked off. Uh, yep, we could do this, we could do this, we could do this, um, and then it was just really a matter of going okay, lord, is this it? And we really seeing lord at that point time we're reading through the new testament together, kind of a chapter a day at that point in time, and we got that day to our Bible reading and we opened it up. And it opened up it was Romans chapter 10. Like, okay, romans, chapter 10. I know what's in Romans chapter 10.

Winona 44:38

We both knew All right, Lord, we know what you're going to tell us today. We're coming here, we're coming here.

Justin 44:43

Yeah. So yeah, I was like, okay, we already know what's there, but we kept reading through Romans chapter 10. We actually got down to the end of Romans chapter 10 and there's a Paul actually quotes Isaiah.

Kyle 44:54

Yeah.

Justin 44:54

Isaiah 65 one is. He's kind of turning back towards Romans, chapter 11. Right, and he talking about the Gentiles, he quotes Isaiah 65 one. I'd never really noticed that before and so I looked at it and I read it and I flipped back to Isaiah 651. And I said what does that say? So I flipped back and this is what it says. So Isaiah 651 said I was ready, I was ready to be sought by those who did not ask for me. I was ready to be found by those who did not seek me. I said here I am. Here I am to a nation which did not call on my name.

Justin 45:27

And it was just this other moment that God, just like he did in the end of the book of John Peter, feed my sheep, just the same way it was as if God was revealing what he desired overall, like what is he ready for? And it was just really clear. Thank you, lord, for that kind of clarity that you're telling us in this moment that you're ready. You're ready to be sought and you're ready. If you're ready, how can I not be ready, right, and so it was like okay at that, literally at that moment, like um, every kind of we both knew and every bit of like trepidation I had about learning a new language or starting over in a new part of the organization and all those things that were felt like a loss. We're like that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, the Lord's ready and he's going to provide everything we need. So we jumped in. We jumped in and it's really been quite a ride. We've been doing it not quite two years now.

Justin 46:19

I learned the language. Winona is, you know, excelling. I'm struggling as normal, but I'm getting it. She can share the gospel pretty well in this new language. I can mumble through the gospel in this new language. We've built a team already. God has just done some really amazing things in all of it. I think the thing that's most overwhelming to me is that we are renewed with energy, excitement, joy in doing what we're doing, and now we have a city of 3 million people that we're like asking Lord what do you do? What do you want us to do? How do we engage and reach the city of 3 million people?

Kyle 46:57

That's so cool, so encouraging. It's always fun to just see how the Lord speaks to people and the ways he does it. It's just encouraging. So what to wrap up, what would you all say? What encouragement would you give to our listeners who are considering the field, just things, to spiritual disciplines, to practice, things to consider? What encouragement might you leave them with?

Winona 47:29

I would say draw near to Christ. I would say really get involved in the Word, find somebody who will hold you accountable to that but also just fall in love with Jesus. Take time as far as spiritual disciplines, take time to get alone with the Lord, practice a spiritual retreat where you pull away from your everyday life and really listen to the Lord, ask Him for what he has for your life. So I would say prayer, spiritual discipline, prayer, spiritual retreats, getting in the Word. I think that's really, really important.

Justin 48:06

Yeah, you definitely echo all those things the ability to discern the voice of God and what do you want me to do?

Justin 48:13

As he speaks through the word, as he speaks through his spirit and prayer, in just different ways that the Lord will speak, all confirmed by the word. Right, these different ways that the Lord would speak. That may be the most critical skill for anybody who goes overseas, because you'll be given these large, vague tasks, like a people group of 1.6 million spread out over six counties, or a city of 3 million people that's incredibly diverse, with all different kinds of layers to it, and you're an outsider and don't speak the language, and now you're going to go in and actually like, make an impact for the kingdom, and that the only way that happens is you're able to discern, like, what do you want me to do, lord? What do you want me to do today? What do you want me to do in a big scales and filter that all the way down from. What do you want me to do today? So, yeah, being able to discern the voice of God, I think is probably maybe, in terms of spiritual disciplines, to cultivate.

Justin 49:09

I think, it is maybe the most important. I think. Beyond that, I think I would say, yeah, just this idea of moving, removing yourself from the center of the story. I think Winona said that Like she's not the star of the story, like how can I remove my? Like, even as I seek the will of God, of what God desires? Sometimes I hear folks say this all the time what does God want me to do? Who's the center of that statement? You Me Me Right? Yeah, yeah. What does God want me to do? No, change the equation. What does God want? What?

Winona 49:40

does God want to do?

Justin 49:41

Just seek what he wants, what's he desire, what's he desire, and if you will see what he desires right around you, literally in the place you are, and begin to take steps of obedience towards that, where you are, I promise, like as you're moving towards what he desires, if there's a different direction he's going to take you, he will reveal it to you. He's a God who communicates to us. What does God want me to do now? And I begin to move in that direction? Oh, and then he wants me to do this. You move in that right, but it's really all about him, it's not about you. Again, John the Baptist, he must increase. I must decrease. I'm not the star of the story, I don't make myself the star of the story. Actually, shifting from a self-orientation to a Godward orientation, he'll take you places you can never imagine.

Kyle 50:27

So true, that's awesome. Thank you all so much for your time and sharing with our listeners. I've been greatly encouraged, and I really think they will too. So thank you again. We look forward to seeing you all again. Everybody, thanks for tuning into this episode and we'll catch you next time.