Chapter 3 from “Fully Equipped: Having What It Takes to Give Your All”
“Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.” – John 4:35
My first mission trip
Few events mark and mold a person for a life time. One of those experiences in my life was the opportunity to visit the foreign mission field on a mission trip. At age twelve, my family drove from Florida to Texas where we visited with a missionary couple who worked on the border of Mexico. I don’t remember much about that trip, but I do remember the phrase in Spanish we learned when giving out Gospel tracts during their church-wide outreach. We would say “Esto es para used” meaning “This is for you.” I would use this phrase often back home when meeting Hispanics and offering a tract. While on that first mission trip, I began to learn about Indians who lived in the mountains who still remained unreached. A seed was born in my heart during that trip.
At age sixteen, my older sister Lori and I went to Ecuador for almost three weeks. We went to visit the Leroy Pifer family. When our plane approached the capital city of Quito during the night, I noticed the lights throughout the mountainside. How excited I was for the adventure that lay ahead. I was not disappointed.
After breakfast the next morning, we headed out over the Andes Mountains. There were four of us packed in the truck. As we rounded the twists and turns, we beheld the breathtaking beauty. Then it happened – we had blown a tire. The Lord was gracious, as the hair pin turns were many and sharp. Most of the roads had no shoulder, but we were able to stop before the next bend in the road and had enough room on the right side of the road to park. We were high into the mountains and realized we had another problem…we had no spare tire! An 8 hour trip would turn into a 12 hour trip, as we had to wait for Brother Pifer to get a ride down the mountain, get a tire, and come back up.
Meanwhile, we waited as the sun lowered. While overlooking the layers of mountains, we watched the fog slowly roll its way through the valleys! A wonderful chance for pictures! When Brother Leroy arrived with the tire, we had some extra help appear out of the mountains….which was a delightful surprise for me!
For some reason, since I was young I had an infatuation with Native American Indians. Whether it was watching a Western, or learning about missions, I always had a soft spot in my heart for them. The people who appeared to help us with our flat tire were natives who lived below had seen our plight. A few days later, I was able to see my first Colorado Indian. You can’t miss them, because they take a red berry and use it to dye their hair! As I look back, I realize God was preparing me to have a heart for those in the regions beyond still needing to hear the Gospel.
Mission trips teach valuable lessons
On that mission trip, I learned some valuable things. One is that missionaries are just normal people who have whole-heartedly devoted themselves to advance the message of the Gospel of Christ. It’s not that they are more talented or qualified, but rather willing and available to let God use them.
Also, I learned that it takes a long time to do ordinary tasks in third-world countries compared to the United States. Just to get the truck fixed could take up an entire day, as life is much slower in the culture of the third world. The schedule was different too. We might not eat breakfast until 10 am, lunch at 2 pm and supper at 10 pm! It’s just a different mindset! This mission trip really opened my eyes to different culture.
Before we left the country on our mission trip, the Pifers took us out to eat at Pizza Hut. There we met an exchange student from America. He asked Brother Pifer why he would bring his wife and children so far away from home to live in third-world conditions. The missionary explained that we believe there is a God who loves all men and gave His Son to die so lost sinners could be saved from eternal punishment in Hell. The young man’s response was, “If I believed what you believe, I wouldn’t have time to sit around here. I would be out warning everybody possible!”
There is no substitute for going and seeing firsthand what missionary life is like on foreign soil.
In fact, it was around that time in my life when I surrendered to be a missionary during Teen Camp in Haines City, Florida.
As a teenager, I thought I would be a missionary to the Indians in the mountains of Mexico. I had experienced time in Mexico and Ecuador, learned some Spanish, played the guitar in the Spanish ministry, and loved Mexican food!
Purposeful Preparation
At my high school graduation, I had my sight on being a missionary and went to further prepare myself at Bible college. I had learned about a few schools, but one college in particular captured my attention because of their focus and heart for missions. In one word, I could summarize the Crown College of the Bible in Powell, Tennessee…”Vision“. (Of course, this just happened to be located in the Smoky Mountains!)
Dr. Clarence Sexton is a man passionate about getting out the Gospel and evangelizing the world during our generation. “Going a little further with no place to stop” was his directive which he repeated often.
Unconscious Preparation
Because I had saved enough money to pay for my first semester, I was able to play on the soccer team. I had never played organized soccer before, so I had a lot to learn. But it was a good experience. As an athlete, I knew that the experience could only be an asset in foreign missions, as soccer is a global sport! As Pastor Sexton would say, many of our life’s experiences were God’s “unconscious preparation”.
Many of the guys who played on our soccer team became missionaries in other lands, especially Latin American countries. Being athletic is not a requirement to serve the Lord, but can be a tremendous asset. It is an easy way to meet new people and connect with others.
Unreached People Groups
The idea of Unreached People Groups was introduced to me during my first mission classes in 1999. A people group has its own ethnic and social identity. They are considered unreached when less than 2% of its population is evangelical Christian. They generally have no local church to preach the Gospel to them. Many of these groups are unengaged, with no one actively trying to evangelize and disciple them! Most of these Unreached People Groups live in the 10×40 Window. This is who Christ referred to when He said go and teach “all nations”.
In my freshman year, I learned about the people in Bangladesh being the largest unreached group! I was just so eager to go where God wanted me, and I just knew it had to be where the most needy people were. During a church service, I went forward and surrendered to go as a missionary to Bangladesh, if that was what God wanted. I went to the library and started to gather information about these impoverished Muslim people. What would it take to take a mission trip there?
The top 10 largest UPGs in the world are as follows:
- Shaikh in Bangladesh….population of 132,950,000
- Japanese in Japan……………………………………….….121,950,000
- Shaikh in India……..………………………………………..….73,079,000
- Brahman in India………………………………………..…..54,955,000
- Yadava in India………………………………………………..54,272,000
- Turk in Turkey…………………………………………………….52,739,000
- Chamar in India………………………………………..…….48,011,000
- Rajput in India…………………………………………………39,839,000
- Han Chinese, Xiang in China…………………36,031,000
- Sunda in Indonesia……………………………………….35,105,000
During my sophomore year, I began to learn about the Muslim peoples in Central Asia. In the countries of Uzbekistan, and its neighboring countries, there is very little Gospel witness. I thought, perhaps this is where God wanted me to go. Should I take a mission trip there? Uzbekistan is surrounded by many other “Stan” countries, and there is a saying that “As Uzbekistan goes, so goes Central Asia”.
Take the opportunities God gives you
Because I was a Mission’s Major, I needed to take a foreign language. I wanted to take Arabic, as that might be helpful with working with Muslims. But there was not enough interest for the college to offer that class. So I took Russian, knowing that many of the former Soviet states spoke Russian, at least as a second language. I ended up taking three semesters of Russian. One semester was during a semester of Greek simultaneously! That was fun. Actually, many of the letters are the same in both languages.
As my time in college continued, I had opportunities to travel with evangelistic teams taking mission trips to churches that were beginning or struggling. This was a real joy to be able to get a taste of pioneer works. A highlight during my junior year was being chosen to join a group of about 20 men from the church and college to go to New York City after the terrorist strikes on September 11th, 2001.
Look for opportunities to minister
When we arrived in Manhattan, you could still see the smoke ascending from the spot where the twin towers were leveled. We rode the subways, roamed the streets and ministered to people everywhere. There we were given permission to use various church buildings. We set up tables and gave out cookies and water along with Gospel literature. We had the opportunity to lead a number of folks to the Lord on that trip! You may read more about this outreach on my blog about the week of September 11th here.
In Bible College, I was continually challenged outside of the classroom by good reading material that friends gave me. One book that really impacted me was Shadow of the Almighty by Elizabeth Elliot. As I read about the life of Jim Elliot, I noted many parallels of his experiences with my own. His personal discipline physically and mentally became a personal challenge. He was an intentional student or servant in training because he understood what it would take to be engaged with a pioneering mission. Jim Elliot gave himself whole-heartedly to being fully equipped for the task – what an example! He competed on the wrestling team and studied Biblical languages. Even while standing in line for meals, he redeemed the time by memorizing Scripture from index cards he had written them on.
Seek to make friendships with missionaries
Being at Bible College, I had the privilege of meeting many missionaries who came through and would encourage us young zealous men. One representative from the Gospel Furthering Fellowship asked me to go on a trip with him to Indonesia. Although I never went, I began to learn specifically of the need of people groups within the borders of countries. In fact, there are over 300 Unreached people groups in Indonesia alone! There were three groups specifically that this missionary was targeting and strategizing to reach. One of these was the Madurese with 14 million people and no church present! You will learn later how this information would affect me and how God would further direct my steps.
Another great blessing in college was spending time with Dr. Ed Reese, who is a wealth of knowledge on great heroes of the past and the compiler of the Chronological Bible. He would tell us of his past experiences with Youth for Christ crusades he participated in. Dr. Reese always thought big and planned big! He had an idea to systematically evangelize the world. He made a list of all 3,000+ counties in America. Then he made a list of all the countries in the world divided by their provinces with their populations. We would divide the provinces or countries of the world into groups of approximately 2 million.
Ideally, Bible preaching churches in each county of America would be responsible for one of these areas of the world.
They would sponsor a church planting evangelist to reach the two million people in the designated region of the world. I enjoyed spending hours looking at maps and working on this project. I felt like I was having a part in making a world-wide difference.
If you have never been on a foreign field, I challenge you to take a mission trip with your family or church. Prepare now by learning about missionaries your church supports. Start saving up money for a plane ticket and get your passport!
Please check out the video that accompanies this chapter titled “Committed to His Cause” about the life of David.
You may read the Introduction and Chapter 1 of this series “Fully Equipped” here.
About the author:
Luke graduated from Crown College of the Bible in 2003. He married Jamie in July of 2006. God has blessed them with five children. Together they had the privilege of serving in the pastorate of a Baptist Church in Florida from 2007-2011.
In August of 2011, our family began our journey to serve the Lord as labourers among Unreached People Groups in Asia. We prepared ourselves at Baptist Bible Translator’s Institute in Bowie, Texas. During that time, God directed our path to work among the Tibetan people in the country of Nepal.
In February of 2014, we moved to Kathmandu, Nepal and experienced God’s work of grace and protection upon our family. We had the privilege to serve at the Crown Nepal Bible College. Teaching classes and preaching at youth conferences was a great opportunity for our family. We also were able to assist in outreaches to villages of the Tamang and Gurung people.
In 2021, we moved to Tampa, Florida. We currently are serving in our home church Southside Baptist Church and teach in the Christian Academy. Luke continues his writing ministry (www.pilgrimoftruth.com) and video messages on his YouTube channel (Pilgrim of Truth). His goal is to aid believers in making Christ known to the world. He continues to seek to assist churches in America. His heart’s desire is to help meet the needs of the unreached people groups in the world.
