Opening Doors through Education

dsmith484
Oct 1
4 min read

Early childhood primary schools are a great tool to impact Unreached People Groups

A Daunting Task

Proclaiming the Gospel to people who have never heard it before, and then making disciples and planting churches among them is a daunting task indeed. The statistics are sobering of the people groups and language groups that are unreached and unengaged (with no Gospel witness). Most of these people live within what is called the "10/40 Window" which consists of North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. Most of these countries are "closed" to traditional western missionaries. God continues to open doors through creative means and through national churches sending their own missionaries to these spiritually dark regions. God has opened doors and is leading us to partner with Asian churches to help train Asian missionaries to go make disciples and plant churches among these unreached language and people groups.

Dave with Asian Missionaries serving among Unreached Peoples in Myanmar

A Key Tool

One of the Asian mission groups that we're partnering with is called AIM (Antioch International Missions). AIM utilizes a lot of creative means to make connections with unreached peoples including sewing schools, motorcycle shops, computer training, and laundry businesses. Another tool that they're using is early childhood primary schools. These schools open doors to teaching the Bible not only to young children, but also to their families. AIM desires to train missionaries how to start and grow schools that teach young children English, classical core curriculum, and the Bible. They've asked us to help them by developing resources specifically geared for children in remote, primitive contexts and then provide training for their missionaries to teach the children. Since completing her job in July, Shawn has hit the ground running planning and developing ideas. This will be her primary role in our new ministry in Asia.

Asian Missionaries starting an early childhood primary school as an evangelism strategy.

No Schools!

In visiting many of the remote locations where Asian missionaries are serving among unreached peoples, we've witnessed that there are often no schools in those communities or when there are schools, they are in extremely poor condition (see photos below). While we often tend to take education for granted here in America, education for children is a tremendous need among many unreached people groups in Asia. Providing quality education is a powerful tool for Asian missionaries to build relationships with families to evangelize and disciple them. Some Asian missionaries are seeing doors open and encouraging opportunities through providing simple, basic education to young children. They've asked for our help to provide training and resources to further develop their efforts.

A local school in a remote, unreached region in Asia.

Short Strides

These educational needs and opportunities are the focus of Shawn's ministry. While Dave is focusing on missions and theological training for national pastors and missionaries, Shawn is focusing her time and energy on developing early childhood educational curriculum designed for Asian young children living in remote and impoverished contexts. We've started Short Strides, a new nonprofit organization which will be our identity in Asia and will be the tool to provide resources and training for Asian missionaries to use in building relationships, making disciples and planting churches among unreached people groups.

Praying, Trusting & Going Forward

The is a huge endeavor and we greatly need and appreciate your prayers for the Lord's wisdom and provision. It's a new, big step for us as we've never done anything quite like this before, but we're confident in the Lord's leading and believe that He will help us to develop key, educational tools that can be used by Asian missionaries for years to come until our Lord returns. We pray that God will use Short Strides to help impact unreached communities with the Gospel and plant new churches. Pray with us for the Lord's wisdom and grace, and that we will follow the Holy Spirit's faithful leading one "short stride" at a time.

Asian Missionaries providing a home, shepherding care and an education for orphans.

Special Prayer Requests:

Pray for Dave as he will be teaching and preaching in Asia for 5 weeks in 4 countries from October 18th to November 25th. Pray for open doors, good health, safety and fruit that remains.
We've begun the visa process to move to Thailand next year. Pray for God's wisdom and provision.
We're so grateful and excited that God has provided 91% of our needed monthly support. Pray for God's provision of the remaining 9%.
In preparation for our move to Asia, we are needing to sell our house. We have a few repairs that we are working on to get it ready for sale. We also have a couple of bigger ticket items that we need more professional help with including electric issues (about $4000). Pray for wisdom, stamina, and provision as we accomplish this final task of our preparations.
December 31st will be Dave's last day serving as the ODBM Director. It's been a wonderful blessing to serve our staff, missionaries and home church family for the past 13 years. Pray for a smooth leadership transition in the months ahead.

Thank you for faithfully holding the ropes for us through your prayers and gracious support. We thank the Lord for you!

Praise the Lord with us,

Dave & Shawn

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