Profile: Uncle LS

On our recent visit we had an opportunity to reconnect with Uncle LS.  I thought it might be good to share his story with you. My old supervisor introduced me to Uncle LS.  He lives in a village that is tucked back in a valley off a highway and then a dirt road that is about forty-five minutes out of town.  My supervisor tells of the time when he discovered the valley and was struck with the thought of “How will these people way out here ever have a chance to hear the gospel?”.  Later, when they hiked into the village, it turns out that they had heard the gospel from a group of Burmese missionaries almost a year before.  Uncle LS was not a believer but his wife and daughter were strong Christians who would routinely go out and share with others.

A couple years ago, Uncle LS and his wife were working out in the fields when there was an earthquake.  Because they lived in a valley, there was also a rockslide and his wife was injured and died.

Uncle LS’s daughter would still go out and share with others, despite her husband not being a believer.  Her husband would often drink and get angry with her going out to share the gospel.  When he would get angry he would often beat her.  She would still go out and share, until one day he beat her and broke her leg.  After that, she quit going out and sharing with others.

When we went out to meet Uncle LS for the first time we were amazed by the beauty in his valley.  It was a very narrow and secluded place with steep ridges.  When we were there, it felt like we were completely alone.  In fact, when Luv-Luv and I would go out there without the truck we would have to hike back to the road and then hitchhike all the way back to town.  Uncle LS struggled with loneliness.  After his wife died, his daughter and her family moved to town and he was left alone in a shrinking village.

Uncle LS allowed us to set up a corn test plot in his village (actually, he was VERY excited about it).  He was always willing to have us come to his house, do any projects we like, and usually wouldn’t let us leave without us giving lots of excuses on why we needed to get back to town.  We would always promise him that the next time we visited we would stay the weekend with him.  (Which we later did.  It was miserable.  Our straw beds were infested with fleas and the dogs barked all night.)

We would often share with him about the Gospel and the God that his wife had believed in.  He would always say that he was open, but he never made Jesus his Lord.  One time we gave him a parallel bible (where all four gospels are lined out next to one another).  Because I couldn’t read the language, I didn’t realize that is what I gave him until the next time he told us of how he read it all, but he couldn’t understand why the book repeated itself so much.

When we went back to visit him this summer, we arrived at his house and it looked deserted.  We assumed that he might have died over the past two years, so we went and asked some of the other villagers.  After about an hour of hunting for him, we found him working at a rest stop on the highway.  He worked with some of his friends and went from being lonely to surrounded by people all the time.  We spent a long time telling him about the gospel again.

Today, he is doing much better than he was when we first met him three years ago.  He no longer struggles with loneliness.  Please pray for Uncle LS.  He is still not a believer and continues to seek the truth.

Why are they Unreached?

It is no big secret that we work with unreached peoples.  An unreached people group is generally classified as one in which there is no opportunity for a reproducing Christian community.  In terms of statistics, most people would say that a people group that is less than 2% Christian is unreached. So why, after almost 2,000 years of Christianity, are there still people who have never heard the Good News?  There are a lot of factors: accessibility, language, culture, government restrictions, and many others.  Logistically it is HUGE undertaking to even get a Bible into a language, much less getting the Bible into the hands of the people and having them understand it.  One of the people groups that we work closely with doesn’t even have one book of the Bible translated into their language yet.

Coffee seems like a natural vehicle to be able to work with unreached peoples.  A lot of unreached peoples are farmers, and many unreached peoples (approximately 6,000) live within an area called the “10/40 window”, which a large portion of is close enough to the equator to grow coffee.  These factors helped to make coffee a natural choice as a vehicle to establish relationships and share the gospel with unreached peoples.

The passion and desire of UCI is that we work with these rural farmers, teach them to plant coffee, build relationships with them and share the gospel.

Asians Reaching Asians

Asians reaching Asians, that is one of the major things that we hope to facilitate.  Whenever we look at mission work and trying to reach others, by far the best way to do it is to train up local believers then equip and support them to go out and reach others.  There are so many advantages that they have over Westerners: language, culture, preexisting networks of friends and family, and not to mention their standard of living is much less.  We can sponsor several Asian missionaries for the price of one Western missionary.  One of our hopes here at Underground Coffee International is to mainly employ Asians that can reach Asians.  Our plan is to have our first employees be Asian missionaries.  Even right now we have Asian brothers and sisters waiting on funding so they can go out and reach others. Another organization that is like minded in this has made a great video with this same point in mind.  It is a little long (about eight minutes), but if you have the time it is well worth a look.  The peoples we work with are not in this video, but they are incredibly alike in both culture and need.