Haiti

So what does Haiti have to do with growing coffee in East Asia?  Absolutely nothing, except that I just returned from a mission trip to there.  It was a great opportunity to meet some small needs there, see the church in a different culture, and see another part of the world.  Even years after the earthquake, there are still so many needs to meet there.  One of the things that stood out to me the most was the similarity between impoverished people, even on opposite sides of the world.  The architecture, language, and faces may change, but village poor in one part of the world looks very similar to village poor in another.  It was also heartbreaking to see that, in such an evangelized nation, there are still so many who did not grasp the basic message of the gospel.  More than anything for me though, Haiti reminded me of the calling to reach the unreached peoples of East Asia through working with our partners here at Underground Coffee International.

The Church Underground

We were very intentional with the tie in between Underground Coffee and the Underground Church. In many ways what we are doing is covert. Due to government persecution among the people we work with, we must be cautious. It is one of the reasons why you’ll never see faces of the people we directly work with (unless they live in another country at the time) or hear the real names of any of our partners. There must be safety for our local partners, but at the same time, the good news and stories of what God is doing in Asia needs to be told. So we will attempt to walk the tightrope of security and motivation, and if we must, we will err on the side of safety of our local partners. We will share stories in the coming months about what is happening in Asia.

A great read on the subject of the underground church is God is Red by Liao Yiwu (HarperOne, 2011). I’ve just finished reading it myself and hope to eventually go through it with our board of directors. The book is a series of interviews of people in Yunnan Province, China. Many of the interviews are with ethnic minorities and focus around the survival of Christianity throughout the persecution in China. If you ever want to understand more about the underground church and unreached peoples, this book is a great place to start.

Who We Are

Yes, I know that you can read who we are in the “about” section. And yes, I also know that if you have even more time you can read our story in that section of this website too. However, my hope for putting a blog on this site is to do a little more than just give you information. My hope (and ours collectively as UCI) is that you see our heart behind what we are doing. First and foremost, we are passionate about sharing the gospel with those who have never heard. I spent two years overseas working with an unreached people in South Eastern Asia (estimates are they are about 0.8% Christian). There several times where I shared with someone who had never heard of Christ at all. During this time I became passionate about seeing those people reached.

Now that I am back in the U.S. for a while, I cannot separate away from the calling to reach those who have never heard. I know that I am called to be here, but at the same time, I know that I have a calling and a passion to be there. Underground Coffee International is a direct result of that passion. Everyone on our board is passionate about reaching the unreached. The missionaries that we will send out will be focused on how to best reach the unreached. Even the coffee that we sell is strategic to reaching the lost (more on that in the months to come).

So we want to be about great coffee, but even more so we want to be about lives being changed by the gospel. Our desire is to help start a movement that allows those who are unreached to finally hear about Christ.