Reflection Essay - Unreached People Group LTE

I have to admit, I wasn’t looking forward to the UPG. I really didn’t want to spend the night in the ‘Bache Forte’ and I wasn’t too thrilled with having to walk around most of the day in the hot sun. But once the LTE started and I was separated from my group and encountered my tribal group on my own, I was very quickly hit with the reality of being a ‘missionary.’

Of course being in the safety of the Back Forty and with my tribal (unreached people) group being interns, there was no real threat to my life, my health or my well being. But role playing as we did was defiantly an eye opening experience. We couldn’t talk to our tribe in English, we had to learn their language and we had to gain their trust. They had been told lies of Jesus Christ and were afraid of his name. They didn’t understand the concept of one God and not having to sacrifice to please them.

Being in a (safe) situation of having to share the gospel and your beliefs was a whole lot more challenging than what I thought it would be. You are truly challenged to explain your beliefs and to defend them. You’re talking to someone who has ‘never’ heard of Jesus before and you need to explain to them who he is and what he did. It was extremely difficult and than having a time limit on the whole situation made it even harder.

Yes, being in the Back Forty for a few days isn’t anything near to how it is being on a mission field. But it really got me to thinking of people who really risk their lives and go out to tribes to speak the word of God to them. Every time our tribe did something intense we would panic for a second but then calm down; “That can’t really hurt us, we’re fine,” we found ourselves saying this over and over. And that small truth of reality calmed us oddly.

But that really got me to thinking of the people who don’t have that small truth of reality. There are people all over the world risking their lives to spread the word of God, and here I was running around in the Back Forty worried about being in the cold, sun and having to get a little dirty. How insane is that thought?

I guess the one thing I learned the most from this experience was that being a missionary might not be my calling, but my heart is defiantly for the mission field. And through this experience my prayers have defiantly been with the missionaries that risk their lives and don’t have the reality of going back to the dorms to get cleaned up and rested. And for the tribes who are scared of unknown.