I had one of the craziest and most intense week of my life last week. Our hosts for this month asked us to take a week to go into villages of unreached people groups and prayer walk. The International Missions Board defines an unreached, unengaged people group (UUPG) as, “A people group is unreached when the number of Evangelical Christians is less than 2% of its population. It is further called unengaged when there is no church planting strategy consistent with Evangelical faith and practice under way.” He showed us coordinates on google maps of the cities, and they were literally in the middle of green (trees). That’s it, no dot signifying a city…just trees.
Yeah, prayer walking to unreached people groups! Sounds pretty normal, right? We thought so, too. At our initial meeting the week before, they gave us the name of three villages. (For privacy and security purposes, I’ll be referring to them as Village A, B, and C). But, they didn’t exactly tell us how to get there, how to get from one to another…in fact, they themselves hadn’t actually been to Village C. Two of my teammates and our squad leader with us ended up getting sick, so only me, Melody, Megan, and Britteny were able to go. I’ll give you a rundown of how each day went.
Our hosts said that travel would be unreliable at best, that busses don’t run at any certain times, and bus stations were standing on the side of the road looking for the right bus to pass by. But God totally provided. Not once did we have trouble finding transportation or getting on the right bus. Our trip from Village A to Village C was supposed to take us at least two days, and it took us about 9 hours. If that’s not God, I don’t know what is.
Village A was along the side of a road, and is filled with a people-group that don’t associate themselves with the Lao people. They have people groups in a few different countries, so they consider those “their people”. This village grew coffee and a root that they cut up into animal feed. Literally every house had tarps of the sour smelling root everywhere. There were kids in rags running around the streets. There were toddlers helping their parents cut up roots with machettes. It’s a totally different world. We walked around and prayed and found a river with children playing and bathing, young girls washing clothes. Village life has a beautiful simplicity to it, but then I’m suddenly reminded that it’s mostly because they don’t have the means to do much else. We spent the night having time with the Lord and worshipping before heading to village B.
Village B was supposed to be nothing more than a stopover, but our hosts warned us that if we couldn’t make it there by noon the next day, we would have to stay a night there before heading to Village C because no trucks will go up there after noon. This was a slight problem because we were informed by the homestay owner that in order to get to Village B, we would have to take one bus (standing on the side of the road, not knowing when the busses start because there’s no schedule…) and then get off the bus before the bus station (where? He wasn’t entirely sure) and then a bus going to village B will pass by that intersection going the other way and you get on that one. ….What? And that’s when we pray. God ended up providing us with a private ride straight from Village A to Village B, and the trip took us a total of 3 hours instead of only God knows how long.
Because we made it to Village B before noon, we were able to catch the only truck going to Village C that day. Talk about God’s perfect timing, when we arrived, the truck was leaving 5 minutes after. God’s crazy good. The ride up to village C was anything but pleasant if I’m being honest. Imagine you’re on the Jurassic Park ride at Disney World being bounced around, and now think of the scene in Star Wars where they’re walking through the dessert with those face wraps….now combine the two for 4 hours and that was our ride to Village C. The roads weren’t finished (cranes actually had to build roads for us at some points) and the dirt was like flour since it’s dry season. After the four hours we finally made it to our destination, Village C.
Our ride dropped us off, and we set out to start walking around what was actually a rather large village. Our mission here was to prayer walk, which was actually more difficult than it sounds. Something you need to understand about each of these villages is that they are currently enemy territory. These people are mostly animists- they worship spirits and make sacrifices to them. There are no believers. They’re considered a UUPG (unreached, unengaged people group). If they’re having a surgery or sick, they go to the witch doctor for healing, and then are indebted to a demon for helping them. The atmosphere in these places is so entirely different than anything I’ve ever experienced before, and for all of us, we found it hard to even know where to start with prayer. I’ve never had it before where I ask Jesus what to pray for, and don’t hear anything. We tried praying out loud which helped a little, but it seemed the atmosphere just sucked the life out of everything. Good thing our God is greater than any of that. Right when we started feeling a little discouraged, He provided Melody and I a group of kids playing a Lao foot ball game that we asked to join in with. It was an amazing opportunity to interact with some of the kids, gather a small group of spectators, and pray for those kids. This week was one when I tangibly saw that when we are weak, He is strong. That night we met up, worshipped, prayed, and listened to what God has for Village C.
The next day our mission was to leave Village C and walk to find other villages not yet known. Crazy, right? Finding villages no one knows about, or has at least never stopped at? We packed up in the morning with our backpacks and tents and headed out. We walked along the main road for a few hours, up and down hills (mind you, we’re in the mountains, we’re not talking about a stroll in the park). After about three hours, we come to the top of a mountain where you can see the land all around. In the distance we saw two small huts, and Britteny was convinced it was a village. Skeptical (and tired) we decided to venture there, and if it wasn’t anything, turn around and start the trek back since we didn’t have anywhere to tent for the night. Well, Britt ended up being right. We found Village D, a village of maybe 30 people in the middle of no where. They were not the most welcoming of the strange foreign girls. Only one little old lady motioned for us to sit on the porch of her shop and rest, and we bought drinks from her. We tried communicating, and used a few Lao phrases we knew to start up conversation, but overall it just wasn’t happening. Instead, Mel broke out her guitar and we worshipped and prayed over this small village. We ended up not tenting there and walked back to Village C, but were excited to have found what God wanted to lead us to! This people group would be considered UUUPG (unreached, unengaged, unheard-of people group). As we were walking back, I just imagined the ground we were walking on being claimed for the kingdom. If no one had ever been to these people before, the Holy Spirit was now dwelling there with them, preparing their hearts for those to come in the future. How amazing is that?
The next day we headed back to Village B on an even worse ride down the mountain. It’s comical looking back on the ride, actually. I don’t think I’ve ever been more dirty in my life, and thank God we were able to buy face masks before heading down. We spent the night in Village B, and the next day headed back to our site for the month. It was one of the most incredible weeks on the race so far for sure, and was probably one of the most eye-opening weeks as well. Stay tuned for the next blog on everything I learned and all God is doing in my heart 🙂
God bless,
Jenna
