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.

Meeting #2

We just wrapped up our second board meeting.  It was a great time of exchanging ideas and we all left encouraged.  For the past several months we have been in the progression of moving from 0 to 1 (there’s an earlier post on that if you’re interested), and now we finally feel like we are in a position to start moving forward.  We are excited for what we have planned over the next few months, and hopefully they will put us in a position to have our first missionary on the field within a year.  Whenever a nonprofit with such a big goal gets started up, there are always question marks and things that come up along the way.  It has just been an amazing ride so far and seeing how God has opened up doors for us to be able to do ministry.  Hopefully you are a part of what we are doing through prayer and partnership.  If you want more details on how to pray or be involved, please send us an email and let us know.  Email us at info@undergroundcoffeeintl.org

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.