World Impact week

The missions committee at our church recently hosted a missions week called the World Impact conference; Neil & I had the privilege of presenting our involvement with ISI to the congregation on the final Sunday night. It was fun! We discussed how all Christians are called to reach the nations for Christ, whether we go overseas to them or reach the peoples of the world who are in our country; how God has created a situation in America where the nations have truly come to us in the 500,000+ international students going to school here every year -- literally causing the "mission field" to be knocking on our doors; why these students are likely to be leaders in their countries when they return home; how Green River CC has 400+ internationals going to school less than 20 minutes from here; and what an impact on the world we can make by reaching out to international students with the love of Christ while they are here.

ISI's area mobilizer, Jeff Nelson, came down from Seattle for the meeting, and it was good to introduce him to Pastor Ed and some others. Several people signed our sign-up form (for wanting more information) -- including Pastor Tom, who said it would be a great fit for the Generational Leadership program at church; GL is the year-long Christian leadership training program for 18-25 year olds at our church. Pastor Tom said he could make work with ISI a required outreach/missions part of the program.

Neil and I had leaned toward trying to develop the Friendship Partner program first (matching students with families/singles/couples in the church for once-a-month get-togethers), but are starting to see that perhaps the weekly Talk Time program might "fly" first. Talk time involves dinner and a meeting with both internationals and native English-speakers attending, and a specific discussion topic each week. It's still -- and always will be? -- a step-by-step process.