This is awesome

On September 22, 2015, I had the joy of preaching a sermon on the second coming of Christ I titled, They Say He is Coming Again. In my application (based on Matthew 24:14) I said,

I’m holding a 3 page document called, No Christians, No Scriptures, No Missionaries. It’s a list of all the people groups with no Christians and no work.

I urge the church, specifically the leadership, to adopt at least one of the people groups on this list and to regularly pray for them.

The pastor agreed and appointed me a one person committee to find a people group to adopt. I found the Southeastern Luoluopo, an unreached people group on the China-Vietnam border, and the church adopted them.

Consequently, once a month we have a specific prayer time for the Luoluopo. As I was gathering information for this month, I was focusing on Christians in Yunnan Province (where the Luoluopo live), and I came across a couple of wonderful stories.

The Eastern Lipo live in the northern part of Yunnan Province. The majority of the Eastern Lipo are professing Christians. They were first converted under the ministry of Australian missionary-doctor Arthur Nicholls (China Inland Mission), who traveled to the area in 1906. Conversions occurred almost immediately. In 1913 the four Gospels were translated into Eastern Lipo, and the entire New Testament in 1951. They experienced severe persecution during the 1960s and 1970s. Most of their culture is now centered around the church and their strong Christian faith. In 1998 the Eastern Lipo churches sent evangelists to ten unreached minorities throughout southern China. (Operation China)

Amen!

The A-Hmao live further north in Yunnan Province. In 1904 missionary Samuel Pollard (known in Chinese as Bo Geli; he was a British Methodist missionary with the China Inland Mission) arrived and found the A-Hmao trapped in slavery and overwhelmed with poverty. Together with Francis Dymond he converted them to Christianity, invented an alphabet for their language, and taught them to read and write (the New Testament was printed in 1917). Pollard baptized 10,000 believers, and before the mission was expelled from China, 80,000 had turned to Christ. Some estimate that 80% of the A-Hmao today are Christians.
After the departure of the missionaries, the church stayed steadfast to Christ. In 1974 many believers were massacred by Chinese troops when they met secretly for prayer in a cave. Instead of destroying the church, the massacre caused a doubling in the number of Christians over a short time. (Operation China)

Amen again!

What does this have to do with the Luoluopo? We are confessing, I believe God will answer us- this is an encouragement for our faith: God has worked mighty things in the past, near them! And the Lipo are sending evangelists to unreached minorities in southern China. This is awesome!

In Psalm 2, the Father said to the Son:

Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, 
and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.

And we are joining with the Son, “Give us the Luoluopo.”