You may remember that our church, Skelly Drive Baptist Church, is planning a trip to Vietnam in 2008. Actually, we hope to possibly send a second group in the Fall.

Anyway, it turns out that one of the major people groups that we will be trying to reach are the Hmong people (the “h” is silent in the pronunciation). It so happens that we host a group of Hmong people, the Tulsa Hmong Alliance, that worship in our facility. They are a kind and humble group of people and in an effort to share their gratitude to us for hosting them in our facility, they took the staff out to eat, early in December.

Just spending time with them caused our hearts to long for them with the heart of Christ. I was so humbled by their generosity. They didn’t have much – the couple we sat across from both worked long hours at factory jobs to put their kids through college – but they were so kind and gracious to us, not wanting us to pay for anything.

Let me give you a few things gleaned from the evening.

There are two main groups of Hmongs and they spread across several borders in Asia. China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos are the ones that spring to mind, but I think there are even more. My wife asked what country the Hmong people were from (our friends are from Laos), but I interjected that they were from several countries, that the Hmong people predate the current political borders and that these borders just lay across the places where this people group have lived for “hundreds and hundreds of years.” I then turned and asked the Chairman of the Board how old the Hmong people were, and he politely said, “Yes, the Hmong people are about 6,000 years old.”

All of my friends – and my wife in particular – looked at me and snickered. “That’s what I said. Hundreds and THOUSANDS of years old!” I exclaimed.

Bob Roberts’ church, Northwood in Keller, is the connection that led us to this trip in the first place. In Bob’s book, Glocalization, Bob talks about God’s heart for cities – that God always sends messengers to the cities (Chapter 3). Now, when I read it, I processed that thought academically. That is to say, I understood what he was saying, but I wasn’t sure how much I believed in that thought.

Sitting across from our friends and talking about the work of God among the Hmong people, they began to say that the Lord was moving and that many of their people were beginning to turn their hearts to the Lord. My wife asked if they had family back in Laos and had they come to know the Lord. The wife of Tulsa Hmong Alliance Treasurer (who works 12 hours/day M-F and 6 hours on Saturday = 60 hrs/week) said that she had an aunt who still lived in Laos, but she did not know the Lord. What she said next hit me like a brick. She said that her aunt did not yet know the Lord because she lived too far away from the city. The people with the message of Christ had not made it to where she lived, yet. They are praying for someone in her village to come to the city and hear the Gospel, so that they can go back with the message. Hopefully, that person will be her aunt, she said.

At that point, Bob’s observation moved from abstract missiological stratagem to real world practicality of the saved and lost around the world.

Anyway, the night was intended to help us feel appreciated. Rather, it sparked in us a greater passion to reach the Hmong people with the Gospel.

Posts with related content

• No Related Post

TAGS: None