And here we are, on the eve of our next big adventure.
As many of you know, we are traveling to Kurdistan (northeastern Iraq) for 10 days as a team of 6. This opportunity was presented to us at the completion of our Perspectives course in the spring. The couple who extended the invitation have been living there for 4 years and chose to go long-term as a result of their own experience with the Perspectives course. Here is a bit of a more comprehensive explanation:
This past spring, Emmaus Church hosted a Perspectives class. Perspectives is a 15 week course designed to educate and mobilize the body of Christ to join God in his global purpose; to unite all peoples to himself. There are currently 6,500 unreached people groups in the world who do not have access to the gospel. Following the course, we were all presented with the opportunity to travel to one of these unreached people groups, The Kurds.
This fall, in obedience to the Lord, six of us will be traveling to Iraqi Kurdistan and spending ten days with a family who has been living among the Kurds. We will be learning more about the unreached Kurds, experiencing life in their culture, praying, and seeking the Lord on behalf of this nation. We are going with no agenda, no projects, simply with a heart for seeing what the Lord is doing and how we can participate with Him. We are eager to learn and experience more about what it means to go to the least reached places in the world.
Who: six people, all alumni of the recent Perspectives class hosted at Emmaus Church.
What: A vision trip to an unreached people group
When: September 27-October 7
Where: Iraqi Kurdistan: The Kurds are a large ethnic group of about 25 million people who have always lived in the same region, and who trace their roots back to the Medes of ancient Persia (the frontier of what is now Iraq, Iran and Turkey) more than 2,500 years ago. Today, Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the world without a state of their own. They are unevenly distributed between Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Armenia and Azerbaijan. If the Middle East map were to be redrawn to give the Kurds their own boundaries, Kurdistan would be as large as France, stretching over 200,000 square miles.
Why: To create awareness and opportunities for mobilization into unreached people groups.
Though we have been asked to approach this trip anticipating the need to adapt, our tentative plan is to help serve at a language center. The team we are partnering with in Kurdistan utilizes the opportunity to build relationships with locals coming to this language center, and these friendships often lead to conversations about Jesus. We will likely be surveying local neighborhoods to see what kinds of services individuals would like to see from the center. The culture is incredibly hospitable and our hosts have told us that we may be invited to tea by the locals. In addition to seeing more of the culture, we also hope to bring some encouragement to the long-term couple as well as their team because living overseas can be tough!
In preparation for the trip, the Wilsons engaged in the Daniel Fast. For those who are not familiar, this fast is based off of Daniel in the book of Daniel in the Bible. King Nebuchadnezzar removed many of the nobility and noteworthy citizens from Jerusalem to come serve in his kingdom. They were to undergo a three year training period, during which time they were to be served the king’s food, which had been offered to the Babylonian gods. Daniel requested that he and his friends be served vegetables (in some translations the word “pulse” is used which is anything that comes from seed) and water for 10 days and be evaluated in comparison to those who ate the king’s food. At the conclusion of the 10 days, the official found that Daniel and his friends were physically superior and thus permitted to refrain from eating the defiled food. Daniel also did a three week fast later on and that is the traditional length of time for those who choose to engage in the “Daniel Fast.”
The Babylonian empire was located in what was now modern-day Iraq.
We found this out about mid-way through the fast and it was very cool to see the connection.
This fast translated into eating food without sugar or preservatives, no animal products (including dairy), and nothing to drink apart from water. It was a learning experience but definitely brought us closer as a couple as well as encouraged us to cook more. We were both reignited with a desire to be in the Word and great anticipation about what was going to happen during our trip.
We leave tomorrow and will come back October 7th. We’re so excited!!!
To those of you who have already been supporting and praying, thank you! We were able to raise all but about $300 of our funds for the trip, which was amazing to see!
As we prepare to go, we do have a request that if you contact us while we are gone, please refer to this as a “trip” and exclude any sort of mention of missions. Feel free to ask how the trip is going, what we’ve been doing, and things of that nature.
Otherwise, we will send an update on how the trip went when we get back! Thanks for your continued prayers and support! See you on the other side!
Love, Casey and Ronny
