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Welcome to thE-TASK for December 2002!

What news and info do you want to read about in thE-TASK? Send your input and feedback for features and people group info to Felicity at fburrow@imb.org.

This month’s eNewsletter focuses on the Northern Dong People Group.

What’s Inside: People Group Info: the Northern Dong of China, Prayer Points, Mission Projects in East Asia, Lottie Moon and You, The Persecuted Church, Quoted, Collegiate Missions Conferences, Comic Relief, and God’s Heart for the Nations Bible study.

Unreached People Group (UPG) focus: The Northern Dong of China

A map is not available at this time. Sorry! We’ll keep working on that technology to include it in future editions.

Personal story: It was a fifteen-hour trip in the middle of the rainy season to reach mountainous Northern Dong people. We found ourselves wet, tired, discouraged and on a motorized long boat going down the river to a 2000-year-old village. Off the boat and up the footpath, we finally arrived and were greeted by the village leader and the oldest member of the village, an eighty-year-old woman who serenaded us with songs in the typical Northern Dong style. It is a Northern Dong custom to sing to your visitors when they enter your village. In order to finally enter the village, the visitor must sing a song in return and if it pleases the crowd, the visitors are welcomed. So there we were in the pouring rain, tired, and hungry, and faced with a chance to sing over the entire village songs of God’s Kingdom and how one day the Northern Dong would hear and believe. Then they invited us in.

World View Info: The 3 million Dong people are one of the 55 official minority groups in China. The Southern Dong and the Northern Dong are divided into two subgroups according to a difference in dialects. The Northern Dong speakers, 38% of the total Dong population, live in the rolling hills of southern China, not far from the Vietnam border.

Livelihood: Everyday life for the Dong includes rice or cotton farming, tending their water buffaloes, breeding fish and ducks, forestry, and producing oil used in paints and varnishes. The women work alongside the men in the fields during planting and harvesting times. They are also skilled weavers and do excellent embroidery. Some Northern Dong areas were ravaged by the cultural revolution, making living and working conditions difficult. Many Northern Dong, however, are moving into the cities and even obtaining college degrees.

Village Life: During spring festivals young men and women gather at the towers and sing to each other. Those who are attracted to each other will pair off and sing to each other all night and into the next day. It is said that a young girl should know enough different songs to sing for three days straight.

When a child is born, the parents plant a China fir tree. The tree grows until the time of the child’s wedding, when it is cut down and used to build the newlyweds a home. Homes are usually built without nails.

Religion - Animism and Ancestor Worship: The Dong’s practice a religion known as animism. Animism is the belief that all things in creation - rivers, trees, mountains, rocks, and fields - have a spirit. The Northern Dong are constantly scared of offending the spirits. If one upsets a spirit then he must appease it or certainly bad things will follow. This belief causes people to ask the spirits for the right places to plant trees, dig a hole, build a home, and even when to get married.

Their lives are consumed by trying to please these spirits. One method of appeasement is to rely on dead ancestors to mediators between those living and the spirits. The living people praise the dead ancestors in order to please them so that they, in turn, will request protection for the living from the spirits. Also, offerings are placed on the ancestors’ graves so that they might ensure good crops in the coming year.

Status of work:

*% Christians: <0.0006%
*Believers: Approx. 600
*Scripture in their language: None
*Jesus Film in their language: None
*Christian broadcasts in their language: None
*Mission agencies: 1
*Responsiveness to the Gospel: Open but very neglected

For more info on the Northern Dong, go to www.northerndong.com

Prayer Points:

• Only a handful of the Northern Dong are believers. Pray that God would give them strength to share their faith and to endure any persecution they might endure as Christians.
• The Northern Dong have been neglected for hundreds of years. Pray that God would restore their identity in Him as a wonderful people created by Him.
• Pray that God would reveal Himself in the Northern Dong’s worldview in a way that would tear down their strongholds of fear and despair.
• Please pray that the house church movement in the eastern parts of China would be burdened to reach the Northern Dong and send workers to them.
• Pray that current workers among the Northern Dong would have a new and clear vision from God to reach them.

For more info about praying for the nations, go to www.imb.org/CompassionNet/default.asp.

Northern Dong ministry contact info:

Northern Dong
PO Box 1341
Cleburne, TX 76003
northerndong@yahoo.com

Web sites or links about the Northern Dong:
www.northerndong.com
www.sil.org/ethnologue/ethnologue.html
www.ad2000.org
www.calebproject.org
www.omf.org
www.brigada.org
www.amazon.com
www.antioch.com

Project List for China

Apply online at www.thetask.org/students/apply!

Lottie Moon and You

So what does a lady who died 90 years ago in China have to do with you as a college student today? Lottie - a missionary who died in China last century - is your link to helping missionaries take God's Message around the world. The Lottie Moon Christmas Offering (LMCO) happens at Christmastime and supports international missions. You can make missions happen even if it's not your turn to go by giving to LMCO. Check your local Southern Baptist church to find out how to give or call the International Mission Board at 1-800-999-3113.

How can you afford it? Here are some creative ideas:

1. Watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas on television instead of renting it. Give the money you saved to Lottie Moon. You'll support campus missionaries in Paris for an hour, letting them explain the gospel to students who've never heard the truth.

2. Skip one weekend's date night and invite another couple on a double date to a free Christmas concert. The money you don't spend that night will support a leadership trainer in Asia for a day, enabling him to teach local believers how to win their people to Christ.

3. Challenge 20 friends to give up two Starbucks a week for six weeks. Pool the money you saved to support a nurse in Africa for a week as she gives medicine and love to an unreached people group.

• Check out more about Lottie and you in the feature at www.thetask.org/students
• Read about what your Lottie Moon dollars do at http://ime.imb.org/LMCO/storiesneed.asp.

The Persecuted Church:

A provincial court cleared four women members of the South China Church of "cult activity" charges because they had been tortured into making rape accusations against their pastor. Just hours after they were freed, however, the police re-arrested them and sent them to labor camps for three-year terms. Observers believe the police re-arrested the women to prevent them from suing officers for torture and wrongful arrest. Cry out to God on behalf of your sisters in Christ. Ask God to give them grace and strength and to use their suffering to bring glory to his name. Thank God for the amazing growth of the Kingdom in China. Pray that justice and peace will be established in China.

From Advance! December 2002, Mark Kelly, editor. To subscribe to Advance!, send an email to subscribe-advance-newsletter@xc.org or visit http://purcell.xc.org/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?join=advance-newsletter

Quoted

Christian workers asked a brand-new Chinese believer to make a list of 100 non-Christian family members, friends, and acquaintances. She began listing names immediately. When she completed the assignment and shared the list with her disciplers, they asked her how many of the 100 might be individuals she could lead to the Lord. With a puzzled look on her face, she replied: "All of them! Isn't that why I made the list?"

Collegiate Missions Conferences coming up!

The Summit
Knoxville, TN
Dec. 27 - 29

Register and get more information at www.the-summit.org

Be Thou My Vision
Auburn, AL
Jan. 3-5

Registration and conference details at www.auburn.edu/student_info/lakeview/cmc.html

Comic Relief: Encouragement for Final Exams

You never have to study at a good school, because it's so impressive to say, "I flunked out of Harvard." But if you say, "I got straights A's at DeWayne State," who cares? -- P.J. O'Roarke

God’s Heart for the Nations Bible Study:
For previous issues of the Bible study, go to http://www.thetask.org/students/e_newsletter.htm and click on the edition you want.

Last month, we looked at John 4:36 - 37 and I Cor. 3:4-7 where the stages of the harvest are described. I outlined the stages - sowing, planting, watering, and reaping, but I didn't really define them. Let's look more closely at the stages of the harvest.

Sowing = an indiscriminate broadcast of the message

When I plant grass seed each spring, I sow the seed in my yard by broadcasting it all over the lawn.

Write below some mission project activities that focus on sowing - an indiscriminate broadcast of the gospel? For ideas, go to www.thetask.org/students/projects.

Planting = an intentional and focused distribution of the message

When a farmer plants green beans, a hole is dug in a straight row for each seed, the seed is planted, and then covered with soil. This is intentional planting in a specific place in the ground.

What are some instances in your life when you have been involved in planting seeds of the gospel?

Watering = action aimed at the growth and development of the seed

How can you water seeds of the gospel in a non-believer's life?

Reaping = the gathering of the fruit when it is ready to be picked

Describe a situation in which you or someone you know has been part of the reaping stage of the harvest.

Some of our missionaries have suggested one more phase to the harvest: plowing. One person in a security-sensitive Asian country said, "You don't come here to plant seeds, or even to water. You come here to dig rocks out of the soil."

Each time you encounter a non-believer, you are part of the harvest that God is doing in that person's life. As Shawn Shannon, one of my campus ministers during college, said to me, "Your influence is always positive or negative, never neutral." Ask God to help you identify what stage of the harvest your non-believing friends are in so you know how to share the gospel message with them.

List below the names of some non-Christians you know. Ask the Lord to give you insight into the stage of the harvest each person is in and then write the stages beside the appropriate name.

Now pray for each person on your list and ask the Lord two things: (1) to give you wisdom and understanding about how to share the gospel with that person in that stage; and (2) to bring someone else into that person's life (if it's not you) to lead the person to the next stage and, eventually, to the reaping stage.

Be encouraged that your part in the harvest is crucial. You may never lead someone to Christ, but if you are faithful to share, that's all God asks of you.

For example, if you want to grow tomatoes, but never plant the seeds, will you ever reap tomatoes? If you plant the seeds and go on vacation and your roommate forgets to water the plant, will you ever reap tomatoes? If the tomatoes are planted and watered and ready to pick, but you have papers to write and tests to study for, so you never pick them, what happens? They rot and fall into the dirt or die on the vine. Reaping never happens without the other stages coming first. But someone has to reap the fruit for it to stay healthy and good for the future, even if it's not you, the one who planted the seed.

Next month we will look at what Jesus calls a harvest field in comparison to our typical view of the harvest.

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