Myanmar, Here We Come

It is 2am and I just finished packing up my stuff. It was an amazing night where I was reminded of God's grace and blessing upon my life and Vintage Church. Maybe one day I'll tell you the story.

I leave in the morning for Myanmar. Holy cow, this is going to be a beast of a trip. Here is our flight schedule: NOLA to Houston, Houston to Moscow, Moscow to Singapore, Singapore to Yangon. I am staying up so that I will be sleepy and the flight will go by faster.

I have heard that I will have access to internet at our hotel, so it is my plan to write a quick blog after some ichat time with the family each night. Before I go, I wanted to give you a few stats of the 10/40 region. I will be serving within this area.

STATS:
10/40 Window: across Africa and Asia from 10 degrees latitude north of the equator to 40 degrees latitude north of the equator.

• Center of population:Two-thirds of the world's population -- more than 3.2 billion people -- live in the 10/40 Window.
• Unreached and unevangelized: 95% of the people living in the 10/40 Window are unevangelized.
• Good news: There's a difference between unreached and unreachable. In 1989 there were only four known Christians living in Mongolia. That country now has an estimated 10,000 indigenous believers.
• Poverty: Eighty-five percent of those living in the 10/40 window are the poorest of the world's poor.
• 865 million unreached Muslims or Islamic followers in 3330 cultural sub-groupings
• 550 million unreached Hindus in 1660 cultural sub-groups
• 150 million unreached Chinese in 830 groups
• 275 million unreached Buddhists in 900 groups
• 2550 unreached tribal groups (which are mainly animistic) with a total population of 140 million
• Forming a smaller -- though important -- unreached group are the 17 million Jews scattered across 134 countries
• Good news: Missions researcher David Barrett says the country with the most rapid Christian expansion ever is China where there are 10,000 new Christian converts every day.

So...you’re bored with Jesus. So...that weekend party is more important right now. So...you’re gonna wait till you get married and have kids tilll you get serious about Christ.

• 66,000 people die every day in unreached poeple groups around the world, never having heard the gospel of Christ.
• Over 160,000 believers will be martyred this year while trying to preach Jesus.