What is your church passionate about? Is there something that you as a congregation would love to do to serve the Lord in another country? Let Advancing Native Missions connect you with a native ministry partner who shares the same passion. One who can show you how God may use your passion for His kingdom. Here are some examples of what our ministry partners do to further God’s kingdom work around the world:
Love insects? A partner in Peru has discovered new species of butterflies and beetles. He has also found previously undiscovered and unreached tribes. One missionary has discovered a way to void the effect of poisonous snakebites instantly. This same missionary has developed a new type of body armor that repels arrows used by natives. Kevlar does not stop arrows!
Love creative people? Many of the missionaries whom ANM serve have written and produced praise and worship CDs. One partner in Myanmar cooks daily and shares the results live through social media. Several ministries translate scripture into their native language and distribute the resulting Bibles and New Testaments. Many missionary partners offer beautiful artwork from their countries for sale to support their ministry. Some of the missionaries create their own art.
Love children? Missionaries with whom we partner serve orphans, feed homeless children, teach about Jesus and the 3 R’s, run camps, and rescue captive children out of the sex trade. An ANM partner in Africa who did not have funds to start an orphanage, began his own foster child program to provide needy kids with a home and get them off of the streets. If you want to minister to kids, we can make it happen.
Does your church value life? One ministry we support in Israel helps women with their unplanned pregnancies so that their babies are not aborted. The support continues for a year. We have ministries in several countries who rescue people from human trafficking, share the gospel with them, and help restore their lives. A ministry in Kenya has a birth center in the making to ensure women are helped to give birth to healthy babies.
Sports your thing? There is a ministry in Mexico that reaches out to teens by training them to play soccer. A ministry in the Philippines similarly reaches kids with basketball, their national sport. Some ministries in Central Asia reach people with the gospel by holding wrestling events.
Is ministry to the deaf important to you? We have a ministry partner in Honduras who has developed sign language for her country, started a deaf school, trained teachers, and positively impacted the deaf community of Honduras. You can partner with her in helping this neglected community in Honduras.
Funding their ministry with agriculture? One missionary in Myanmar grows cashews to raise funds to minister to a leper colony. Another in Ghana collects and wholesales shea nuts to fund his ministry among villagers. A ministry in Mexico manufactures guava jam from fruit grown by local farmers. We have missionaries who raise mushrooms to fund their ministry. Others raise goats and trout to sell. One ministry in the Philippines raises pigs to help out their missionaries. A ministry in South America purchases organically grown coffee to sell and support their work.
Does your church have doctors, nurses or dentists wanting to serve? And do they have a heart to share their skills with those with little or no access to health care? ANM leads short-term mission teams to hold dental and medical clinics, and share the love of Jesus. These are conducted by medical professionals, including members of our own staff.
Movies your passion? God has used the Jesus Film powerfully, and ANM helps to distribute and show it. One missionary translated the script into her native language. Then she rewrote the narrative and lined up 15 native speakers to be dubbed into the soundtrack. Now a whole new nation is learning about Jesus because one person was willing to work hard for the Lord.
Do you enjoy hands-on projects? You just hit the jackpot! You can send a team on a mission trip and help build a church, school, home, or whatever a ministry partner needs. Teams also have been able to do skills training with local people while working on construction projects. ANM sends blankets and apparel to various ministries to clothe needy people around the world. Your sewing project is welcome as ANM and Gleaning for the World work together to send items overseas. Also, specific items can be sent with church teams to ministries they visit. Knitters and people who crochet can help ANM by making hats and mittens for ministries to distribute to those who would otherwise go without.
Clean water to save lives and souls. Many ministries dig wells to supply fresh, clean water to people in need. Whole villages can be transformed by the gospel when followers of Jesus provide new wells. You can partner with them to give both clean water and the “living” water from Jesus.
Convinced? Want to know how your church’s gifts or passions might fit into God’s global work? Pray for what God would have you do. Share your thoughts with ANM. Give your time, employ your skills, continue to pray, and consider providing financial resources. Send a team on a short-term trip. You can be a part of what God is doing around the world. Exercise your passion!
Advancing Native Missions is a bridge between Christians in the U.S. and native partners around the world to advance God’s kingdom and declare His glory among the nations. We would like to help you and your church move forward in obeying the command of Jesus to be His “witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)
As you pray and plan how to reach beyond your church, please consider these various ways your congregation can partner with ANM. If you have a particular region of the world, a specific country, or a kind of work that you are interested in, we can match you with a ministry partner who is already faithfully doing the work in the places where you wish to focus. ANM partners know the local language, culture, and people, therefore they can minister effectively where God has placed them. Our 345 native partners represent 10,425 native missionaries in 97 countries. These are not “cookie-cutter” partners. Each one develops their own ministry style while we vet, encourage, support, and pray for them. ANM’s partners build churches, operate schools and orphanages, and train future leaders in Bible academies and colleges, all the things you think of when you picture missions. But we also partner with ministries that present the gospel in unique ways as noted above. The regular blog posts on the ANM website give the scoop on our heroes of the faith—the native missionaries. Reading some of the posts may help you decide what your next steps in missions will be as a congregation.
