If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.
Matthew 17:20
Most Christians believe that prayer is powerful. We believe the Bible when it tells us that Elijah prayed and it did not rain for three and a half years! We believe that when Moses prayed the Lord opened the sea. And yet, we tend to pray for the small, the immediate. We pray for health and safe travel, friends and family. What would it look like to believe that God would answer our most daring prayers?
Well, I don’t know how it all started, but what I do know is that sixteen years ago someone at Hook Church in London recommended that their church start praying for a lost people group in Chad. This group (the Dadjo) are 99.99% Muslim and out of 60,000 people there is only one known believing family.
How is it that someone in an affluent nation takes their eyes off their circle of friends, their own worries, and their own children and looks across the world to a poorer group of people that hasn’t heard of Christ? How is it that someone in Hook Church was able to love people they had never met? How did the needs of this lost people take precedent at a church prayer meeting?
The believer who put this recommendation on the table could see the Lord answer prayers for those who were in their immediate circle of influence. They could see the Lord heal their aunt of cancer, if he chose to do so. They could see their son come to Christ. They could see their spouse finally find a job after months of unemployment. Did this individual not know that they would not be able to see the Lord’s work among a lost people in the middle of Africa for years, if ever?
Whoever that person was, they must have had the faith of (at least) the size of a mustard seed. And as the years continued on, the believers in Hook Church persevered in their prayers and demonstrated that they believed in a God who does the impossible.
Fourteen years after they first considered the plight of the Dadjo, a group of World Team Cameroon missionaries desiring to reach out even further, began to pray and do research. Then, in December 2017, one of these missionaries got on a plane to explore opportunities in Chad. They found that in the Guera region, 24 out of 27 people groups were unreached. In the three of the reached groups, the local church has a burden to reach out to their neighbors, and specifically to a difficult group called the Dadjo. World Team began to dialogue with this Chadian church about the possibility of joining them in their efforts.
And today, it’s official. The prayers of Hook Church in London are being answered: the Dadjo will soon receive missionaries, both from surrounding people groups and from our agency, World Team.
However, the members of Hook Church were not praying that the Dadjo would make it on the map of a mission agency. No, they were praying that this people would hear the Gospel. As it turns out, there are still many mountains that need to be moved. To become a missionary in this region means learning three languages: French, Chadian Arabic, and the local language. It will mean that someone will need to kiss their family goodbye to come live in a difficult part of the world where poverty is real and the temperatures high.
And yet, our God is still the God of the impossible. He has sustained a church in London to pray for this people for sixteen years, and he is certainly able to sustain a team of missionaries in sweltering heat and in frustration as they learn multiple languages.
If you or someone you know would like to know more about the Dadjo people, please email me and I will get you in touch with those leading this new initiative. And please dare to pray like the people of Hook Church. Pray for the impossible, pray for the unfathomable, pray for the nations.
