In this issue of Adventist Frontiers, we are highlighting an elite group of expert missionaries who specialize in AFM’s core method of outreach—friendship evangelism. Who are these awesome evangelists? They’re our student missionaries!

Decades of cross-cultural mission work have taught us that before unreached people are willing to open their hearts to God’s love, they must first experience ours. Despite their youth and lack of experience, this is what makes our student missionaries such a powerful force: they are highly skilled in the first rule of effective Gospel outreach—befriend and love. God does the rest.

As you read our SMs’ stories, you’ll notice that loving can take many forms. It can be sudden and spontaneous, like Emily finding herself along a sun-baked African road, reading her Bible to a swarm of eager children (p. 38). It can shine through physical care, like Keirsta hiking down a Philippine mountainside, keeping a bleeding man alive on his way to the hospital (p. 18). As with Jessica and her friend Kratip, love can bloom slowly over many months, despite mistakes along the way (p. 14). Other SMs strike up casual friendships, only to find that God has pre-arranged everything, and the Holy Spirit has already been working on hearts for years (p. 10).

Though every SM’s story is different, they all share two things in common: Amazement at God’s mighty power working through them, and joy at being vessels of His love and salvation for unreached people.

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