A 15-year-old girl gets a boil on her head. Her family does what they can to help her, but she continues to get worse. Finally, in desperation they take her to the hospital, where, tragically, she dies. The family is left with many questions. Why did she die? Why did she get sick in the first place? Was it caused by foul play or neglect?

These questions are universal and trans-cultural. Everyone wants to know what causes sickness, especially sicknesses leading to death. If you ask a Gogodala what happened in this case, you’ll likely get an answer like this: “Someone cast magic on her, that’s why she died.” But if you asked someone from a developed part of the world, they would probably say she didn’t get help for her boil in time, and the infection killed her. If there can be such differences of opinion between cultures on simple medical issues, how much more opportunity is there for confusion when people of different cultural backgrounds discuss spiritual issues?

While on furlough, we spent many hours developing our discipleship strategy for the next couple of years. We reviewed basic Bible principles of discipleship then took a careful look at critical issues and relationships within Gogodala culture that these principles needed to be applied to. A few of the major pieces of our strategy include: 1) communication of biblical concepts in a way that is easy for Gogodala to understand; 2) leadership development; and 3) application of Christ’s teaching to every aspect of Gogodala life, including how to appropriately relate to sickness and death.

Please pray for us as we launch into this next phase of ministry.

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