“No one has the right to hear the gospel twice, while there remains someone who has not heard it once.” For years, this quote from Oswald Smith has pricked my conscience. I am surrounded by the abundance of the gospel in my life. My grandfather was a pastor, many of my family are involved church-goers, and every year I can hear the gospel preached 52 different ways. Yet, in this age of technology, satellites and the Internet, about 3 billion people have never heard the gospel or even the name of Jesus once. It’s not fair.

As a Sinim myself, I feel like being a missionary to the Sinim is in my blood. In the middle of my grandfather’s pastoral career, war threatened the lives of all Sinim Adventists in the country. He almost stayed in spite of the danger, but his superiors forced him to take his family and escape to America. I often wonder if the burden I feel to be a missionary is the result of my grandfather’s prayers that someone from his line would go back to finish the work he couldn’t. I used to half-joke with coworkers that one day I would go to the Sinim people and start a vegan health restaurant to share the gospel. The Sinim people’s war-torn past has left them under a regime antagonistic to evangelism, but the health message can open doors otherwise closed to the gospel.

Three years ago, God called me to quit a job I loved with Bibleinfo.com to become a short-term AFM missionary to the Tai-Kadai. Though I had wanted to go to the Sinim, no such project existed yet. However, I fell in love with the Tai-Kadai people and found happiness in a foreign land far beyond what I knew in my stable job with benefits back home. Imagine my surprise when, during my time with the Tai-Kadai, AFM shared with me that the worldwide church wanted to start a project for the Sinim and invited me to consider it. The surprise became conviction when I discovered that the church wanted to start a vegan restaurant!
Although my time with the Tai-Kadai was short, it gave me new eyes for the needs of the unreached. Now back in the States, it feels strange to sit in a church of 5,000 members full of camera equipment and sound systems, being served by multiple pastors. My mind goes back to the familiar, dusty room so close to my heart where my Tai-Kadai friends worship with hand-me-down guitars, a keyboard with malfunctioning keys, and a truck that works 75 percent of the time to transport members to church. They don’t need fancy equipment, and they don’t even have a pastor; just the encouragement of their Christian brothers and sisters. Surely some of those 5,000 members sitting in the big church are able to go to the unreached, or are willing to support someone to go in their place?

The 93 million Sinim people need to know their Savior. God is opening doors, and not another day should go by without a witness among them. Will you prayerfully consider joining me in reaching the Sinim people?

[Note name correction: Angeline’s name was incorrectly spelled “Angela” in the May Adventist Frontiers magazine.]

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