REACHING OUT TO INTERNATIONALS

I am from India, and came to America three years ago to work on my doctorate. When my wife and I arrived, we knew we needed to find a church, but we quickly realized that most churches in our town are not diverse at all. Once we settled on what has now become our church here, we spoke to our pastor about this. We know there are communities in our town of various ethnicities, where many of the people just recently came to America. Our pastor looked at us, and asked what we would like to do about it. This began our ministry to internationals in our community. Each week, we have local teachers come to our church to tutor new internationals in English. Every month, we host a dinner and invite all the internationals we know in the community. Then, we get contact information from them and visit them. Many have now decided to attend our church because of those dinners and visits. These internationals feel like our church is a part of their community. Since we have more internationals at our church, we host prayer events for the countries represented within our congregation. I didn’t intend on starting a new ministry. I’m a father or two little boys, a husband, a full-time doctoral student, and I have a job, so my time is very limited. However, I am so thankful for this ministry. We have found the community we were longing for, and we have seen many come to the Lord as a result. There are countless international people in America looking for community. I am sure with just a little bit of work, more could come to the Lord if we all worked together.