Hunters of Affliction (The Life of Nomads)

In this episode we meet Ron, who spent decades with his family living in South Asia with nomadic peoples - shepherds and goatherders who spend the winters on the plains and the summers up in the mountains. We'll hear about the many dangers that they face and the many tragedies they endure.

We also learn about how the nomadic life and mindset can teach us much about the various cultures and historical contexts of the Bible. In what sense are we, as the people of God, also nomadic? What is significant about the theme of 'tabernacle' throughout the Scriptures?

Ron mentions the help that one of John Piper's books was to him in his time of grief. You can download The Misery of Job & The Mercy of God for free here. 

To learn more about nomads or working with nomads, do check out The Nomadic Peoples Network here. For the courses that Ron mentions in the episode, visit this site. And for Ron's podcast, Let Nomads Move You, visit your normal podcast platform or click this link.

Transcript

Ron: 0:02

And he says Josiah, your son. There's no more. I brushed past him and rushed into the main room and everybody was sitting there with tears still streaming from their eyes, and the lifeless body of our son, five months old to the day. My wife had tried, she had pleaded with God for a miracle. I began pleading with God, hear all these wonderful stories about missionaries out there and God raises somebody from the dead. Okay, I believe you, God. Now's your chance.

Matt: 0:38

Hi guys. Welcome back to Raw Mission, the podcast where we hear the stories of ordinary men and women who've experienced the goodness of God and who've responded to his invitation to take the good news to the least reached. I am Matt, your host, and today I have Ron with us. Ron and his family lived for decades in the mountains of South Asia where they worked amongst pastoral nomadic shepherds. He'll be talking about the hardships and struggles of nomadic life in that region and how his own family entered into their culture and their experiences for the sake of the gospel. And just a heads up, this episode does include two tragic stories of bereavement, specifically in both cases, the loss of a child.

Ron: 1:20

Hi Ron. It's so good to have you on the show. Welcome. Thanks Matt. Really glad to be with you. I've been looking forward to this for a while.

Matt: 1:27

Good. This is gonna be quite unusual. We're gonna be hearing about nomads today and you are one of the guys who thinks a lot about this and who's got a lot of experiences over the years with different nomadic peoples. So I'm really looking forward to hearing some of your wisdom and that you've gleaned from others as Well, that you can bring to us today. Ron, take us back to just your childhood. Where did you grow up? And tell us about your faith story and how you got involved with missions.

Ron: 1:52

I was born and raised in northern California red, red Forest hill area in small county called Mendocino. everybody in my extended family would've said, yeah, we're Christian. My mother's heritage goes back through Kentucky. She was born and started her life in a rural area in central Kentucky. And by the time she was starting school, she was in California for a variety of reasons, and that's where eventually she met my dad. Who was in the Air Force and we bounced around a little bit for the first several years of life. Then there was, unfortunately divorce and remarriage. And so we moved around. I could say mobility is already a part of my life from pretty early on. But then somewhere along the way, my grandmother gave me a Bible for Christmas one year, and for a lot of different reasons, that was a special gift for me. A few days later, I wanted to start reading it. The first book of the Bible that I ever read by myself was First Corinthians, and I got to that love chapter and I thought, wow. This is the way Christians are supposed to be. I need to focus in on this. So that was what you could call my first conversion. There were a series of other things that God used in the process of my life, but at some point I realized I really need to stay with this commitment to follow this book, to read it for all it's worth, and to find ways to put it into practice, not just in my own life, but in the extended family in my community. And when I was in high school, our church got together and we went on this missionary trip and so as a teenager I preached my first sermon through an interpreter and this organization used to have a mission conference where you learn about mission in the morning hours, and then you go out and do it in the afternoon and evening hours and yeah, during the morning hours listening to the missionary speaker, that would be somebody from some other part of the world and that person would talk about. The place where they were bringing the good news and maybe Bible translation or whatever. And usually those were missionaries working in kind of pioneering locations where there had not been any church or disciples of Jesus or scripture in their language. So right from my first trip there, I said, okay, God, we've got many bibles in my house. We've got a church on just about every block in my town. That's an overstatement But we had a lot of churches in my hometown, lots of Bibles, lots of different translations. And I thought, wow, here's these missionaries talking about places where there's no verse in any language that the local people can understand. Not even a verse, that was back in 1979. And people weren't really talking about unreached unengaged at that time, but these people were talking about going in to a tribe somewhere where there was nothing nothing about Jesus

Matt: 4:55

and so in your teenage years that was a great opportunity to be exposed to some of this thinking, wow, there's a huge world out there. There's a lack of the gospel in many of these societies, and that, just started to stir something in, you did it. How did it progress from there?

Ron: 5:09

well on that trip. I committed. I said, Jesus, I know what you want me to do. I was already interested in cultures and languages and now I thought, okay, this is the way you've wired me. I'm gonna spend the rest of my life bringing the good news of Jesus to some place where it doesn't exist. of course, as a teenager, I was interested in girls but I realized I can't get myself sidetracked by a girl that doesn't already have this kind of goal. So I set my heart on a prayer Okay, Jesus. I can see where you're taking me and I can see the processes you're bringing in and through my life. I don't want to be in a hurry, but if you want me to be married, then I pray that you'll be doing the same kind of thing in her, and that when you're ready and you think we're ready, that we'll meet at the right time. I think I was about 17 when that happened. And then as I began praying that prayer it became obvious I needed to break up with the current girlfriend. That was difficult to put it mildly. and then, not express interest in. Others who didn't seem to be going in the same direction. And then I knew I needed to go to Bible college. to get ready for Bible translation. I needed to learn some Greek and Hebrew and learn how to do deep exegesis in the scriptures. But I also knew I didn't have any money to afford college. Our family wasn't a very wealthy family and there wasn't gonna be a chance for my mom to be able to pay for college and at the time, the most obvious way to do that outta high school was to join the military. So just trying to think, okay what branch of the military could I join that would give me a decent income and college money, 'cause military branches would in the states would provide some education fund, and would give me the right kind of resiliency, survival skills that I would need in a tough environment. so I joined the Marines,

Matt: 7:02

we go back, what? I don't know, 10, 15, 20 years perhaps when we first met in South Asia, but yeah, I

Ron: 7:09

yeah,

Matt: 7:09

Know you had that military Marines background. That's interesting.

Ron: 7:11

Yeah, had to deal with some extremely difficult situations. Generally, I was the only strong follower of Jesus in my military unit, as you can imagine. The kinds of chiding that I would get. How to deal with people who don't like me because of my religion how to be able to defend my faith, to not just say what I believed, but I could give an answer for why I believed it. And that turned out to be very good training,

Matt: 7:39

when did nomads actually come onto your radar Tell us more about that. How the story arc went.

Ron: 7:44

I met a girl on one of those Mexico outreach trips and can I confess Physically she was distracting to me, but more so than that is that I was able to see immediately her deep character, her deep love for Jesus, her deep love for other people. Her capacity and love for working within the context of a team. And I learned from her that she had a heart for Bible translation in a place where it had never been done before. And I'm like, okay, is this the one stop Any pen pals with anybody else? I'm pretty sure this is the one. Jesus. And by the end of the week she also recognized we needed to have a quick conversation. And we remained in contact. Jesus still had a lot of work to do in us, I would say specifically, especially in me. It was for very long years before we finally actually got married. But from the moment I first saw her until today I never looked back. I knew God had done exactly what my prayer had been. At some point along the way we realized we would probably get married. So we decided together several important choices, including where I should go to Bible college. We had both heard about and grown to admire the kind of training that comes outta Prairie Bible College in Canada. So I started there, did a about a year and a half as a single student. And then we got married and then we went back to Bible college together, did another couple years together. She also took some courses. She's a much better student than I am she usually did better in the courses Than I did. And then we had, our first child there. And then we came down back to, I did a pastoral internship in Northern California Did another pastoral internship after graduation in the Los Angeles area Saving money again to go on for the master's degree in linguistics and exegesis at the SIL school in Dallas. From this.

Matt: 9:46

would be Bible translation, correct.

Ron: 9:49

Exactly. Yeah. we were coming towards the latter part of our Bible translation studies we thought okay, Lord maybe it's time that you let us know where you want us to go. So we wrote to 15 different organizations. We said, this is who we are. This is how we feel like God has wired us. How could we fit into your organization to do Bible translation and church planting? Somewhere in a place where it's never been done before we got a variety of responses from the organizations And nothing really clicked. the last organization that wrote to us they gave us a brochure. And the brochure had a picture of this South Asian shepherd boy, and he was holding a lamb and the caption said, Some people see a Muslim Shepherd boy. We see the future leader of the Shepherd Church. We were sold. on the border of that in Penn. One of the team members of that team in formation said in our organization, we need six members on a team. Right now we are four, two couples and this shepherd people group of well over 2 million has no verse of scripture and no church and no known disciples of Jesus. We would love to have some Bible translation oriented people come and join our team. And obviously that was like another Thunderbolt to us. And so we wrote back and said, sign us up. So we joined that team. I went that same summer with the team that was in formation and a bunch of other people who were like me scouting things out. And we did six weeks in that mountain zone. And we met some of the nomads themselves and saw how they lived found out about a regional language school not too far away. And during that six weeks we did some trekking up in the higher mountains and just opened doors. People were really open. We met a guy an elder kind of saintly person of the community during that trip. like a priest, king of all the nomads and their neighbors there. he asked each of us different questions and he gets to me and he says so Mr. Ron, what do you wanna do? And I said I'm studying right now linguistics researching how to, develop literacy and language program and that kind of stuff, anthropology. And he says, what do you wanna do with all that? I said I'd like to go someplace where people are not very well educated and maybe they don't have an education program in their language. I'd like to do mother tongue education and linguistic research and he says you'll never find, a more backwards tribe than ours. We need you to come and study our language and develop education resources for our children so that they can become literate. Because right now the literacy rate is less than 2%.

Matt: 12:32

Did you see a lot of poverty around up in those mountains?

Ron: 12:37

It is not so much poverty. Nomads typically are not necessarily impoverished. They don't have a lot of money in the bank. What they'll do is make a motion towards the forest and say, our bank is out there in the forest. our sheep, our goats, our buffalo, our camels, whatever. So nomads keep their money not in the bank, but in the bush.

Matt: 12:54

Yes. And,

Ron: 12:54

And uh,

Matt: 12:55

and they've got the trees there and the

Ron: 12:57

yeah, they, so have they have tremendous resources and tremendous indigenous knowledge. I had this conversation with the director of the aggro forest department and at the end he said, I've got a PhD in agro forest ology. But what you're telling me about now is what my illiterate mother taught me when I was a little boy, and it was not in any layer of my education.

Matt: 13:27

did you go back to the states, prepare your family and then move out there long term? And what did that look like and what were the challenges of trying to work people?

Ron: 13:36

That first trip was in 93. we moved to the region in 1994. our third child, our son was born and he was about three months old when we landed. And that priest, king guy, he had said, when you come, you can come and stay with me and get your start there. And I said sir, thank you very much. And, yeah, we moved in, we lived there for two months, in the winter time when all the nomads come down he said My place is gonna be far too crowded. So you're not gonna be comfortable here. I've made arrangements for you to rent from my son-in-law and we ended up living with them for about eight more months.

Matt: 14:13

Were you digging into language and culture? Was this the first time you really got to know what nomads

Ron: 14:20

Yeah, we began learning where's your summer home and where's your winter home? Some of them extremely remote in both directions. In most cases, their winter home is close to other language communities, other ethnic communities of various religions. Yeah, we learned a lot of things about nomadic mindset, the hard way there's not a lot written about nomads, missiologically speaking I'll have to go back and look and see if there's even one published article in any missiological magazine or journal before 1993. I don't think there was. The Nomadic People's Network didn't start until after that I didn't find out about the network until quite a few years later, five, eight years later I think it was, and went to my first Nomadic People's Network gathering.

Matt: 15:07

you guys have a working definition of what a nomad is. Can you help us with that?

Ron: 15:11

yeah, the first point was, no, they're not individualistic, they're collectivistic. So it starts with an N. Then there's an O organized in some kind of internal structure. Clan tribe. Or some other social structure that's part of their DNA mobility for the community, not just for the individual, Even if it doesn't seem like they're using it, they still think about mobility as a community resource, The next key word was autonomy. Autonomy for their group, We don't want outsiders telling us what to do. We've got this figured out over eons of time. Distinct. We are distinct different from others based on this mobility, community resource, heritage.

Matt: 15:59

Great. so at this point now you're living in South Asia, got various children. Are you starting at this point to go with the nomads up into the hills, into the mountains during the summers and be more sedentary in the towns during the winter?

Ron: 16:15

Exactly. Yeah. when I was a kid, my dear Sweet Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Sutton would do her level best to tell me everything about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and Jesus. Now I feel like I'm walking with those guys through the mountains and it turns out quite a few of them have similar names. And so I said I feel like I'm walking through the pages of both the old and New Testament. the more I learned about the Nomad way of thinking, the more I realized. I should have already known this. I How come nobody told me? This is on every page of scripture from Genesis to the very end of Revelation. I don't know if you've realized this, Matt, but even in the book of Revelation, when we are doing the translation of Revelation, we kept coming up with Greek word for tent and tent dwelling. We don't have a very good word for dwelling in a tent. It takes a whole phrase to say that in English, but in Greek, it's one word. And it gets translated with a whole bunch of different words in English booth, sometimes even tent tabernacle. Tabernacle's, just a Latin word for tent. And, I looked at the Greek translation of the Old Testament. Those words show up all the place. What's the Hebrew words for those? Oh, I began looking at those and I realized a lot of the words in our English Bible translation don't bring out this idea of a temporary dwelling place, That idea of being a pilgrim not being of this world. This world is not my home. I'm just passing through. Used to sing about that. Now, walking with these nomads across the mountains and valleys, I was walking through the pages of scripture and with my family sometimes because the world is full of political strife and turmoil and security reasons can't take my family everywhere. And even a lot of nomad women actually don't like the long hike So they don't mind actually taking the journey in a vehicle. So I put my wife and the majority of our younger kids in the car and the older kids we would walk together with the clan and spend days at a time out there with them. For various reasons. I was never able to actually walk the entire annual cycle with them. But I've walked close to half of the upward cycle and with another clan, close to half of the downward cycle on a different caravan route.

Matt: 18:33

How many months

Ron: 18:34

would.

Matt: 18:34

would it take them to do the full cycle up or down?

Ron: 18:37

most commonly it's a two month trek up and a two month trek coming

Matt: 18:42

And from my memory, it would take parts just to lose the snow anyway, wouldn't it? So you start begins lower down, and as you get further up over the weeks and weeks, more is becoming available for your cattle

Ron: 18:58

And there's a variety of ridges, each one getting higher than the last one, and then down into the deep ravines torrential rivers. And sometimes they'd have to build their own log bridge to get across But They know where they can drop a couple of trees And the whole clan, works together. Everybody's involved. One of the things that I really loved about my time with nomads is what I learned about community involvement. Everybody has a job and everybody does their job. Survival is all about being a member of the community. People can make individual decisions about certain things, but even when they do that as a nomad, they think of their position in the whole community. And how does what I decide impact my family, my extended family? a Somali friend of mine told me that the weirdest question he's ever been asked in his life, an English speaking person said, Hey, brother, do you have a family? And this brother, his brain just froze. It just seized up. He could not out what the point of that question was. and, he just couldn't answer the question. And later on somebody told him what the meaning behind the question was, do you have a wife and children? a lot of people in the states like the people have been married for quite a while and when they are expecting their first child, they say, oh, you're about to start a family. That doesn't make sense in the nomad world. So thinking on these points has revolutionized how I look at scripture So I was saying about Revelation. what's the point of ske? And au God is the subject of the sentence usually. And he says, I'm going to, tabernacle among my people. I'm gonna tent among my people. It seems to me, with God's response, even to David, when David says, I'm gonna build you a big palace, after David had built his own big palace, and by the way, the word for temple and the word for palace are oftentimes the same Hebrew word God says, did I ever ask you for a palace? All the years wandering in the desert and all the years you guys have been settled here and in the promised land did I ever ask you for a palace? And then he finally says, actually, you're not gonna be the one to build it. Your son who's gonna come after you is gonna build it. But God never seems to be interested in a building. He's interested in a community of people are,

Matt: 21:11

that that involves the arc of the covenant, God's presence with his people on the road mobile. It involves pillar of fire and the cloud, doesn't it? And sort of in the desert meeting with God and countering God like Jacob and just constant pilgrimage that you were mentioning earlier. I think that's so important. And this is what I'm loving about the nomad thinking let alone of course, coming forwards to John's gospel, the word became flesh and tabernacle amongst us made his tent made his dwelling with us. but I hadn't thought so much about Revelation taking it all the way down to the end. I will be with my people again.

Ron: 21:48

Yeah, and we don't get much in Revelation that talks about one specific location or one big temple. The temple of God seems to be a tent, and that's one of the things I don't really appreciate about the word tabernacle. People have named their big, church building, either church of something or such and such tabernacle. I think those are fine names, but at the end of the day, we have to realize that you and I, we are the church and God wants to tint among us. a very experienced worker among Fellini nomads from 40 years back asked this penetrating question, Who were Priscilla Okla and Paul making tents for as far away as Rome. The Jewish diaspora were still living in tents. It's not just for a shop, of course they would have, tents for shops, tents for military, and other purposes. But They used tents for home.

Matt: 22:48

Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. It's not just a description of Jesus' life with his disciples on the road looking for lost sheep. Guys, you're on a pilgrimage. We are on a journey together, isn't it? These things are so key to our, and not just settling and finding our stability and security in the world's or wealth around us.

Ron: 23:09

Yeah. Oh man. there's been number of moments where I get emotional and tears just flow naturally for me. And one of these big events, the first showing of the Jesus film in the shepherd language. And it was the final draft that had been sent to us by the Jesus Film Project people. And so we invited some of our Shepherd friends to come and watch this film with us. This was the first time any of us had watched it from start to finish. In this language. almost everybody in the room had never seen it in any language. And so we sit there and we're watching it on our reasonably decent sized screen tv. And at the end, one of the shepherd men, said, Jesus is just like one of us. Jesus and his disciples were just like us. And I'm like yeah, I've been thinking that, but how did you come to that opinion? And he said, the food that they ate looked like the kind of food we eat, the kind of clothes they wear looks like the kind of clothes we wear, they're constantly on the move. They're spending times out under the open stars under the open sun, walking through fields. The whole film is Jesus on the move with his disciples and with so many other people. And we realize, wow, that's the New Testament story. Jesus is moving almost every page you turn,

Matt: 24:23

It's he uses the metaphor of the Good Shepherd, which is of course strewn throughout the whole of scripture, which I didn't realize until recently reading Kenneth Bailey a bit deeper the Shepherd Motif throughout scripture, but it's there, isn't it, And he adopts that as the Good Shepherd. Yeah.

Ron: 24:39

Kenneth Bailey is one of my favorite authors mainly because one of our friends gave me a copy of that book for my birthday, Kenneth Bailey, the Good Shepherd.

Matt: 24:47

Yeah.

Ron: 24:47

I had read the author Philip something or other. Shepherd looks at the 23rd Psalm. That's a good book, but that's like preschool in comparison to Kenneth Bailey's book, the Good Shepherd.

Matt: 25:44

Ron, I do want to ask about some of the toughest moments of your life in the mountains of South Asia. Could you share just, one or two of the most difficult times for your family?

Ron: 25:56

I asked an elder grandfather, great-grandfather, age shepherd man. Give me a story about your life. I said, I wanna learn your, people, your language, your culture. Give me a story that encapsulates your life. And he says, oh, you want to learn about our life, our language, our community? Our life is affliction. We are the hunters of affliction. So he gave me a series of examples of that. Obviously they're living under the, sun. It was. Late spring when I was talking with them. So it was already getting quite hot and they were antsy and edgy to get on the move, get up into the high elevation. My wife often says that the shepherds who migrate up into the high mountains, they're the only smart people in the region. It can be blazing hot the lowlands, and you can a snowball when you reach the Highlands. So we wore sweaters more often in the summer than we did in the winter. besides the weather, there's the political situation. There's one ethnic group or one nation rising up against another nation people have their reasons for not being able to trust this group or that group. With a sense of hopelessness. Sometimes they violence. these nomads, all they want to do is from point A to point B. We want all of your family to survive. You want all or as much as possible of your animals to survive. And, make these log bridges that I mentioned across the river, and not everybody makes it. People slip sheep, goats slip and raging torrent. Cold water survival is difficult. And then you get to these militants that just take something that you have. take your goat, take your cow, have a feast. And they want more people on their side. So they'll take your children, they'll take your brother, your cousin, they'll take you. hard up relationship with women, So they'll steal a wife. Then course the military police or whatever other security from the government perspective trying to keep the peace they're watching. With long distance equipment, they can watch, they can listen. And so they see, oh, camp this caravan has had contact with that group, So they want to go find out why. So they take somebody and they take you in for questioning. Something you could call non-verbal questioning. Not gonna get into the details, but you can imagine what happens And they have their ways of making people talk if you don't actually have to talk about. So you lose people on the way to a variety of factors. The one year that we were crossing one ridge with them a freak snow and ice storm came in And killed over a thousand animals, even including horses, big animals. and four men also died that storm, just over one night. We practically had the tent we were sleeping in, ripped off of its stakes. the grandmother of the family we were staying with, I woke up into a thumping sound right by my head and she had her hand on the center post of the tent and was keeping it from landing on my head, or sorry, that was the grandfather was there keeping it from landing on my head. The grandmother as thin and sprightly as she was on the front pole holding onto trying to prevent it from flying away. And if the wind had taken the tent, it would've taken her with it.

Matt: 29:11

sorry, they were doing that to protect you.

Ron: 29:13

they were doing it to protect everybody in the tent, which included their grandkids. so not just for me and my son and a British guest we had at that point actually. but yeah, we somehow managed to get some sleep, but then we woke up to the reality that so many had died at the higher and we were thanking for our preservation. Anyway, just to say that's the normal affliction the people live with. And another Is when people assemble together at the beginning of the migration, And the buses a lot of times are over full And one of those buses carrying more than 40 people plunged into the deep gorge, killing on the bus.

Matt: 29:49

Yeah, I've seen many of those at the bottom of mountain passes where I was,

Ron: 29:54

We kept hearing over the days and weeks after that story hit the news. person after person, been on that bus. They had their relative on that bus. And our heart was ripping, listening to all these stories we had migrated up to a point on another ridge with our family that year. And this is early also in our years. We found a kind of a touristy sort of area. not very many tourists go there, but some national tourists would go there and we went there and we got permission from all the different powers that be to take up residents in a hotel there. then we went out and started mingling with the nomads as they were coming up. And at that time we had six kids that had given us a total of four girls and two boys. And our youngest had been born November 27th. And, then we got this permission to go up there in April. I was having the time of my life as an anthropologist, linguist. just imagine. I was doing the data collection thing and writing notes and interviewing people. My language was sparse, but enjoying meeting people. and I met this guy And he had this sad look in his eyes. and I had my daughter in my arms. She's about five years old at the time. And he says in his language, how old is your daughter? And I said she's about five. And he says, she looks a lot like my daughter. She was about five. She was with her grandmother, my mother on that bus. I think he probably could see the moisture in my eyes. I gave a hug to my daughter and I said, yeah, affliction. God is watching. And he's with us. is with us. Even in the midst of affliction. Went down to the hotel, and talked with my wife. And we said, how can we understand these people? How can we really enter in to the life of these people? We don't know the depth of the afflictions that they face. We prayed,. God help us to understand their affliction, to find ways to identify with them. So on the next day I had to go do some more paperwork and my wife and kids were gonna do a little stroll along with some of these shepherds as they were coming through. And they did and walked for a few hours and then they had to walk back, get to the road and get to the hotel. Then the next day I was gonna have my turn to spend the whole day hanging out with the shepherds. And the family was tired and they just wanted to get through their homeschool program. we bring our education on the move with us. And so my wife and the kids, they did their homeschool. Those were old enough for school, did their school. And I played with our youngest. He was five months old and bounced him on my knee. Perfectly healthy, looked bright, healthy The whole family, just this idyllic situation. here doing the thing that we had been preparing for so long. And said goodbye to everybody. then I was out having a good time with these people they talked about some of their heritage and about eagles and falcons and falconry Then they moved on and I met this other group, completely different tribe, different religion, and I interviewed them, thought about going with them to their village, but then figured, no, it's getting late. I better get back. Kept having this gnawing feeling like I need to get back. And finally I, said, okay, yeah, Lord, I'll go back. I went back down it still fairly early in the afternoon and we had another shepherdess man helping us, living with us, working with us and helping us with language and culture and so many other things. And he met me at the stairs up to the hotel room area and he had this grievous look on his face, what's going on? And he says Josiah, your son. There's no more. I said, what are you talking about? I brushed past him and rushed into the our main room and everybody was sitting there with tears still streaming from their eyes, anguished looks on their faces, confusion. And the lifeless body of our son, five months old to the day. Do I do mouth to mouth resuscitation? I had some training in that, but he's been like this for more than four hours. My wife had tried, she had pleaded with God for a miracle. I began pleading with God, hear all these wonderful stories about missionaries out there and God raises somebody from the dead. Okay, I believe you, God. Now's your chance. All these people will see what a wonderful and powerful God you are. And there's still a small voice of God said, no, they won't. They'll see you. They won't see me. They'll see another miracle worker. These countries are full of miracle workers. I'm still praying for a miracle. God, this is your chance. I want a miracle. God said, no, I have something better. It can be better than that. Have you ever argued with God? I still argue with him sometimes. He always wins. I find it's better that way. What do you do now? Our shepherd's friend was asking us that and I said, I don't know. do you guys do? He says, I'm too young to know all that stuff. I'm just a kid. He was about 19, 20. I had been to quite a few funerals already. So that's some idea of what they do, but I have not very much experienced with how we do funerals in America. In America, we just hire a company to do everything for us. The body's already at the hospital. The hospital takes it over to the morgue sends it over to the funeral home, and we just show up at a day that's predetermined between us and the schedule of the mortuary. I don't know what we do. I've been through the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation. There's not a lot of clear description or instruction about what to do. see actually quite a variety of different things that people end up doing. And I said don't your people do it like this? And he said yeah, I think I've seen something like that. Okay, let's go do that. I've seen a graveyard. At one time I was driving by there and I saw them burying some old guy can we bury him over there? The local people said, sure, we can do that. turns out there was a misunderstanding. I thought they were talking about one particular location where I had seen them burying somebody, but they had a different place in mind. I asked the hotel owner from a different ethnic group, and he said, everything we have is at your disposal. I just began telling everybody, and so many people wanted to come. Everybody loaded up in the bus. And we got to this place and I was caught off guard, different place. They began, digging And it was too rocky. So they had to choose a different spot. They dug down a little bit too. Rocky had to find another spot. Third time, fourth time, five times. And people began to say, seems like this must have been a really child in the eyes of God. Even the ground doesn't want to receive his body. I was thinking why didn't he raise him from the dead then? I later learned that when that happens, and it's an adult, the statement is this cantankerous old man, the ground doesn't wanna receive him, but when it's a child, it's precious in the eyes of God. We had different passages of scripture coming to mind and we read them. And I had that five-year-old daughter in my lap again, she had already begun learning to read and she was really good So as I'm reading First Thessalonians chapter four, 13 through 18 my daughter says, daddy, can I read it? I said, sure. Now, when I had begun reading already, the people crowding around, what is this guy reading? And one guy, I am pretty sure it was the bus driver. Who knew the shepherd language. He was back over here listening and watching. And people were asking him, what's he reading? And he said he's reading from the Holy Books. the Christian Holy Books. but then my daughter says daddy, can I read. So I said, sure, go ahead and read it. So she reads it and now these shepherds are like this girl who's only about five years old read English. That was amazing. And this shepherd's guy was what she was reading. Fortunately she was reading it nice and slow so he could follow along. And I was thinking he's doing a pretty good job and I'm learning some new words. And then after she finished, I asked for the regional language book to be brought. And it's written in a personal Arabic script. so I read it. That and my reading is still slow, but this same shepherd's man was translating it from that language, which is close the shepherd's language, still significantly different. he was demonstrating that it was significantly different by translating it extemporaneously right there on the spot the language of the majority of the people there. And an old shepherd man with about half of his teeth scraggly red beard and his turban, says, we are here with you. And I said, I am so glad that you all are here with us. We could not this by ourselves. There is nobody. From our people, from our tribe, our clan, nobody who speaks our language, nobody from our religion who is here with us today. And he says, we your family. I was actually shocked by that. He says, you have come here for us and we are your people and you're our people. He says, you're my son. That little girl is my granddaughter. You're wife is my daughter-in-law. Wow. my face just filled up with tears again and was so appreciative. So healing for my heart and for our hearts as a family that these people embraced us like that.

Matt: 40:05

Ron, thank you for revisiting that story. I know there's a cost to that. And yeah, very hard to know what to say. I know that, it's been many years of you guys wrestling and processing as best one can But yeah, it's just very powerful that those few verses even must have spoken to them so deeply. just, the very beginnings of life with that, people sharing the gospel with that people. But

Ron: 40:31

It was interesting, At the bottom of that passage, it says, comfort one another with these words. And when they heard that, that old Toothless man and several others began saying, wow, yes, these are very comforting words for all of us. So, We went back to the hotel and loaded up and, drove down couple hours away. There's a local The and I were, we knew each other pretty well and we're friends. And it was a Sunday actually. So we drove down there and eventually got to talk with them and, they grieved with us for some time and let us use their phone. And we called our different teammates and others from his phone to let the word out and everybody gathered around us in the Plains later on. And much later, several months went by. We had gone through some substantial healing trying to move on with life. we got an invitation to move into a different shepherd's village in a different part of the, state, a higher up and farther in and a big valley. And when we moved into that village. The people had already heard the story about the English person's child who had died and been buried in our cemetery. I should say that cemetery was chosen. They said, because that other one that you know about, only old guys get buried there. This cemetery is where we bury our children. So the 15 or 20 other graves that I saw in that cemetery, virtually unmarked graves all just children next to a settlement. A summer camp people for years afterwards, whenever we were, meeting new people. People would say, oh, are you related to that family whose child died up on that location and is buried among our children?

Matt: 42:19

yeah. Ron, that's very precious. I really appreciate you sharing that toughest of moments with us. And we were talking earlier about tabernacle, pitching a tent with us, God doing that with us ultimately in Jesus becoming the man of sorrows to walk with us in this life with all its hardships. And that's what mission is really, isn't it? It's us being called to do the same with people. We don't really know that well, but God loves them and we know God cares about them, and he wants to bring this eternal hope that we've come to know through Jesus to them. And we can, in a very small way, embody some of the gospel amongst them and that's exactly what you were doing in the suffering. John Piper talks about that a lot, doesn't he? Filling up the afflictions of Christ and living that out amongst the people there. I just think there's such power in that story because it's a gospel story. It's what God's heart is and that's coming across so beautifully in the life that you guys chose to live for 20 years, not just in that moment, but whatever it was, however long you guys lived out there. And it's such a precious moment. don't really wanna move on, but yeah. What's your reflection?

Ron: 43:30

no, I was just gonna say we, we had the privilege of, lunch with. Piper not too long after that. And he gave us a copy of his book on job, his poem that included a disc of him reading it. Powerful, also healing for us.

Matt: 43:46

Yeah.

Ron: 43:46

There were two other major events I'll just mention. One which was made exponentially harder because of the situation with our son when I was no longer allowed to come back to that country. So sometime later quite a few years had passed. I lost access without going into the detail, I wasn't able to go back. can't get a visa and that was traumatic for us as a family. after 20 years. To be stopped at that particular point of our life the things that we saw Jesus doing in that last six months, especially our last six months in 2014 to lose access to that and no longer be able to continue was highly traumatic. So then we shifted and felt jobless. I felt jobless. What in the world am I gonna do if I don't do what I've been doing? And if I can't do it on location, I couldn't imagine doing it remotely. And I put the word out to a number of people in our organization and we have two guys each with the name Jeff. In our organization, pretty common name. And they both independently wrote back to me and said, we think you should be the nomad catalyst, using different terms at the time, but we think you should be the nomad guy for our organization. We need somebody like you in that position.

Matt: 45:16

Is how many nomads are there around the world, and especially Muslim people groups.

Ron: 45:21

there are at least 400 nomad people, groups approximating roughly 400 million human beings. About 98% of those unreached

Matt: 45:38

And we're on nomads, especially people, groups that we focus on in the Muslim world they'll stretch from West Africa right across Africa, into the Middle East and beyond, up into Asia, central Asia, and right across the places we live.

Ron: 45:56

A lot of people say that Muslims are the least reached, right? If you're a nomad a Muslim, according to our data, which covers all religious groups, you're less likely to hear about Jesus than a sedentary Muslim. I had a guy from a particular large nomadic population complex country tell me, among my people, the only ones following Jesus the ones who live in the city who have pretty much And he thought of himself as a settled person. he was a third generation settled person.

Matt: 46:35

Ron, it's been so precious and I've really enjoyed having you on. So thank you for sharing your wisdom and for sharing your personal, very personal stories with us. It's been a blessing to me and I know to my listeners. So thanks so much for joining us today and yeah, God bless you and all that you're trying to do. I'll put a link to your podcast and various other resources in the show notes.

Ron: 46:56

Yeah, we've got a couple of online courses. One of 'em I'm just about to launch is called Let Nomads Move You. I would urge people before they launch out to go doing even short term trips, take this course, it will transform you, If you're working with Nomads long term, you can join the Nomadic Peoples Network. Only people who are working long term with nomads already on the field can join. If you're a nomad following Jesus, inviting others to follow Jesus, bring Jesus into your tribal community. You can join nomadic peoples.net. Write to me. go on the website use the contact form and send us a message and we'll get back with you right away. And do an interview and you can join the network. No cost we've got lots of resources about working with nomads on the website. So nomadic peoples.net.

Matt: 47:54

Great. there may be some opportunities for folks interested in short-term trips and placements to just get in touch with your local sending VAEs or with Ron himself and I'll put his details in the show notes as well. Great. Thank you so much brother for your time. God bless you in all that you're doing. Really appreciate everything.

Ron: 48:12

Thank you, Matt. I really appreciate just everything that you're doing, making nomads more visible.

Matt: 48:17

Great. Bye-bye then.

Ron: 48:19

Bye. Take care.

Speaker: 48:21

Thanks so much for joining us today, guys. Do get in touch if you want to share how God is speaking to you through the podcast, or if you want to partner with us in raising up more workers. You can email me personally, matt@frontiers.org.uk, and we'll finish with the passage of scripture that Ron Red out at the funeral of Siah, their five month old son. It's from one Thessalonians chapter four. Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind who have no hope for. We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord's word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not proceed. Those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command, With the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left, we be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore, encourage one another with these words. Have a great week and do join us next time to hear from more ordinary people serving our extraordinary God in some of the toughest parts of the world.