Bingo cards

Trying to tell a single story to tell that captures life in South Asia is like trying to figure out which sip of water quenched your thirst. Which breath kept oxygen flowing. I can’t give you a story to tell the big picture. I can only give you an anecdote.

Take the “mystery man” anecdote as an example. One day, I was working at my table on my laptop. I heard a noise from my balcony door, and then without warning, a man walks in from the balcony, through my kitchen, and doesn’t so much as glance at me on his way to my front door. I momentarily lost words, but thankfully, found them again (and in the right language) before he left my apartment.

“What are you doing?” I asked with the right amount of incredulity and anger. Not as much anger as you might think, given the intrusion into my home.

He sheepishly smiled at me and said he was going back downstairs. Yes. Downstairs, because we live on the 18th floor of a 23-floor highrise. Can you see why I wasn’t immediately angry? Now it made sense why this mystery man was wearing a hard hat and a rope harness. He had been working on the outside of the building, and rather than rappelling down, he decided my apartment was his ideal exit point so he could use the much more convenient elevator.

You could live in this country for 20 years, and still, daily, find something that you’d never seen or imagined before. Like, who had “man rappels off roof to break into my 18th-floor apartment” on their bingo card? Anybody?

What else do I have on my Anecdote Bingo Card?

• Caught in an unexpected rainstorm while riding my scooter that fills my shoes with water before I get home
• Wild cow on road steals my bananas from my shopping bag because she was hungry
• Tuk-tuk driver serenades me with a love song as he takes me to my destination

Ask me about this country and I can only tell you little stories, tiny events, all these microscopic moments. Because I don’t have the scope to zoom out enough to tell you about everything at once. It’s too big.

And when I think about how will we ever accomplish what God asks us to do in this country, to tell the Good News to those who’ve never heard, I’m just as overwhelmed. It’s too big.

But that’s why we’re thinking differently here. Amongst all these people, these stories, these anecdotes, we’re focusing on the pockets of hope, the stories of life, the organizations that are going where we cannot. I might have my own personal anecdotes, but so does God. This is the God Story Bingo Card:

• Man faithfully builds ministry for 40 years in an area known as the Graveyard of Missions, a full decade before seeing anyone come to Christ
• Believers create treehouses so they can get the cell signal they need to receive online Bible training
• Woman prays to picture of Jesus on hospital wall to spare the life of her husband, only to have Jesus, out of all the other gods to whom she prayed, answer her in seconds with a miracle

As we fill in the God Story Bingo Card with these holy anecdotes—we can see a bigger picture.

God is already at work here. And the scope is not too big for Him. And what’s more, He has a place for us in His plan. We can come alongside those organizations to support and resource the work being done here.

South Asia is diverse. It’s huge. It’s incomprehensible. And I will seemingly never run out of stories to tell about living here. Thankfully, God has more stories for us to tell too.

It’s our job now to find them.

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This story is from an international worker in South Asia. You can support their work by giving to the Global Advance Fund or by giving to The Jaffray Offering to help raise up South Asian church planters.