Source: International Mission Board, November 10, 2022
[A] mission team from Immanuel Baptist Church [in] Magnolia, Arkansas, expected things in Brooklyn, New York, to be different from their small southern Arkansas town. Nothing, however, prepared them for culture shock once they surfaced from the subway into this Brighton Beach community known as “Little Odessa” — the U.S. hub for Central Asian immigrants. It was as if they had just entered another country.
Ben Coulter breathed in the unfamiliar spices from food stalls and broke out in a wide grin. The pastor watched the mission team made up of college students and families from his church mingle along the boardwalk and beach. Their goal was to meet people from Uzbekistan and provide gospel access that knows no geographic or social boundary. This is diaspora missions at its core.
“What started out as reaching an Uzbek student in our backyard, turned into a burden for an entire nation,” Coulter explained.
See the full story with pictures. It’s worth reading.
Speaking of diaspora, the percentage of people in Canada who are immigrants has reached a new record high (Reuters).