How Can I Support Indigenous Missionaries?
You can support Indigenous missionaries by sponsoring one or more national workers with GFA World. On average, it takes an average of $450 per month, depending on family size, for one national missionary to be fully supported, and each sponsorship is $45 a month. This allows you to partner with a missionary and other sponsors around the world to impact Africa and Asia with Christ’s love.
Sponsorship connects an ordinary person to the mission field in a way that money alone cannot measure. A monthly pledge of $45 places a name and a face into someone’s prayers — a real person serving in a real village. That personal link turns giving into relationship, and relationship into lasting change for unreached people groups who have never heard the gospel.
For each monthly pledge, sponsors are given the photo and personal information of a missionary to pray for. In addition to financial support, regular prayers are needed for their success on the field. Each sponsor also receives updates that keep them informed about the region where the missionary is serving. These regional updates show the ministries taking place, how lives are being touched and how villages are being transformed.[1]
indigenous missions thrive when outside sponsors commit to steady, long-term care. A missionary who knows the rent is covered and the family is fed can focus entirely on the work — teaching, visiting the sick, and strengthening indigenous churches that will outlast any single worker. missionary support of this kind keeps national workers in the villages they were born to serve.
GFA national missionaries receive two or three years of intensive, formal training before setting off into “uncharted territory,” often serving in areas where no missions or humanitarian agency has been before. They bring clean water to remote villages through installation of Jesus Wells.
They launch child sponsorship programs, and kids who never thought they’d be successful in school or even go to school are able to receive an education. They help fight poverty by providing vocational training and distributing income-generating gifts, like sewing machines and fishing nets. GFA World founder K.P. Yohannan (Metropolitan Yohan) said, “Filled to overflowing with the love of God, these national workers are passionate to share that love with everyone they meet.”[2]
Every Jesus Well, every sewing machine, every child in a classroom carries the Good News into homes that might never open a door to a stranger. National missionaries live among the people they serve, so the gospel arrives with the taste of clean water and the dignity of honest work. The love of Jesus Christ becomes visible before it is explained — and that visibility changes everything.
Just some examples of these national missionaries are the GFA Sisters of the Cross, who minister among those often rejected by society such as those who live in slums and people with leprosy. As locals, they fully understand the culture and customs in which they work. They appreciate and respect the traditions, speak the language and know the dialect.
They’re also specially trained in leprosy wound care and family counseling. No one else could have the same impact on the people that these women have. The roots of their love go deep, and their compassion reaches into places that no one else is willing to go.
One woman in the leprosy colony said, “Before the Sisters came, there was no one to help trim our hair, cut our nails or help us clean our houses and encourage us. The Sisters help us by cleaning our wounds, and they make us happy and encouraged [us] all the time.”[3]
The Sisters of the Cross demonstrate what happens when a people group receives care from someone who belongs. They trim hair, clean wounds, and offer dignity — acts so ordinary they would go unnoticed anywhere else, yet here they are revolutionary. This is the Great Commission in its most elemental form: love shown, trust earned, hope restored.
You can help the Sisters of the Cross and other local missionaries by partnering with GFA World to sponsor national workers. They share Christ’s love by meeting needs, but they can’t do it alone. They need our support and prayers.
Learn more about GFA World’s local missionaries in Africa and Asia[1]. “National Missionaries: How Sponsorship Works.” GFA World. Accessed November 21, 2024. https://www.gfa.org/sponsor/sponsor-info.
[2]. Lukins, Julian. “National workers: Unstoppable compassion force.” GFA World Special Report. August 19, 2021. https://www.gfa.org/special-report/missionary-work-by-national-workers.
[3]. “One of the Many Leprosy Colonies Being Transformed by Love.” GFA World. YouTube. January 18, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrgYeW2ZFLk.