Tun gripped me in one of the biggest bear hugs I have ever had in my life. He simply would not let go.

Startled by his sudden burst of emotion I realized this was a divine juncture of history – a first time meeting that would likely impact eternity. I had never seen him before in my life, yet somehow we knew each other. In a Kingdom completely unfettered by time and space the Holy Spirit had for years been building an invisible friendship consummated on that day, with tears of Joy.

Seven years earlier at Wycliffe Canada’s Race to 2025 I had learned of Tun’s people, the K people. My team wore their name emblazed on the back of our race jerseys. We fought through blasting snow on high mountain peaks, climbed frozen waterfalls and helped raise thousands of dollars for bible translation.  The K people were virtually an unreached, Bibleless people group still firmly in the grip of Satan’s spiritual realm and steeped in the worship of demonic spirits. Only a handful of believers were known among them. Although few K people had heard about Jesus, the vast majority had absolutely no awareness of the Gospel or the claims of Jesus. The few believers faced great opposition from the authorities, spiritual leaders who believed the presence of Christians would bring a curse on the village. This tiny church existed in a land where it is illegal to be a Christian, and where the laws exacts severe punishment on anyone pledging allegiance to Jesus Christ.

On and off for seven years I had prayed for Tun and his people as unknown faces. Meanwhile, completely unbeknownst to me, the Spirit of God was on the move. Hundreds of K people were discovering the fulfillment of all human longing and desire. They were meeting Jesus. They were discovering the Way, the Truth and the Life. A neighbouring people group had received God’s Word in their own language and heeded the call of Jesus. These new believers realized this good news was not only for them, but for people everywhere and in time they found themselves obeying Jesus’ command to go and make disciples. They went to the K people.

In K land the hunger to know God burns strong. Churches and home fellowships have sprung up all over the region, but not without great opposition. Many new believers have been imprisoned or cast out of their families and villages. Many obstacles stand in the way of this fledgling new church. They live in extremely remote, isolated regions with no electricity or safe water supplies. They have no Bible in their language. There are no trained pastors or experienced leaders. Literacy rates hover between 3% and 25%. No leadership training or Sunday school materials have ever existed in their language. Third grade is the highest level of education most adults have ever had the chance to achieve. The K believers cried out to their newfound Father, “Help!”

About the same time I was busy ice-axing my way up frozen waterfalls in Canada and learning about the K people, the Spirit of God was already busy answering their cry before it was ever uttered! In another place quite far from K land, a love affair was blossoming in ultra-urban, tropical Bangkok, Thailand. Bart*, a young, American English teacher fell in love with a cute and brilliant Thai linguist. Yon* was finishing her masters in linguistics at a local university with the dream to one day become a Bible translator. With the approval of her family and local church, they soon found themselves married and commissioned into a reality neither of them could ever have imagined.

Living in a small, bustling border town in Southeast Asia, they heard the cries of the K people coming from across the river. Contact was made and Bart and Yon fell into yet another affair of love. For two years they have laboured tirelessly to finish creating a writing system for the K language, build a comprehensive dictionary, prepare Sunday school materials and begin translating the New Testament. In addition, preparations for a full-blown literacy program were scheduled. Hearing these rumours, Karen and I grew more and more eager to meet this zealous couple and learn more of this mystery people group whom we were also growing to love.

Enter Tun and the giant bear hug. Chosen as the first ever K person to attend a special mother-tongue literacy teacher training course outside his country, Tun showed up in a prayer meeting, and then in our house in Chiang Mai, the same city in which God had called Karen and I to serve. In fact, by that time, we had met Bart and Yon a few months earlier for the first time. We shared with them our own story of the K and I pulled out my Race to 2025 jersey from seven years earlier. Dumbfounded and elated, Yon’s jaw dropped to the floor and an instant Kingdom friendship was formed. We all took pictures with the jersey and of course Yon showed them to all her K friends—Tun included. The moment Tun saw me at the prayer meeting, he knew exactly who I was—the Canadian guy who climbed a mountain for the K people!

Tun was the first ever K person I met face to face. His giant bear hug sets the bar for me as I consider the deep expressions of love and gratitude the K have for God and for their fellow brothers and sisters in his glorious Kingdom—no matter how far or near. What can I do to share God’s boundless love with these newfound friends?