Global Legacy Missions - Rob & Ria Gmyrek

Speaker: Rob Gmyrek, Indonesia

Rob Gmyrek: Hello. I'm Rob and my wife Ria and I are in Indonesia. We've known and worked with Activate Church for a very long time. We were happy to have Pastor Sheridyn here with us a few months ago. And our vision and our heart is for the unreached people groups of Sumatra, Indonesia. We've been at that for long time. More than 30 years. Mostly, they're Islamic and quite difficult, but God has been faithful, and we have been working diligently there for a long time. More recently, God has opened up the doors for us to do some work in Papua, which is also something we are really excited about and beginning to work on.

Rob Gmyrek: OK, some of the things that we can be celebrating or excited about recently is one of them about four years ago, God brought a person to us who had a tremendous heart and vision for Papua in the eastern side of Indonesia. She had spent many years there, but had gotten very, very burnt out. And just before Covid hit, she came and started being with us and being a part of our training. And God did a real work in her heart. And it was really, really exciting. And she got really, really excited about the vision to return to Papua. So she's been doing that, and we've been acting as leaders and helping her. And so we've also we brought some Papuans out from some very, very, tribal areas to do some training with us, mostly learning stories from the Bible. That happened a couple of years ago, 23 years ago. And in the middle of that, I realised that these students God was sending to us, their mother tongue or the language that they grew up in had no Bible, not a single verse or not a single word of the Bible in their language. And here I have people from these groups and they're learning mostly stories from the Bible, in a training that we're running. So I began to think about what we can do about this, and we approach them with just trying to begin to record some of these stories. So last year we ran a training, we also just finished running a second one this year to work with some of these people to record stories in their language. And this is turning out to be a much larger, much more difficult project than I thought, doing some of these translation things, but praise God. so far this year we have recorded the, book of Ruth and also a few other stories, sometimes The Creation Story and the Fall of Man in four different languages, that up until the beginning of this year had never had a single word or a single verse of the Bible in that language. So that's really, really exciting for us. And, I just got word, actually yesterday from the leader of this team and a group that went back to Papua. They took it back to the tribes who speak these languages and played it for them. And they were so excited and they were rejoicing and some people were crying and they decided to have a large feast and even butchered pigs, which in their culture, the biggest festival that you can have is to butcher a pig and celebrate that way. So, we're really, really excited about this. We're trying to record more people who speak these languages to do more stories and make better qualities of some of these translations. So this is just at the beginning. It's something really new. It's something that's just happened this year. It's really exciting for us. We are in Indonesia doing this, and Indonesia still has, according to several different organisations, Wycliffe and others more than 850 - about 860 languages that have no Bible, not one single word in that language. So we're doing what we can. It's... we're going slow. We're just taking it step by step simply, but we want to thank you for praying for us and for these tribes as it's really exciting to see what God is doing. On another ministry that we're working with is on Sumatra, which I mentioned in our introduction. We have teams on six different unreached people, groups up there that are doing a great job. Mostly up there. it's quite difficult, they're largely Islamic, and just even getting there or trying to figure out what to do is difficult. So just the fact that many of them have been there for many, many years and been faithful to what God has called them to is really exciting to us. And we're trusting God to answer and to be faithful to these different ones. We are seeing, results, but slow and simple. But praise God. We are continuing to work on that, and we're continuing to spend a lot of time up there, doing what we can to see these different areas of Indonesia reached with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Rob Gmyrek: OK, I want to tell you the story of Ibrani. He's from Papua. At 19 years old, he'd lived in the jungle. Never been to school, Never seen electricity. Never seen us - a house with the floor. None of these kind of things. But he is poised to be one of the leaders of his tribe going forward due to his family and the family he lives in, or was born into, and he came out and spent a year with us at our training facility in Java, and it completely and totally transformed his life completely, saw him receive Jesus as his Saviour and get really, really, really excited for the stories he was learning to be put in his native language, which has no Bible at all. So just earlier this year, he helped us record, both the story of creation and the story of Ruth in his native tongue. And right now he's back amongst his home villages sharing this story and really, really excited with how God is working through him and in him.

Rob Gmyrek: Something I want you to know about our ministry and what we're doing just regarding the people groups on the island of Sumatra that are largely Islamic. They're, been that way for a long time, and it's very difficult to reach them. I just would like you guys to know that God is faithful and that God is beginning to work. And we do see, results. We do see things happening. There are often small and simple, but God is faithful, and God is working and doing something in the hearts of these people. And we just want to thank you for your prayers and thank you for your commitment to us, particularly in these really hard areas where it's difficult to report a lot of, results sometimes. And I just want you to know that we have teams up there of Indonesians. Some of them have been working amongst these groups for over 20 years, just faithful and working day in and day out with what God has called them to do.

Rob Gmyrek: OK, what motivates us is just God's grace, God's goodness, God's kindness, God's provision in our lives and how God has, provided a way that we can have a restored relationship with him. And it's just in our hearts. God's put it there. God's called my wife and I to be missionaries to Indonesia, to unreached people groups to areas that have never heard of the gospel of Jesus Christ in any way, shape or form. And that's really exciting for us. And we've been at it for quite a long time. But still seeing God's Grace, still seeing God's mercy, and still seeing God's provision in our lives. And, it's so exciting. We've seen tens and tens of people who have never heard of the gospel before. You have a chance to hear of it, have a chance to hear stories from the gospel in their languages, and just to see the way they light up to see the decisions they make to see the decision that one group that heard the gospel or the story of Ruth and creation recently in their native tongue decided to have a huge celebration and set butcher pigs which is the biggest way of celebrating for them. And they were so thankful and so grateful for hearing of some of the good news of from the Bible and then with some of the others there. Some of the team we sent hearing the good news of Jesus Christ. And so it's just exciting. God's doing new things. There's we have lots and lots and lots of young people involved in what we're doing, and they're really excited just to see Take the gospel to where it's never been taken before.

Rob Gmyrek: OK, what are our biggest prayer needs? First of all we are in Singapore right now. My wife just a couple of days ago had her second knee replacement operation, which is still a prayer. But praise God, it's gone well, the doctors are very happy. For the last several years, we've asked for prayer for our Children, but they are all three have seen some real breakthroughs and doing very well, our youngest daughter's on staff of a church, the pastoral staff and the other two older ones are doing well also. So we thank you for praying for them. I think the biggest prayer needs for us is just that God would continue to open doors, continue to provide, for the two areas that we focus on the Islamic unreached people groups on Sumatra. We need to see more young people involved up there. We need to see people with a vision. We need to see people with a heart going to more of these groups. And so we run a training centre and are really praying and trusting God to bring along more people that He's called and prepared for this. The second one is going to very, very remote, difficult areas to reach in Papua, and we have lots of young people involved in that and really excited about that. So we just pray, need to pray that God will watch over them and protect them. There's many real dangers in going out there, from malaria to other sicknesses to, just all kinds of things because it's remote and it's hard, difficult travel. So pray for us for safety, pray for protection. Pray that God would continue to release young people that have a heart to see His Kingdom come and His will being done amongst these people.