“They’re so real!” was my first impression of the stories I read in Adventist Frontiers. I have read many mission stories through the years, and it seems to me that the majority of them have happy endings: someone is usually helped, healed or converted. Don’t get me wrong. I am very glad to know that around the world people are having their needs met, their health restored or most importantly their lives saved for eternity.

So why don’t all the stories in the AFM magazine have happy endings? Part of the answer lies in something we were told during orientation: “You have been called to go work among the unreached,” John Kent, AFM’s training director, said, “and that is difficult. That is why they’re still unreached. If it were easy to reach them, they already would have been reached.”

That thought has gone through my mind a lot since then. The reason the Otammari people and so many other people groups all over the planet are still unreached is mainly because it is difficult to reach them. They’re either so isolated geographically that we can’t get there comfortably or on such a different page in their worldview that it takes intense missionary effort to bridge the gap. That humbles me and inspires me. What a privilege! What a challenge!

As a reader of this magazine, you are a part of this missionary movement. Thank you for letting the needs of others touch your heart. Thank you for praying that the Holy Spirit will prepare the hearts of the unreached to receive the gospel, and thank you for your patience when happy endings are still in the making.

• Twitter