Working at the media office

Some of you may remember that, several years ago, I would spend my winters as a snow bird, flying down to Southeast Asia to help at an office that sought to see broad sowing of the Word by distributing the Bible to the U people via web pages, apps, and other social media platforms. I had returned to this part of the world to see doctors about my voice, and gladly spent several hours a day volunteering at the office. They had changed things around since I had last been there and I was a little overwhelmed the first day they took me up to the room where I would be working. The small room called the ‘interaction room’ was lined with devices.  There were at least 18 screens set up, all of which I would be using on a daily basis to contact people still living in my former province.

 In some ways, it is like telemarketers cold calling down a list of names, except that we aren’t calling; we are friending people on social media. I, personally, wouldn’t just accept any stranger’s friend request but it is amazing to see how many people do. Since one social media platform is so controlled by the government and accounts can be shut down, we don’t want to push scripture passages on people unless they have given us permission to send them a link. We also don’t want our new online friends to realize we are foreigners. We want them to think that this is coming from a fellow U; so, even as we interact and text back and forth, we have set sentences that have been checked for proper spelling and grammar.

The responses we get vary greatly. We quickly learn that some people can’t speak the U language and must be part of a different people group. Some un-friend us so fast that we don’t even get to tell them about the website. Some threaten us and others simply say, “Thanks but no thanks.” The joy is the few people who say, “Sure, send me the link.”

Each computer station is different: some send people to the Psalms where the passage is beautifully recorded and put to music, another station is giving people the first chapter of the book of Jonah and seeing if readers will be drawn into the story, and one station sends them to the home page where people can click on any topic that interests them. The hope is to see what hook draws more attention. One afternoon, I was working on the computers sending out Jonah. One of the guys that agreed I could send him the link finished off chapter one in minutes and was eager to keep reading. He likewise devoured chapter two and was hungry for more. Even after I had sent him all four chapters, he was still writing us back asking for more to read. Before leaving for the day, I had sent him a link to the home page. The next morning I noticed he had sent us several more messages and asked one of the fulltime office staff to jump in and take over interacting with the guy. In the world of telemarketing, that counts as a win!