To look back on the development of the church in East Timor over the past nine years is a lesson in God's response to faith and obedience. Rising from the rubble of civil war, the church has now become established and continues to grow.

Pastor Samuel Soares of Lospalos was recently sharing with a visitor to East Timor about how the church started and then has spread from one area to another.

"We are using ‘house church’ concepts in the Lospalos area to effectively reach people with the Gospel message," Samuel said. The team is hopeful that this concept will also be useful in outreach to other areas of the country.  

The thing that makes the house church model so effective is that it's based on everyday relationships: disciples of Jesus connecting with people in everyday life and sharing the love of Christ -- by all means. These friendships develop into fellowships that gather in everyday locations such homes, schools and coffee shops.   

One way the team has done this in East Timor is by meeting a very practical need in the community -- English tutoring. With so many young people in East Timor clamoring to learn English, tutoring was a natural bridge for the Church of the Nazarene to enter by offering a quality English program. According to team leader Warren Neal, they have just completed the second week of their English program for this year, and “things are going very well.”

The leadership team decided that every Friday afternoon they would invite the students to come together for a two-hour, informal, fun practice session. This past Friday 50 students showed up. In these Friday sessions the team uses a variety of tools to teach and connect relationally.

“The youth here love to sing, so we begin with a music DVD that has subtitled lyrics,” Neal explained. “This week we taught them the song 'This Is My Desire'. After explaining the meaning of the words, we sang it several times."

Following the karaoke session, the group played a modified game of Scrabble by making a list of all the English words they could spell. East Timorese youth love competition, so they were motivated to finish with the most words and the fewest number of letters left over. They finished off their English session by putting together some puzzles that were created from the words and phrases that they had learned during the week.

At the end of the afternoon, "they sang the song again and we had a short Bible study (also in English),” Neal said. “Everyone seemed to have a good time and our team was really tired when it was over!  Hopefully more will come as they hear about what we are doing."   

Simple but creative methods are connecting people to Christ and expanding the Kingdom in East Timor. What about in your community?

For more information about English teaching (and other teaching) opportunities on the Asia-Pacific Region, please visit www.asiaserve.org.