One Message

Dan decided to leave first. Since there was no way of knowing exactly when the container would arrive, he didn’t want to risk missing the moment the Bibles were unloaded.

I wanted to witness that moment with my own eyes too. But my heart was drawn even more toward something else. After the Bibles arrived, I wanted to personally meet the young people we had been connected with while carrying those Bibles and booklets in our hands. I wanted to capture our conversations with them on film. That was the picture I carried in my mind.

So we divided the roles. Dan would go ahead first, wait for the container to arrive, and continue gathering material for the documentary. I would enter either the week the shipment was expected to arrive, or the week before. For the sake of my wife, who would have to care for baby Roa alone, I knew my schedule had to stay short.

Traveling to and from Guinea-Bissau is never easy. Airfare is expensive, and even after arriving, reaching the southern part of the country requires another ten hours or so by car. Because of that, I had always believed that any trip to Guinea-Bissau needed to last at least two or three months.

The shortest-term team I had ever taken there was back in 2023. Among the forty people who carried the 1,600 Bibles together, some could only join for the transport itself because of work vacations or academic schedules. Their stay lasted around fifteen days. Even that was the shortest schedule I had ever experienced in Guinea-Bissau with a team.

This time, I decided to plan for about the same length. I felt disappointed that I would return to Guinea-Bissau for such a short visit, but with our baby still so young, it didn’t feel right to leave my wife alone for a long time. So as we settled on roughly fifteen days, I started searching for the cheapest flight options first.

We had absolutely no financial resources for the trip. And yet, my confidence only grew stronger that the Lord Himself would make this journey possible as well.

Then a message arrived from somewhere unexpected.

It was from YWAM Kona. More specifically, from the EBPN ministry team at YWAM Kona.

Ever since I first learned about their team, I had tried several times to contact them. I kept telling myself that a large ministry within a large organization must be incredibly busy, that my emails could easily disappear unnoticed. Still, through different people, I managed to track down the contact information of someone involved with EBPN and sent messages anyway.

But I never received a response.

When I had wanted so desperately to connect with them, there had only been silence. And now, at this exact moment, they were the ones reaching out first.

The message itself was simple. They said they wanted to talk and asked whether we could set up a Zoom meeting.

EBPN — End Bible Poverty Now. The ministry dedicated to ending Bible poverty. It is one of the primary ministries YWAM Kona is focusing on right now.

And that single message completely changed the purpose and direction of this journey.