Below is a true Boots on the Road story highlighting one of the many unreached people groups along the Silk Road. This story is excerpted from the book, Live Dead Together: A Practice in Group Abiding. Order the book and find other Live Dead resources here.

Just two brisk winter days before Christmas, a Kyrgyz friend asked me to tell the Christmas story at the English conversation club he teaches. This was an amazing opportunity to tell Kyrgyz students the true story of Christmas, something certainly none of them had ever heard. Of course, I would have liked more time to truly put together a good “storied” version of Luke chapters 1 and 2 but time was not on my side, so I decided to read the story directly from the text and pray for the best.

Even though our new teammates had not been in the country long enough to be able to share in presenting the Gospel that day, they were fully equipped to pray. One teammate came with me and the rest stayed at home, interceding for the students, for a move of the Holy Spirit, and for God’s will to be accomplished in this key moment.

The time for my ten-minute Christmas presentation arrived all too soon. Halfway through I realized I had never opened my Bible yet every word I said was not my own but the Holy Spirit’s. He was speaking through me to these Kyrgyz students! They hung on my every word.

When I explained Emmanuel, God with us, their eyes were as big as saucers and their mouths hung open. “Wow, God is with us!” was repeated again and again by them all.

Their world view was just shattered because the Islam that they have grown up with implies that God is never with us.

At the end, many students thanked me, but one female student stands out. She said to me, “Thank you for this amazing story. It is awesome. I’m going to tell everyone I know because everyone needs to hear this story!”

My team and I couldn’t agree more.