The Last Word - Living Our Message

By E. Scott Martin

We live in Kyrgyzstan now. Everyone here asks us why we are here. In their question they are not asking the “what will we be doing,” but really, the “why?” Why in the world would we move to Kyrgyzstan! Why would we leave the comforts of a nice home, friends and finance in America? The Kyrgyz people don’t understand it. In the natural, it makes no sense at all.

We live in Kyrgyzstan because we are living our message. Crystal coined the phrase “Give a year and pray about a lifetime,” which has been declared to tens of thousands of university students and young adults. When I was 18 years old and a student on the University of Arizona, I made a commitment to Jesus that I would pursue the authentic gospel all the days of my life. I would go anywhere, at any time and do anything He asked of me. We have always endeavored to live our message. We wouldn’t ever ask any of our students to do what we ourselves were not willing to do or hadn’t already done.

A little over two years ago, the Lord spoke to Crystal and I that we were to model “give a year” to our Chi Alpha family. At that moment we began to prepare for the mission. We downscaled our personal possessions, we sold our car and we raised the budget. We prepared National Chi Alpha for what we were about to do. We finally departed on August 9, 2006 (and were a part of history as we were caught up in the London Heathrow terrorist alert). We have a team of 12 university graduates both from Chi Alpha and our AG universities who are joining us here in Kyrgyzstan to serve with us during this initial tenure.

Why are we in Kyrgyzstan? Here’s more. In the 1990’s many Church agencies declared it the Decade of Harvest. Basically, the Church would work hard to harvest the fruit of souls prior to ushering in the new millennium. The Decade of Harvest is over and we are now in the Decade of Decay. The harvest is so plentiful around the globe; we just don’t have enough workers to bring it in. The fruit daily rots on the vine. We all need to be harvesters around the globe to pick the fruit for our Father before it decays.

Some people have commented to us, “So you are giving a year and praying about a lifetime.” I chuckle and reply back, “No, we have given our lives, and now we are praying about where to spend the next year!”

Please join us in living our message. Give a year and pray about a lifetime.

E. Scott, Crystal, Mercer & Marcus Martin Global Student Mission Directors National Chi Alpha