Cultural Crossroads
Kids of missionaries thrive amidst colliding cultures

By Jesse Lyautey

Her muscles are sore after hours of rattling around inside the 4x4 truck.

It feels like she's been on the road for days.

The 24-year-old International Mission Board journeyman and rugged researcher knows the general direction of the people group she’s looking for, but isn't quite sure.

Katy Butler's looking at the map of Nigeria trying to figure out if she's even on the right dirt road.

"Only the major towns are marked on the map," Butler says. "We'll have to stop at the next village to ask if we're going the right way."

Butler, along with her teammate, 24-year-old Sara Wescoat and Joel, their Hausa translator, are looking for two people groups today.

Their job is to scour the bush of Nigeria for West African people groups. Once they find them, they gather information such as population, village locations, and percentages of Islam, Christianity, and African Traditional Religion. They also gauge whether the people are open or reluctant to outsiders. 

This data is gathered so American or local Nigerian churches can come and teach Nigeria's unreached people groups about following the path of Jesus.

It's a lot of hours and days bouncing around in a truck.

"I've been to the four sides of the country: north towards Niger, south to the ocean, east to Cameroon and west to Benin," Butler says.

That's because she's responsible for researching 10 people groups in a year and a half, in addition to helping her three teammates -- Wescoat, Melanie Luellen, 25, and Kati Kavanagh, 25.

That doesn't sound hard. But, she's been out three times trying to find some of these people groups.

Some go by multiple names and some are so small they've been swallowed up by larger people groups and don't speak their heart language anymore.

She also has three American churches that she takes charge of when they come to Nigeria. These churches, called Engaging Churches, make 4-5 trips a year to West Africa because they're responsible for taking the Gospel to a people group with a population less than 100,000. She takes them to get supplies and introduces them to Africans who can help them along the way – translators, drivers, guides, and evangelists, anyone they might need to share Jesus.

"I like seeing churches getting excited about doing it, seeing God using them, knowing that what we’re doing … is preparing the way for the churches to come," Butler says. "Seeing the churches' determination to continue and share about Jesus."

Riding in the backseat, Wescoat looks at the GPS in her hand, holding it out the open window, hoping it's finally got a signal from the satellite thousands of miles overhead. Each turn they take deeper into the bush, past villages, millet fields and cow herds, she marks and draws a mini-map of the way they're taking.

"This is so the next time when they bring an American church they can find the group on the first try," Wescoat says.

The rough roads aggravate Wescoat's old knee injuring that she can now only drive on paved roads, which are very few in this part of the world.

It's all worth it for her. "These churches coming out have been amazing and some are even moving towards self-facilitating, which means that they deal less with us," Wescoat says.
The more people groups they research and churches that come, more people who get to hear about Jesus.

The researches are also a little like traveling evangelists. They're ready to share – each of them has Bible stories memorized about Jesus to present to crowds or individuals whenever the occasion presents itself.

"It’s our responsibility," Butler says, "to not just bring the Gospel to the tribes but to get churches involved, too. We (IMB) could do it on our own, but it would take way longer."