Could you use your English teaching skills to share the love of Jesus with people on the Indian Ocean Islands?

Background

AIM has been serving in the Indian Oceans Islands for about 40 years. A Bible translation project was started on the Islands in 2014 and is making significant progress in making the Bible available to Islanders. Yet there continues to be great resistance to the gospel due to the hardness of peoples’ hearts, the strong grip of Islam, and spiritual blindness. Despite the sometimes-discouraging results on the Islands from a human perspective, we know that the work hasn’t been in vain and we hope for reproducing local Christ-centred churches to be planted here.

The islands are quite poor and receive much aid from abroad. Most people in the villages are sustenance farmers, fisherman, shop-owners, and government workers such as teachers. Islanders generally feed themselves from the fields and the sea, but they are also dependent on some imported products such as rice, oil and chicken wings.

Vision, strategy and ministry

Throughout the course of the team, members will learn the local dialect. English teaching will help them to pick up local language and culture. One of the team’s main values is to help translate more portions of the Bible into the local language, so after around a year, team members will help in translation.

The team will follow the TIMO curriculum, which will take them through a series of units as they learn through on-the-ground practice. The primary goal of this team is developing and preparing the team for ministry. Members are committing to a two-year team, but we ask that they prayerfully consider longer term ministry on the islands, as usually it is only after several years on the ground that most members really hit their stride in language, cultural understanding, and effectiveness.

Qualifications and Experience

All team members will need to have either professional teaching experience or have completed a Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) training course.

What are the personal (not academic) characteristics required?

Abiding in and surrendering to Christ, with clear evidence of the fruit of the Spirit in their daily interactions. A teachable spirit. A team player, willing to live simply.

Other information

There is running water, electricity, and internet, but team members will need to be flexible as all of these are relatively unreliable and can go out for short or long periods of time without warning. Living in community with local people will mean choosing to forgo many of our modern escapes, including not having TVs in our homes, and significantly limiting our use of computers/smartphones so as not to cut ourselves off from local interaction.

We would like the team to start between late 2023 and early 2024, and the team will last for two years. The team will consist of between 6-12 adults.