I discovered that God has brought refugees to this country so that we can empower them to reach the unreached with the gospel,” says Terri Saelee, coordinator for Adventist Refugee and Immigrant Ministries (ARIM) in the North American Division (NAD). 

A few years ago, NAD hosted its Church Planting Bootcamp in Florida, where church lay leaders and pastors gathered for sessions on church planting and revitalization. Terri served as a keynote speaker for the Refugee and Immigrant Ministries track. Upon arriving, she noticed that many attendees in the track were refugees and immigrants themselves. She prayed that God would help her communicate what these leaders needed to hear.

“In the context of our mission to reach every nation, kindred, tongue, and people,” says Terri, “I shared that there are approximately 7,000 unreached language groups, which represent 43% of the world’s population.”

Terri brings a strong legacy of experience to her work. She served as a student missionary in Thailand and later returned to the United States to continue her studies at Weimar Institute (then Weimar College). She spearheaded outreach programs for Hmong refugees, involving Hmong leaders in planning and providing for their needs. 

During this time, Terri met Ko Saelee, a young Hmong pastor. They fell in love and got married. “I like to tell people neither he nor I knew how much I would need him,” she says. “I believe it’s providential that I’m married to him, because there’s a lot I wouldn’t see if I were just looking from the outside in. But being married to one of these visionary church planters, I see it from this perspective, too.”

Terri and Ko planted a Lao church and a Hmong church in California, then planted more Hmong churches in Wisconsin and Minnesota during the next few years.

In 2008, Terri recalls lying awake many nights, unable to get a question out of her mind: What if God is bringing other language groups here and none of us are aware of who they are, where they are, and how to reach them? An idea formed: NAD needed someone to research incoming language groups and help local churches prepare to reach them.

Initially, Terri didn’t think she was that person, but God made it clear a few months later when she was called to become the first ARIM Coordinator for NAD. ARIM directs the work of more than 18 language-specific refugee and immigrant groups in North America through church planting consultants.

Terri explains that the division-wide ministry is based on the following quote by Ellen White: 

As I have testified for years, if we were quick in discerning the opening providences of God, we should be able to see in the multiplying opportunities to reach many foreigners in America a divinely appointed means of rapidly extending the third angel’s message into all the nations of earth. God in His providence has brought men to our very doors and thrust them, as it were, into our arms, that they might learn the truth, and be qualified to do a work we could not do in getting the light before men of other tongues
(Evangelism, p. 570).

This quote “screams the word refugee to me,” Terri says. She believes those who come to the NAD seeking new homes are perfectly equipped to share God’s love with their language groups.

Since its founding in 2009, ARIM has grown significantly. In preparing a 10-year report for NAD, Terri discovered that the number of reached language groups had doubled, refugee congregations had quadrupled, and tithe and annual baptisms had grown by 800 percent.

Terri’s message resonated strongly with the bootcamp attendees. Refugee and immigrant pastors approached her immediately afterward, sharing the names of unreached people groups—many of which Terri had never heard of. They told her, “We want to discuss, we want to strategize, we want to plan how to reach the unreached.”

Terri learned that believers could reach not only their own language groups but also related groups they’ve encountered on their refugee journeys.

As a result of the discussions at the bootcamp, the Falam* language group, previously unreached by the church throughout the world, now has three active church plants in North America. A Falam community in Australia has also watched an online evangelistic series posted by ARIM's Falam church-planting consultant and requested that he help them plant a church.

Terri is grateful to serve refugees and immigrants in NAD. “Reaching every nation, kindred, tongue, and people is right in the core of our mission statement,” she reminds us. “And I love that our church is dedicated and focused on that.”

Please pray for ARIM and refugee and immigrant church leaders as they continue to reach the unreached.

* Falam refugees are originally from Myanmar (Burma)