Tyler & Phuong Halstead - Algeria

September 10th, 2025

About Us

We are the Halstead family–Tyler, Phuong, and our twin sons Abraham and Aaron. God has called us to join Him in planting the Church among the unreached of the Arab World. We have just completed a 3 year term in Cairo, with the Live Dead team there, where we learned Arabic, had our boys, and grew our hearts for the people of this region. Having completed our primary season of learning language and culture, we’re now about to jump into the place where we believe the Lord has called us for the long haul: Algeria.

Our heart for Algeria:

In Revelation we see the final fulfillment of the Great Commission Jesus gives His disciples before ascending into heaven: worshippers gathered around the throne from every tribe, tongue, and nation, giving Jesus the Glory He deserves for all eternity. Needless to say, with nearly half the “nations” (people groups) of the world still considered unreached, this vision hasn’t been fulfilled yet. Few places on earth illustrate the absence of worshippers of Jesus more than Algeria. 34 unreached people groups amounting to more than 99.9% of the population of 46 million. Imagine how long it would take to find one follower of Jesus in this land! Now imagine that you are an Algerian who has never heard the Gospel. How long would it take for you to meet someone who could share with you about Jesus? This is made yet worse because relative to other countries in North Africa, Algeria has hardly any missionaries. At the time we visited in late 2022, there were 15 in the whole country! We feel a burden to do something about this. Particularly, in the country’s second largest city of Oran, where there aren’t any other missionaries, we plan to establish ourselves using business and English language education to gain access to this incredibly unreached people.

Our story:

One of the biggest reasons for our burden for the unreached is that Phuong knows the plight of the unreached firsthand. She was born in a small village in the center of Vietnam where she never once heard the truth of the Gospel or even met a follower of Jesus. In fact, it was through the ministry of an Assemblies of God missionary that she was first introduced to Jesus. In short order upon committing her life to Jesus, she began taking part in mission trips to the least reached parts of Vietnam to share the good news that she had just received. Within a couple years, this new journey with the Lord took her to a Bible college in America, where He confirmed His calling on her life to be a missionary.

Tyler grew up in a Christian home in a rural part of Michigan, but first felt the call to missions during his senior year of high school in 2006. Since that time, he has stayed involved in cross-cultural ministry, both stateside and overseas. He served in ministries stateside in Fort Myers, Florida as a part of Master's Commission, Minneapolis while at North Central, and on the South Side of Chicago, as the youth pastor at Chicago City Life Center. He also served in Indonesia for two years and as an intern with a ministry to the unreached in northern India.

Proclaiming Christ and making disciples where the Church doesn’t yet exist has been our desire for how we want to spend our years and serve the Lord. We are grateful now for the chance to do that as a family, with Abraham and Aaron joining us in April 2022 partway through our first term on the field in Egypt. One thing we’ve learned since then is that people throughout the Arab World love kids, and these two have opened doors to many relationships for us and brought joy to us and many others we have met here. We believe that God’s calling on our lives isn’t just for us as the parents, but that He’s already delighting in using our kids for His glory as well.

How you can help:

More than anything, we need your prayers. We recognize that we are serving in a dark part of the world that Satan will not relinquish without a fight. For our protection, for our provision, and especially for Muslim eyes to be opened to the truth of the Gospel, an army of prayer warriors needs to be barraging heaven on behalf of the ministry God is allowing us to be a part of in the North Africa.

If you're reading this, you probably also know that none of this will be possible without the financial support of Christ-followers who love missions and desire to see the Church planted among every tribe, tongue, and nation. If you want to be a part of the ministry God is going to use us for in Algeria, one important way you can do that is by giving financially as one of our monthly supporters. There is a link at the bottom of this page where you can make either a one-time donation or become one of our monthly supporters.

Missions to the unreached is something that every believer has a part in, whether as a goer or a sender, and we cannot adequately express our gratitude to you as someone God is using to send missionaries to the field!

Summer 2025 Update

‘Sir,’ the servant said, ‘what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.’Then the master told his servant, ‘Go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full."
-Luke 14:22-23

We hope it's been a great summer for you! After arriving in Algeria back in April, we've now had a few months to get our bearings and start to figure out what life, family, business, and planting the Church in this country might look like. We've come to understand more deeply the ways that this culture is different than our previous experience in Egypt and get more of a sense of the spiritual darkness that is here. More on that later on. Thus far, we've made serious progress transitioning our Arabic to the Algerian dialect, we've made a number of local friends, and we've gotten more of a sense of what it will take to stay and thrive in this country that is notoriously difficult to get into and remain in long-term.

In the first part of the summer, a lot of our focus was taken up by hosting short-term visitors and interns, as well as just figuring out how to live, communicate and get around. Since then, we've been able to start finding areas where we can minister and share Christ. We knew going in that this country was almost entirely Muslim and hostile to Christian witness, but what we didn't anticipate is what the younger generation here was like. While many of them are staunch, religious Muslims, it's striking how many of them don't practice their faith and live secular, often hedonistic lives devoid of hope. Drugs and alcohol are a far bigger issue here than we would have anticipated. We came here thinking that it strategically made sense to focus on the 18-25 age group, but now that we're seeing what their lives are like and getting to know some of them, we feel even more of a burden for them. Below, I'll introduce you to three of them that we've met and begun to invest our time discipling.

Nora (all the names are changed for security) came from a small city in the west of the country and from the Arab people group. She came to faith in Christ a few years ago, has been baptized, and is beginning to take on the role of a big sister to others in her circle who are seeking or have decided to follow Jesus.
Hannah is a college student from a conservative family who had started growing disillusioned with Islam a few years ago. She shared with us that earlier this year, her and a friend decided to visit a historic Catholic church in the city on a whim when they walked past it and saw the door open. She said that in the moment she stepped inside, she felt a peace that she had never experienced before and knew that she had to find out more about Christianity. Before she even found a church that welcomed her, she started seeing herself as a Christian, even though she knew almost nothing about Christianity. Now she's attending the English-speaking church in the downtown of the capital that we go to and growing in her faith. Her family isn't happy about her decision to follow Christ, but she's persisting and has even started singing in the church choir.

Because of his mom's job, John grew up moving internationally multiple times and earned a scholarship to study abroad for college. Unfortunately, he also had severe struggles with drug use and mental health, which resulted in him losing his opportunities and returning to Algeria. For years after, he continued to struggle with drugs and depression and considered himself an atheist. Nora had been a friend of his and invited him to church, where we met him and formed a connection. Though he's still not a believer, he has been eager to meet and begin a Bible study. He's been very open to listen every time I share the Gospel with him and it seems that he's on his way to Jesus.

Please keep these three friends and the many others here that we hope to meet and be able to disciple in your prayers!

Phuong connecting with Hannah and hearing more of her story of how she found Christ.

For the three friends I mentioned above, there’s been a connection to the above-ground church in the capital that has spurred their growth towards Christ. Unfortunately, the situation here is such that there is only that one English speaking church and one Arabic speaking Protestant church in the entire country. There are a few Catholic churches, dating back to the French colonial era and of course, believers meeting secretly in homes, but there is almost no chance for the average Algerian to meet a Christian or hear the Gospel. We are grateful for the legal church that is here, as well as for the chance to fellowship with other believers that it provides, but we want to get out into the alleyways and country lanes of this vast land and find those that otherwise won't here.

With that in mind, we took a trip this past week to visit two cities in eastern Algeria, Constantine and Annaba, that are currently without any global workers and almost no local believers. While we don't feel we're ready just yet to move to another city, it is something we're open to once the Lord indicates it's time. These two cities are strategic and important for different reasons, and we are praying that the Lord would call multiple global worker units to them both, as the need is great. In the mean time, continue to pray with us that the Lord would lead us how to be effective where we are now and that we would discern what the next steps are here for us when the time comes.

As always, thank you so much for your prayers, support, and friendship with us in this journey!

We took a family picture at the end of our day touring Constantine. The city is famous for its deep gorges surrounding it on multiple sides and the bridges spanning those gorges.

Above: Sharing about Jesus with a couple guys I met at the historic Notre Dame D'Afrique Church. The site is mainly a tourist attraction now, but we've realized that those interested in Christianity sometimes come because they don't know where else to go to learn more, so we've started coming here praying to find people; Another good place to meet people has been the local parks where families with kids come; Street market in the old city of Constantine during our vision trip.

Above: We were blessed to have the chance to go back to Egypt for a visa run in July! It was great reconnecting with Abu Asila again and hearing how the Lord is sustaining him; It was also wonderful reconnecting with our good friend Mohammad, the Palestinian medical student from Gaza who has shown great interest in the Gospel; After the time in Egypt, we attended a week of meetings in Cyprus with area leadership and our colleagues from other countries in the Arab World.
Below: Phuong hanging out with Nora and learning more of her testimony; Me sharing a meal with a new friend I met this summer; Some of the mountain scenery just south of where we live in the capital–Algeria is beautiful!