A Sydney Anglican from Narrabeen is using Christian counselling techniques alongside evangelistic singers to help build bridges into Pakistan's Muslim communities.
Nicky Lock, an Anglicare counsellor and course developer for St Mark's National Theological Centre has been working with local contacts in Rawalpindi to establish a Christian counselling centre for the community.
"Being a western woman in Pakistan had its challenges" says Nicky Lock, reflecting on her two week trip to Pakistan to teach counselling skills to 14 volunteers.
"Managing my "duppatta', the stole that covers my chest and needs to be quickly whipped up over my head when anyone prays was one of them!"
Supporter and retired theological college principal Dr Barkat Pervaiz hopes the centre will provide an opportunity to reach out into the Muslim community with Christian values and information.
Ms Lock says working with translators brought home to her the distinctly different values the Pakistani culture places on concepts like individuality and marriage.
"I quickly realised how much ideas about personhood and our value in God's eyes had been influenced even within the Christian community by the dominant Moslem culture," she says.
"Working with the students enabled me to develop an appropriate model of counselling that provided the opportunity to educate them about the Biblical view of personhood as well as a healthy view of Christian marriage."
Nicky also had time to meet with CMS missionary Steve Sonneman who is working with the Tribal peoples in the south of Pakistan.
Mr Sonneman is the principal of a small theological college seeking to reach out to the tribal peoples in the Sindh region.
The college trains pastors and lay people to be story tellers to tell the gospel message to the oral learners of the district.
Ms Lock reports that the CMS missionary is desperately short staffed but still finds time to go to Karachi to teach individual subjects at the theological college there.
"Steve is working with local pastors to develop programs to reach out to these people in story and song," she says.
"The Christians in the area have developed evangelistic singing teams which sing at the all night singing program where the tribal people mourn their dead. Sadly, their teams have experienced some strong opposition in the last few months and there hasbeen persecution of Christian villages."
Ms Lock says her two weeks working in Pakistan have brought home to her how hard it is to be a Christian in a culture with a different religious foundation.
"Even in a hristian community, your beliefs can be so easily influenced by the surrounding culture, almost without realising it."
"In these conditions, the value of using Scripture as a basis for teaching is of utmost importance, so the provision of theologically well trained pastors and counsellors is paramount."
