Lying just beyond Singapore’s shores are more than 2,000 remote islands that are inaccessible by planes or cars, and where even basic necessities are lacking. In these communities, many have also never heard the Gospel.

But Flotilla Southeast Asia is on a mission to change that.

Established in 2020 by Youth With A Mission Singapore (YWAM Singapore), Flotilla Southeast Asia has been searching out these unreached islands using private vessels to share the Good News with local communities. It is part of a wider Flotilla vision by YWAM to bring the hope of Christ to isolated islands around the world.

Over the past three years, Flotilla Southeast Asia has embarked on about 15 voyages, navigating open waters to reach islands that most maps barely register. Each sail, which lasts an average of one to two weeks, is taken on by a team of seven to eight people, including YWAM Singapore staff and volunteers.

The goal is to seek out these isolated islands and create open doors for the Gospel to take root, explained Hudson Kim, a leader and missionary at YWAM Singapore who helms the ministry.

A local child from an island interacting with the team.

After getting to know the villagers, the team links the community up with local partners that can help to meet their needs and disciple them in the long-term – mainly through the provision of Bible translation, a local spiritual fellowship, and access to basic necessities like clean water, shelter, sanitation, healthcare and education.

Since its first voyage in 2022, Flotilla Southeast Asia has visited 73 unreached villages and 58 islands, and has engaged some 500 people in spiritual conversations, said Hudson, marvelling at how God has been opening doors for the Gospel in the region in unprecedented ways.

“Every open door, every connection, it’s really been God’s doing from the beginning,” said the 44-year-old.

Soft ground, open hearts

For half of the islands they have sailed to, the team has been the first outsiders to be warmly welcomed, said Hudson, attributing this openness to the prayers of some 100 intercessors who cover each trip.

For safety, the team sleeps aboard the vessel with a machete by their sides and scatters thumbtacks across the stairs of the vessel to deter unwelcome visitors. But they have never encountered any hostility or danger. In fact, the villagers have even hosted them in their homes when bad weather made resting on the vessel difficult.

⁠The team having fellowship on the boat with locals from the village.

As relationships are built, the team has had natural opportunities to share the Gospel with the villagers. Hudson has no lack of stories of how locals have been receptive to the Message, even if they are the only ones on their island who accept Christ.

On one island, a man quietly eavesdropped as the team shared the Gospel with his friend. Afterwards, he approached one of the team members privately, wanting to know more about the Gospel.

The team left a contextualised Bible with him before sailing off. Months later, the man had read the Gospel of Luke his own. When work brought him to the main island, the man reached out to the Flotilla Southeast Asia team saying that he was ready to give his life to Jesus and be baptised. 

The team visiting locals in their homes.

On another voyage, a man on the shore waved and called out to the team as they sailed past his island. Even though the island was not one of their planned destinations, the team felt a strong prompting to return to it.

When they arrived, they had the opportunity to pray for the man who had waved to them. After the prayer, the man said he felt joy. That opened the door for the team to share the Gospel with the man, who accepted Jesus into his life.

While not everyone the team shares Christ with accepts Him on the spot, they have seen seeds being planted. They once shared the Gospel with an elderly grandmother, who listened attentively and was moved to tears by the end of their sharing. Though she did not receive Christ then, they saw that God was working in her heart.

Tracing God’s hand

Recounting these powerful stories, Hudson believes that they have been nothing but God’s doing.

“I find myself not needing a strategy – just hearing and obeying, being sensitive to God, for He always connects us with the right people and the places to enter,” he said.

In fact, the very birth of Flotilla Southeast Asia had been orchestrated by God. Five years before the ministry was launched, He was already preparing its first vessel, the Silver Voyager (not its real name). 

The boat was first purchased by Roy and his wife, Sally (not their real names), at a boat show in Singapore. They were drawn to the vessel and had plans to live aboard it for a season.

In what felt like a divine prompting, the couple found themselves drawn to a marina in a neighbouring Southeast Asian country. They settled there for five years, made the boat their home and fell in love with the region and its people.

Unbeknownst to them, the YWAM Singapore team had been fervently interceding for that region, believing that God would one day open a door for them to go there with the Gospel.

Children at the villages are always the first to welcome the team.

The years rolled by and as Roy and Sally began to think of retirement, they made a promise to God that they would give themselves to mission work.

They did not know exactly what that would look like, but since they owned a vessel, they searched up information on how to utilise it for missions. That was when the discovered the Flotilla vision and the ministry’s goal to partner vessel owners who share their burden for the nations.

The couple immediately contacted Hudson to offer their boat. In an answered prayer, the Silver Voyager was berthed at the exact area that YWAM Singapore had been praying to reach.

From one vessel to none

In 2022, the Silver Voyager became the first outreach boat to come into partnership with Flotilla Southeast Asia. With the boat their home, Roy and Sally journeyed with the team on every voyage for three years.

At the end of 2025, they decided to sell the vessel and return to their home country, after sensing that God was calling them into a new season of life.

As the Silver Voyager was the ministry’s only boat for outreach at the time, the team wondered how they would continue. As the news spread, two men who shared a deep burden for the vessel and its mission tried to raise funds to purchase it so the work could go on.

Russell (not his real name) was a long-time donor and prayer partner of the ministry. Ernest (not his real name), on the other hand, had gotten to know about the Flotilla ministry as his vessel was berthed at the same marina as the ministry’s training vessel. He later gave his personal vessel to another YWAM Flotilla ministry in Southeast Asia.

However, despite generous gifts from supporters, the cost of the Silver Voyager was beyond what both men could collectively raise. Then a buyer, who shared the team’s burden for the unreached, stepped in and acquired the vessel.

While that buyer expressed his intention to continue serving the Flotilla vision to reach unreached and isolated islands, he wanted to redirect the Silver Voyager to a different region. 

With no vessel to sail, the Flotilla Southeast Asia team were now limited to visiting places accessible by local ferries – and were left praying that God would move.

A multiplication of vessels

Throughout this time, the Flotilla Southeast Asia team were also getting to know the Silver Voyager’s new owner better. Moved by stories of what God had been doing through the Silver Voyager, he generously offered to help Russell and Ernest purchase a new vessel for the team.

Five days before a captain was due to sail the Silver Voyager to its new destination, however, the owner had a change of mind.

“I don’t know why I didn’t think about it in this way before, but why don’t I just leave the Silver Voyager with you guys and find a new boat (for the other region)?” he told the team.

Heading to islands that they have never been to before.

The news sent the team into shock. The owner then shared that he had felt a strong and persistent prompting from the Lord to release the Silver Voyager back to the Flotilla Southeast Asia ministry.

“The team and I saw it as God’s wisdom of multiplication. From one vessel, the vessels for the wider Flotilla mandate multiplied to three (the Silver Voyager, the new boat and Ernest’s boat) because of this heart-churning journey,” Hudson said.

Charting the way forward

Now that the Silver Voyager is back in partnership with the Flotilla Southeast Asia team, their desire is to bring their boat ministry to greater heights.

“We are going to go further and wider,” Hudson said with conviction, noting that some of these islands require up to 30 hours of sailing to reach.

“How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.”

Alongside its island outreach, the team is also developing two additional pillars of ministry.

The first pillar is the YWAM Ships Singapore Maritime Academy, which aims to train individuals in both the practical components –seamanship, navigation, and vessel operations – and the spiritual posture and cross-cultural adaptability required for boat missions.

The academy hopes to train and send 50 missionary sailors into areas that are hard to reach in the next two years.

The second pillar is Worship on Water, “a house of prayer on the waters”. It was birthed after Kay (not her real name), a boat owner, dedicated her vessel to the ministry in 2024 with a word for the team: Before missions can bear lasting fruit, it must be grounded in worship and prayer.

Praising God during the first Worship on Water session.

Every month, partners of the ministry gather on Kay’s boat – declared as the spiritual engine room of the ministry – as it sails out into the Singapore Straits for a time of worship, prayer and intercession for the unreached communities around Singapore. Recently, the team also connected with a married couple who writes original worship songs in the region’s traditional languages.

Acknowledging the limitations of cross-culture missionaries, the team is praying that the islanders will not just accept the Gospel but eventually take it even further to their own people.

As they work, the team clings to the picture described in Isaiah 42:10-12: “Sing to the Lord a new song, His praise from the end of the earth, you who go down to the sea, and all that fills it, the coastlands and their inhabitants … Let them give glory to the Lord, and declare His praise in the coastlands.”

Hudson said: “God has given us feet on water. So, simply put, we will go – until all islands sing.”

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