Where 140,858 international students live
Drive east on Olympic Boulevard through Koreatown. The signs switch to Hangul. Korean BBQ restaurants, H Mart supermarkets, noraebang karaoke bars — 409 Korean businesses mapped in this metro alone.
Now drive south on Pioneer Boulevard in Artesia. The script changes to Devanagari and Gujarati. This is Little India — sari shops, Bollywood cinemas, Hindu temples, and Indian grocery stores stretching for miles. 340 Indian businesses. Most serve a community where fewer than 1 in 100 people have ever heard the gospel.
Businesses mapped by ethnicity in Los Angeles metro
Westwood is sometimes called “Tehrangeles.” It’s home to the largest concentration of Persian Jews outside Israel and Iran. Three blocks from UCLA, you can hear Farsi on every corner. 331,000 Persian speakers live in the United States. Zero percent evangelical.
California hosts more international students than any other state — 140,858 in 2023–24. One in three comes from China. One in five from India. They fill lecture halls at UCLA, USC, Caltech, and dozens of Cal State campuses.
“International students function as ‘knowledge diasporas’ — agents of capital circulation between home and host countries. Their conversion has multiplicative potential.”
— Brooks & Waters (2021)
“God is pursuing with omnipotent passion a worldwide purpose of gathering joyful worshippers for Himself from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.”
— John Piper
“Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples.”
Psalm 96:3
Walk Pioneer Boulevard in Artesia. Count the temples, the grocery stores, the sari shops. This is not a cultural excursion — it’s a mission field.
Contact a campus ministry at UCLA or USC. Ask about students from unreached backgrounds.
Learn one fact about the Tehrani Jewish community. Start with their story.
The nations didn’t wait. They moved to the 405.