This is why I do what I do. I’m currently working as a
missionary, training in Australia and focusing on reaching people in Southeast
Asia. It’s something I have been thinking about a lot lately… this particular
calling on my life to go and share the gospel to all the earth.
I just arrived back in Perth from a 3 month outreach to 2
nations in Southeast Asia, and a few country towns in the outback up north
Australia. If you asked me 3 months ago, what I was expecting would happen
during this outreach, I would have never guessed what I am about to share with
you.
God is so much more committed to reaching people than I
realize most of the time. We started out in one nation (that I cannot mention
on this blog) where God led us to do a lot of prayer and worship, welcoming Him
into the city. As we really asked the Lord to lead us in ministry, we felt to
do a lot of evangelism, which is a big word for going out into public areas and
telling people about Jesus. Because this nation is closed, we were not legally
allowed to do this, but of course, we were not going to let that hold us back..
for goodness sake, there’s so many people that have never heard the good
news!! So my team (Ali, Faith, Pete –
from Australia, Sandra – from Papua New Guinea, Venny – from Indonesia, Nathalie
– from France, and Daniel and myself from the United States) would spend lots
of time at the public parks, where lots of young people will come to hang out.
We barely needed to make eye contact before the teenagers would flock around us
because we were foreigners, and ask us questions like “What’s your name? Where
are you from? Why are you here? Do you like it here?”….Etc. Most of them just
wanted to use us to practice their English. It didn’t take long for us to start
getting asked about our beliefs or make a connection in the conversation to
tell them about Jesus. Most had little if no knowledge about Jesus. I was so
shocked! We made it our goal to tell as many as we could about Jesus. One night
I had 7 girls that were interested in hearing my story and as they huddled in
close to listen, I did not hold back in telling them the gospel in a way they
could comprehend. Some received and some didn’t, but God totally moved in our
limited ability to communicate to the people. In our 3 weeks in this location,
our team saw 5 salvations! Such a fruitful time!
The second story I will share is one that I am most
privileged to be a part of. In the second nation we stayed in, we felt like our
strategy in reaching the people was going to be different than the first
location, because it’s a different culture and way of life. Again we sought the
Lord for direction and felt that he was giving us a heart for the Buddhist
monks….
If you know anything about Buddhism, you would know that
it’s highly anti-Jesus. It incorporates a lot of idol worship and religious
ceremonies and sacrifices made to the statue (that would represent a god, for
example Buddha, or another god within the religion….) Their goal is to get to
Nirvana, which is this state of nothing. There’s a lot that plays into it, but
it’s totally anti-Salvation and there’s a lot of dark things that take place
within their practices. This is a picture of a monk who has been practicing
this religion for 14 years. Only males are allowed to join the monastery, and
they can start when they are kids if they want to. The government gives them a
deal on their education if they join, so many of them are going into the
monastery with this incentive. One day our team was praying and asking the Lord
where to go and I had a picture in my mind of a temple, while Pete had a
picture of a monk standing under these flag poles. I remembered that there are
flag poles right across the street from the temple, so we immediately thought
this was where God was wanting us to go. So we went in faith and when we got there,
we met a monk whose name was Loun. He spoke great English and wanted to chat
with us some more so we took the opportunity to hang out with him. He led us to
the large doors of the temple where they practice their religious ceremonies.
As he opened the door, there was this large 12 foot Budha statue at the other
end of the room and I almost peed my pants when I saw it. Even being there,
made me feel uncomfortable, but I knew
this was what God was saying for us to do. So we stayed there for a long time
that afternoon just learning from him and his religion. After a while, Nathalie
shared with him about Jesus. She did this in a very non-offensive way, so that
he knew she wasn’t judging him or his beliefs. I could see his face get softer
and more open the more she shared. That day we prayed for him and gave him a
bible, as he said he would like to read it. We found out a few days later as we
ran into him on the street that he had been telling some of the other monks the
stories in the gospel that he was reading. I was so stoked when I heard this! A
monk, sharing with his other monk friends stories about Jesus?! No way! We
could tell something in his heart was changing as we kept meeting with him and
by our last meeting, he had a lot of questions about how to follow God and what
he has to do if he wanted to follow God. Nathalie shared with him about the Ten
Commandments, and told him her own journey with following and obeying God’s
word. They went on and continued to chat, and finally she asked him if he
wanted to receive Jesus. He responded in these words (I kid you not) “I wanted
to the first day you told me about him”. As a Buddhist monk, he was able to recognize
that his life now needed to change if he gave his life to the Lord. He
understood this, as he allowed Nathalie to lead him to salvation. All glory to
God. I love this story for so many reasons. God isn’t looking for us to be
really good talkers so that we can persuade people into following him…. Quite frankly,
that’s not the approach that Jesus took. Jesus loved. And God told us to go
love these monks, and in our obedience, he opened a door where we could build
trust with them through sharing our own stories… and God would lead the rest. I
also love this because it is such a clear testimony of how God sees a broken
life and wants to do something about it. He cares more than I will ever know
about people I would never give a second thought about. He wanted to take a
risk on this guy and show him who he is…. And look what happened! Such a privilege.
God did so much on this outreach. I think the big thing I
took away from it is that God really wants us to know his heart for people…. And
to see a bit more of the brokenness of the world so that we can know how to reach
it. It’s not pretty, and many of the people I met on this trip are in really
depressing situations, but because He is so much bigger, stronger and so
committed to reaching them, he has called me and you to take on this task and
do the possible so that he can do the impossible in hopes that they would be
set free!
I'm really good at painting Spider Man!
What a rush. I’m so excited to share more of these stories
with you. Hopefully I can do so in person =)
Just want to thank all of you who prayed, gave financially
and really back my team and I up! You can take these stories for yourselves, because
you invested into them!
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