This past Friday the college department of Gracepoint Fellowship Church (Koinonia, Acts2Fellowship, Kairos) met together to listen to various testimonies of people who went on mission trips last summer. In total, 185 members of our church went to 6 different countries to share the gospel! They went to Taiwan, Honduras, Thailand, Kyrgyzstan, Cambodia, and China.
In Cambodia, our team members taught various classes at Life University. There they played fun games with the students, fellowshipping and developing relationships, ranging from kindergarten students to nursing students! Cambodia is a nation in healing; it is haunted by the recent atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge, haunted by its seedy sex-trafficking trade, where boys and girls as young as 4 or 5 years old are peddled. At the school and at various villages they visited, our team shared the gospel of hope, restoration and redemption through song, dance, skit, and messages. Though our team members had intended to encourage the Christians there, they found that they themselves were challenged and encouraged by the passionate and zealous young Christians they encountered at the university. Here is a snippet of what brother Chris Ko shared:
“I think I speak for all when I say that some of these students ended up encouraging us more than we did them. One student in particular named LH really encouraged me….He told me about his heart for God and he asked for spiritual guidance. This 16 year old put me to shame with his passion for the gospel. I’m so glad and thankful that I was able to build a relationship with him. I hope all that we did as a team, not just for LH, but for the rest of the Life University students were just as inspiring.”
We sent two teams to Honduras; both teams administered medical & dental care to local villagers, and one team administered medical care for the animals. They also participated in services that local pastors held. In one service, 500 people accepted Christ. While it was an amazing experience, and much good work was done, it was perhaps the lesson that sister Yanhui shared with all of us, a lesson that has become our own, that would characterize that trip. She shared about how she had had the wrong understanding of how to win people to Christ, and how she came to have a more biblical understanding: It requires a lot of work, heart, prayer, and effort, and it’s worth it because each person is so precious to God. Here is a snippet of her sharing:
“Luke 15, the DT text 2 weeks prior to that week, began to speak to me. I was amazed at the amount of effort has to be spent on each of the lost ones. The shepherd has to leave all that he has behind to look for that one lost sheep in the open country; the woman has to sweep the entire house to search for that one lost coin, and the Father, he waits, I’m sure he prays, and his heart must’ve been broken for his lost son. It is one sheep, one coin and one son that were lost, yet each one is so precious. Andy was right, we need to treat the people as individuals rather than masses. How devaluing to God’s mercy and grace it was for me to think that salvation shall come with all the work we had done, and how dehumanizing it was to think that the people would come to Christ just because what we had done for them, forgetting that they are humans just like me, having their own sins and pride. They too as lost ones need to be lifted up individually and cared for and prayed for. Each of them needs to be searched, needs someone to abandon or sacrifice something to be looked for and waited upon though prayers. Finding is awesome, but what’s behind finding? What needs to be poured out on the owner’s part?”
In China and Taiwan, we focused on building relationships and helping the students we met there to start thinking about life, and all the tough questions that surround life. We sent two teams to Taiwan: one team worked with our Gracepoint church plant in Danshui Taiwan, and one team worked with Danshui’s English camp. Mission trips can be dangerous in that they can open your mind and imaginations to new possibilities of living your life, ways that are not so “normal.” Sister Emily Kim shares the following:
“I was a bit surprised by how much I loved it in Taiwan, and how much I felt God’s aching heart for the precious students I was meeting. I was filled with sadness at the thought that I would have to say goodbye to them, right when I felt like we were really bonding. During one of my prayer walks through the campus on my way back to the dorms, I almost felt like I “heard” God asking me, “Why don’t you come and teach here? You’re always saying you don’t know what you want to do with your PhD…”
Another dangerous thing that can happen is that you can actually grow and become even more fervent in your faith. Sister Myra Dharma shares the following.
“…I saw the deep contrast of my own God to their idols. My God being a loving God, who not only created me, but also loves me, wants to know me, and bless me. There was that huge difference and I wanted to share how there was a True and Living God who knows and loves them deeply and even wants to bless them without their needing to ask and beg. God wants to bless out of love, not from people’s fears and pleading. He isn’t some kind of false god who demands our sacrifices and fear, and enjoys incense and offerings without looking at the heart. God is relational and alive. This made my eyes open and appreciate who God is and His heart for these people…I feel so privileged to be able to go on this Taiwan mission trip – what did I have to offer? …Overall, I felt like I didn’t have much. Yet God wanted me on the trip…I have this sense of privilege and purpose because I have my testimony, my story in which God prepared and saved me from my sinfulness and a life of self destruction. Like David, I can be confident and ready to fight different Goliaths in my life because of my testimony. Holding onto this identity and the fact that I was made alive when I was dead in my sin renewed a sense of 2 P’s in my life: Privilege and Purpose. I feel privileged to have this amazing gift of the gospel and the calling to share it with those around me whom I was just like… I am… on a mission…for life. This is the purpose given to me. Thinking of this… fired me up thinking how I could be used by God to love others.”
Our team also sent an exploratory team to Kyrgyzstan, a small country in central Asia. As a church we had been in Central Asia before, and wondered if God was calling us back there.
In Thailand our members taught at a school for missionary kids, and spent time at a leper colony and orphanage. Josh Linville, A2f senior, saved up every penny he earned for a year to save up for this trip. Was it worth it? Yes it was, even if he was being sent half-way around the world to answer the seeking question of a child. Here is a little bit of Josh’s sharing:
“I remember one activity in which Jenny had the kids and the teachers draw a picture of their families on a piece of paper and then share them with the group. I felt self conscious because my picture only had two people, myself and my mom. So I decided to draw God in my photo, because I was more a part of his family than anything else. My group shared our pictures with each other and the kids saw that I had drawn God. Then one of the students asked me, “Teacher, how can you come to know God?” My eyes began to water. There I was playing games and singing songs with kids from a different culture who I had only met three days ago. Yet despite my feelings of whether God was working or not amongst this camp, here was a child with a question, a question God had sent our team half way around the world to answer. That if we believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and accept him as our Lord and savior, then we can be reconciled with God. Praise God for his faithfulness.”
Thailand Summer Mission Trip
At the end of all of the testimonies, we could not help but be in awe of the fact that our God is a great God, that he created all the nations and the peoples in it, that this was His world and that He was madly in love with it. People wonder why we do this. In airfare I think we spent over $300,000 dollars. Was it worth it?
Was it worth it to make a statement to the sex-traffickers that children in Cambodia were to be loved, taught, and nourished as children, and not peddled for pleasure? Yes. Was it worth it to show love to an orphan who lost his or her parents to the recent tsunamis? Yes. Was it worth it to encourage other Christians laboring to bring light and hope and healing and restoration to their nation? Yes. Was it worth it to enter into a Muslim nation that suffers just like the rest of the world, to build relational bridges with the western world in times when our relationship is characterized as (to put it mildly) “strained” ? Yes, it is. Was it worth it, to go and have our eyes opened to see God more clearly, our purpose more clearly, His power more clearly, and to see a possibly new and grander vision for our lives, individually, and as a church? Yes, IT IS. I look forward to hearing more testimonies in the future, and maybe having one of my own. And maybe next time you can join us too!
