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| Stephen with a native evangelist |
How far are you willing to follow Christ? How much
persecution or hurt are you willing to endure for His Name? How many comforts
are you willing to give up in order to expand His Kingdom? Anyone in ministry
has had to face these questions. Maybe some of you are asking yourselves this
right now. Anyways, here is a little story about a great missionary and indeed
he is one of our dear friends. This missionary isn’t famous, you wouldn’t see him
on any media or in a popular article. In fact, Pedro is his name and he lives
in China. He’s originally from the Yunnan province, China and one day he felt a
calling to go to Shangri-La (a former Tibetan area and now a self-governing
city in China) in order to preach the Gospel to the lost. This was in the early
2010s. Before he left, his entire church and family including his wife and
children had a funeral service for him. It’s a bit absurd to attend your own
funeral service especially being alive. He and his family understood that this
was a suicide mission because at the time, Christians were persecuted heavily
in Tibet. So, he attended his own funeral and then leaves for Tibet. While in
Tibet, he hid in the attic during the day and at night, he would come down and
preach to the people in the small house. Slowly, day by day, he did this for
over 2 years. The church in Tibet grew and God kept him save. After about 2
years of this, he traveled back home. Most of his church members and his family
were extremely shocked to see him alive. During the time that he was in Tibet,
he had no way of contacting his family and so it was normal for the family to
think he was dead. This is what he gave up in order to expand the Kingdom.
In another country, there is another kingdom worker that
is doing a phenomenal work with the locals. This native evangelist resides in
the communist country to the east of Thailand. He’s being used by God to do
great things in a country where Christians are persecuted. He has been planting
many churches and telling people about Jesus. We are extremely blessed to be
able to partner with him in order to further God’s Kingdom in Southeast Asia. For
many Christians in the communist country, everyday could be your last day on
earth. In the midst of literal and physical persecution, more and more souls
are being converted.
Not long ago in this country, there was a local man
from a reputable family that really hated this evangelist. The local man
believed that this evangelists was destroying the culture of the native people and
everything they have held dearly on to for generations, so he vowed to kill the
evangelist. Every day, the man sat waiting on the side of the road in hopes to
ambush and assassinate the evangelist on his way home. Miraculously, the
evangelist would unknowingly take different paths home every day, so the man
was never able to murder the evangelist. One day, this local man was oppressed
by the evil spirit and lost his sanity; his family took him everywhere but he
couldn’t be healed. Finally, the family decided to bring him to the church
where the evangelist went. The evangelist and several Christians gathered and prayed
for the man and he was healed by God! This local man accepted Christ and became
a firm believer of Jesus! Now, he is an elder of the church with about 700
members. Praise God! The man, at some point, confessed to the evangelist about
how he plotted to murder him and asked him for forgiveness. This is an awesome
and powerful testimony where God works in people’s lives and even restores
relationships! This month, Stephen went to that country and was able to meet the
local man; in fact, this man was the one who let Stephen and the evangelist use
his car to travel around in order to help people and to spread the Gospel! He
asked for prayers for his family because many of his siblings are still
non-believers and have, in a sense, shunned him for following Jesus.
Such a powerful and living testimony recalls Stephen
to his early conversion since his family was one of the first group of Lisu in
Thailand to accept Jesus Christ. Over 45 years ago, Stephen’s family, new
believers, went through several types of persecutions from family shunning, to
house stoning (people threw rocks at their house), house burning (people
attempted to set the house on fire) and eventually many villagers paid a hit
man to massacre the family. Perhaps this is the reason that God sent our
mission to those persecuted countries because we would be able to relate well
with both the persecutors and the persecuted.
Indeed, Stephen recently made a trip into Laos in
order to build relationships with the local people because God has opened this
door very wide. Nick took him to the border of Thailand and Laos, where Stephen
took a hundred mosquito nets with him into Laos in order to help the local
people afflicted with mosquito borne diseases. The trip was a great success. At
first, Stephen was a bit timid and afraid when he was asked to preach to a
large crowd. With many stories of foreigners disappearing or being killed or
being locked up indefinitely, fear creeps in. Nonetheless, God is able and He was
there with the native evangelist and Stephen. Throughout the trip, without
breaking national laws, Stephen was able to build great friendships with leaders
both nonbelievers and believers. In many occasions those leaders asked him to
pray for them. Praise God for this!
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Hot, Hot, Hot
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Traveling through the jungle to reach
the remote villages |
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| A typical cooking at the remote village |
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| Early morning at the remote village |
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| Harvesting at the rice field! |
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| Meal fellowship |
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| With new unbeliever friends! |
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| One of the local churches |
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| Stephen is preaching in Thai with the interpreter |
During the month of October, the whole family faced various
sicknesses. Stephen, Mary and Isaac all had the flu and after that… a cold,
back to back. Becky also had a cold as well. Stephen had the flu but still went
to Laos because the schedule to meet the locals and the leaders had already
been set; Mary was in the hospital for several days. Towards the end of the
month, Isaac ended up getting food poisoning which also led to hospitalization
for a few days. Nick has a knee injury as he played soccer with the refugee
kids whom he coaches. With all of these problems, we still praise God for giving
us another day to serve Him. We are weak but He is strong, we fail but He is
able! Our God is awesome and is worthy of all praise, and that is why we choose
to give up certain comforts, endure persecutions and trials, and humbly look to
and follow Jesus!
We appreciate your constant prayers for our family
and ministry as we tell people about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in
Southeast Asia and China.
