We had a long journey from Africa to Asia. It was so long that time seemed to become an illusion and it got to the point where I didn’t even know how long I had been traveling.
Our first leg of the journey was from Malawi to Ethiopia, where we were supposed to have a four hour layover. These four hours quickly turned into nine – our flight was delayed overnight. When I got this news I honestly didn’t care because I was so exhausted already. In addition to this, Ethiopia is known for their coffee – so I knew this extended layover was the perfect opportunity to try some. Lemme tell ya – Ethiopian coffee is BOMB. And I drank it black – I never drink black coffee…and I still enjoyed it.
Anyways, I could talk about coffee for this entire blog so enough about that. The main reason I am writing this is to tell you about an insane God moment that two of my friends and I had while drinking coffee in the Addis Ababa airport.
Ann Marie and Chandler are fellow coffee fanatics so obviously we flocked together to go drink some. The coffee shop we went to had community tables and was pretty full, so we ended up asking a young Asian man if we could share his table with him. As soon as we sat down, he introduced himself in broken English. He was super friendly and interested in talking to us. We learned that he had lived in France for six years and was a Chinese-French translator as well as very knowledgeable about technology. He asked us about our travels and we asked him about his. It turns out he had been traveling to somewhere in Africa to do some translation work. Although this young man’s English wasn’t perfect, it was amazing to see how we were still able to communicate so clearly.
Over our second cup of coffee, it became clear to all three of us that we had met this man for a reason and God had brought us together. Since we were on our way to a closed country, we were trying to be careful about fully sharing the purpose of our travels – so we didn’t bring our faith up at all. However, this man did. Completely out of the blue, he told us that he was interested in religions. He then went on to say that his grandmother was a devout Christian – something that is very rare to find in China. He said how the religion had always interested him. At this point, we knew we had to go deeper into this topic with him.
We ended up sharing our faith and hearts for Jesus with him, and he asked many questions. He said he believed in God, but sometimes struggled to put his faith in someone he could not physically see. One of my friends knew someone who had struggled with the same thing, and she was able to share a little about that with him. We could tell that this man was hungering for something more. He wanted Jesus. And we were put in his path for a reason – we met him for a reason. We were able to answer some of the questions that he may never have been able to get an answer to in China – a country with extremely limited spiritual freedoms.
This man didn’t give his life to Jesus in that moment. Nothing extremely profound happened. It was just a conversation. But it was a conversation in which this young man was able to go deeper into his curiosity about who Jesus was. It was a conversation that brought people from two completely different parts of the world together to talk about the Savior of the world. And I trust that Jesus is working in this man’s heart…I trust that Jesus will continue to reveal himself to this man. And I trust that Jesus is doing this for the entire country of China. We may not see it, but we have to believe it.
This moment taught me that God can show up anywhere, when you least expect it. Going into Asia, this moment was so needed. A lot of what we will be doing in Asia will have to do with finding our own ministries and building relationships with people. And God gave us this moment to show us how very possible this will be, we just have to say yes to the opportunities He puts in front of us.
…blog to come about our first week and a half in Vietnam later today :).
