This past weekend our squad traveled to Laos for a couple days to renew our visas. Even though we were there for such a short period of time, God used a encounter with a young man to rejuvenate my spirt. It can be so easy for me to forget sometimes how God is working and the places he is working.
Monday night Rae, Alex and I were out walking the streets of Vientiane, Laos. We saw a homeless man and stopped to buy food for him. While waiting for the food we started talking to a Laos man named Ying. After a bunch of small talk he ended up inviting us to go to a concert with him. We told him we wouldn’t be able to make it and said good-bye to him. As we got back to the hostel all three of us got the feeling that we needed to go back and find our friend Ying. It had been 20 minutes since we had last seen him, but of course as we started looking for him God led us to the store he was coming out of. He later told us that night that after we left he started praying that God would lead us back to him.
We then headed with him too the concert, as we were walking I kept praying about how we were going to communicate Gods love to Ying. During the concert we noticed Ying wasn’t drinking and Alex asked him why. He told Alex that he had just become a Christian and he had made a personal choice that alcohol was not important too him. It was so exciting to find out he was a believer, when this whole time i was asking God how to show Christ to him.
After the concert we were able to talk with him for a couple hours about how he had become a believer. He came to know the Lord six months ago from other missionaries sharing the gospel with him. We were able to sit with him, discuss the Bible and attempted to answer his questions. At one point he was telling me how hard it is for a rich man to get into heaven, where Jesus gives the example of a camel going through the eye of the needle. He ended up telling me the story using a elephant instead of a camel, which to me seems even harder.
I walked away that night so fired up and excited. It brought be so much joy to be able to sit with a english speaking Laos man and talk about Jesus. It was so great to be reminded that God really does plan out every detail. I am seeing more and more of how sometimes we are just called to be obedient. It might be as little as turning around while walking, stoping at a store, or taking to a random person. God is always taking to us and we need to be obedient to his voice. We would have never met Ying without the homeless man and God putting the desire in Rae and Alex’s heart to buy food for him. We so often put a limit to Gods greatness and all the places he is working.
I ask that all of you keep Ying in your prayers as he figures out how to live his life for God. He really is wanting to serve God completely, but is not sure how that looks like in his life. I will likely never see Ying again in my life or maybe our paths will cross one day. i do know for a fact that God placed Ying in my life that night to bring me hope and remind of his crazy greatness.
Thank you once again for all your prayers and support. God Bless each one of you!!!
