I’m a little behind on my blogs so I apologize to my friends and family back home! So much has been happening so quickly that I haven’t been able to sit down with solid WiFi and write out what the Lord has been doing. As I have said before in my past blog I am sorry for the terrible grammar but I’m always going to be raw and open with what I write, trying to translate how I speak into words is tough! Bare with me please!
Back to our travel day going to Shanghai I got on my first ever international airplane to travel to another country for the first time in my life. There’s going to be a lot of first on this adventure and I’m so excited for each one! First of all it’s one thing to hear people say things and another to actually experience them..one of those things is being 6’8 on an airplane to China! Wow! It’s been a week here and there are already to many stories to tell about me hitting my head on things! I haven’t been on very many airplanes but every time I always seem to get the middle sit and I knew going on this plane ride for 11 hours it would be the same, I found myself between two Chinese men snug as a bug ready to begin this mission!
The man to my left didn’t say one word to me the whole time but the man to my right was named Jay. By the grace of God on an airplane with quite a few people Jay spoke fairly good English. Right away, God was showing me that every moment is ministry and if we look at the big picture to much we will miss the little opportunities He provides. It would have been so easy for me to put my headphones on and watch a movie for the whole plan ride but in that moment God needed a seed to be planted and He chose me to be that vessel. I thank God for Jay!
So him and I began to talk over the next few hours about each other’s life’s and how we ended up in this moment, he was going to visit family and works in America with a wife and kids and I am here to tell you about Jesus….I didn’t say that but definitely wanted to!! He was in the process of becoming a citizen and I was just so amazed at how open he was in the moment about anything we would talk about! He was a very educated man with his doctorates in some field I don’t remember but has spent the good majority of his life in school. There was a hole in his heart that I could see and he made it clear that he knew he was missing something about life. In our talk I was able to plant small seeds about my faith to him which really opened the door right up for me to share the gospel!
He told me he knew about Jesus and has been to some bible studies but was a man of facts and needed to know for sure God was real before asking Him into his life. I know God will answer that prayer! The talk continued and he shared with me the hurts that have taken place in his life by church people telling him that God hasn’t revealed Himself to him because he was doing something wrong. That really broke my heart. So I apologized on behalf of the church and told him that he couldn’t do enough things right before God In order to please Him. Thats why Jesus came to open the door for us to have a relationship with Him and by God’s grace alone he would be saved if he believed that Christ died for His sins on the cross and confessed his need for Jesus. God would change him from the inside out and take away the weight of this world that he was feeling. I think in that moment I was able to show Jay a part and purpose of the body of Christ that is love! Jay told me he wanted a relationship like I had with God more than anything and I pray he follows up that desire! One day I will see Jay again in heaven and I will rejoice for eternity!
