I was sitting on the steps outside the hostel. It was dark out, but the cool air of the night felt so good. It was an enjoyable atmosphere but my heart was aching so badly. I felt so alone. Why? There were 6 other girls right inside that I had been living with all month. I was staying at a hostel full of people. I felt like I couldn’t even get the words out to the Lord asking why I felt so alone.
The strain from UH month and moving around so much was starting to get to me. We had moved to 3 different cities within the week. The month was hard. I was tired physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
We really hadn’t seen much fruit from our ministry and I had just heard a story from a squad mate about a crazy encounter with the Holy Spirit that was brought upon a man he was evangelizing to at a park. I wanted this! I was so hugry for it! “God, where are you? It’s been so long since I encountered you in this way. I need help right now. I haven’t felt this alone on the Race yet. I want it to be me and you, but how can I when I feel so inadequate. I need something to affirm my faith in you.”
Whether I said those words outloud or in my head, the Spirit helped me get a prayer together. The Lord heard and He answered. About 30 seconds went by and a man walked out of the front door of the hostel, where I was sitting, and started to smoke a cigerette. I suddenly felt so at peace when he said “hello, where are you from?” This seems to be the way every conversation starts when you are travelling, but this made it easy to dig into what he was doing there.
His name was Christopher. He was actually a local there in Riga and was staying at the hostel because him and his wife were going through a divorce. As he was telling me this I could hear the sadness in his voice. Watching him sip back on beer and suck the cigerette between sentences, my heart broke. He shared that he was falling into a depression. He had struggled with it before and now he just feels so hopeless. He had a 2 year old daughter as well, whose name ironically is Jennifer.
I asked what he believed and he began to tell me how he was raised catholic but didn’t really enjoy it or see the value in it. Then he asked what I was doing there. Why had I travelled from America. Now I got to share! I got to share how the Lord brought me to this wonderful way of living and it was simply being in a love relationship with Him and going wherever He took me.
Christopher felt he had done too many bad things to deserve that love from the Lord. I got to share some of my testimony with him and he started to understand that the love of the Father goes beyond all sin! He knew that alcohol was just a covering and didn’t fix anything. From what I shared, he was figuring out that only the Lord could truly bring healing.
I then shared how just moments before, I too was feeling alone. That feeling isn’t forever gone once you find Jesus, there are still days where you feel alone and things are hard. But when you have Jesus, you KNOW that you’re never alone and He bring you that strength to get through the hard times. I started ministering to my own heart in this. I shared about the Holy Spirit and asked questions to help him see how much religion is involved in catholicism. That it isn’t about what we do, but a relationship through Jesus.
Now Christopher was very interested! He put his cigarette out, set his beer to the side and sat on the step to learn more. Shortly after our conversation started to go deeper, another man walks out. He was Korean and after listening to what we were talking about he decided to speak up and say he didn’t believe any of it. He was an atheist. His name was Yun Ho.
If you don’t remember, shortly before this I was crying out to God almost complaining that I hadn’t had any big evangelizing opportunities for a while. Well, He answered! Now I was sitting there talking to a drunk catholic and an atheist! “Oh Jesus, give me the words!”
The conversation continued to be very challenging, yet so good! I ended the conversation around 1am and told Christopher that we (my team and I) would be around the hostel. He was so excited there were more people to share this. He could have talked about it all night! He was so hungry for what we had to share.
The next morning we needed to pray into when to leave the hostel. We all felt we should stay. We kept hearing “look in front of you.”
Christopher and Yun Ho were our ministry there. We had been to several places and were worried about what our ministry was supposed to look like we were missing what was right there in front of us.
We continued looking for potential contacts in the area but through out the day we would see them in passing. Turned out that same morning Christopher and Yun Ho got their laptop and tablet stolen. This made it difficult to get time aside from looking and figuring out who could have possibly done it, to talk with them. But we trusted it was all in the Lord’s timing and all quickly saw how this was a perfect opportunity to be the light and shine light on the situation.
One of the girls on the team, Michelle, is also Korean. She has a younger brother at home that she had been missing dearly, and it turned out Yun Ho was the same age as Michelle’s brother. Michelle got to spend a lot of time with Yun Ho. She spent time encouraging him and showing him the light and love of the Lord that he didn’t believe . She spent hours with him, all while speaking in Korean, so this made it that much more special of a ministry opportunity.
I wish I could say there was a huge ending to our week there at the hostel ministering to these two young men. But I dont. Myself and a girl Naz got to take Christopher to coffee and have a very long conversation to help him just have someone to talk to about all he was going through. We were also able to share a lot about where the Lord has carried us. That God is pursuing him as well, and we believe He led us there that week specifically for him and Yun Ho.
I believe the Lord did touch his heart in many ways through us, and that both him and Yun Ho saw Jesus during their stay at Firefighter Hostel.
- Yun Ho was heading back to Korea the day we left there. He had been travelling for a few weeks through different countries in Europe. France being the main destination. He claims to be an atheist because he has felt pushed around and judged by the christians he has witnessed on the streets of Korea shouting out and throwing Bibles in peoples faces. He saw something was different with us and voiced how weird it was how at peace he felt with us around during everything with his laptop getting stolen.
- Christopher wasn’t sure where he was going to go or stay. There was a lot of heart ache with him of course, walking through a divorce and figuring out how to deal with his family being so broken. He voiced to me that he has a choice to go back, clean up his life, and hopefully it would work out. But he doesn’t want to put in the effort to give up drugs and fight through this hurt again. He knows the Lord is all needs. He told us he wants what we have but wasn’t ready for it.
Please join me in prayer for Yun Ho and Christopher to not forget the love and peace they experienced that week in Riga. That they don’t think it was us that brought this, but that Jesus used us to reach them that week. They will be encouraged when they think back and witnessed how living for the Lord can make you see circumstances so much differently. That they see the strength the Lord brought to us in the hard times we shared with them that we have walked through. That our obedience brought open doors for the Lord to start moving and working on our friends hearts. Pray they start to see how God is pursuing them and how much He loves them.
