In a lot of the countries when we show up people are
intrigued about foreigners coming to visit and stay for a month. The more remote the location, the more
interest people seem to have probably because they don’t have many visitors. They also usually want to hear what you have
to say and if they believe in God they want you to run church services. Here it has been a similar experience. We’ve been able to lead a couple Bible
studies and the Sunday church services since we arrived.
Whenever we get to a new country it always takes time to
learn about the culture and find out about the local church though. We’ve seen a wide range of people’s maturity
in the faith and it helps to get a feel for where people are at when we try to
minister and lead services. Sometimes
people barely believe in Jesus at all and sometimes people are crazy about Him and
just want to soak up more of Christ in whatever way they can.
Here in our village, we’ve been told that people were introduced
to Christianity and became Christians twenty years ago. However, as we started to talk with people
and explore what it means to be a follower of Christ and who Jesus is, we
quickly learned that they are still in an infancy stage in their beliefs. It makes sense because although someone may
have came and preached the Gospel twenty years ago, there hasn’t been anyone to
stay and disciple people. As far as we
know, pastor Hem is the only one in the village who has a Bible, and one of the
few people who can read. The Asli people
have their own language and no Bible has been translated into it and very few
people even speak the official language of the country, let alone can read it.
So as we started to probe and ask questions about who Jesus
is, what His life was like, why he had to die, we started to see it on people’s
faces that they didn’t know who He was. Many had never heard about Jesus’ life on earth and they had no idea why
He came and died. I was reminded of The
Great Commission and how the last thing that Jesus tells us is to go make
disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything He had taught. Sure we could show up and be another
foreigner to preach the Gospel and have people once again say they wanted to be
Christians and pray the sinner’s prayer.
But after we left they would be right back at square one, not understanding
who God is and the truths that are presented in His word.
I know God is bigger than even the Bible. I know that He can reveal himself through
whatever means He chooses and isn’t limited to words on a page. I know He gives us dreams, visions, and speaks
to our hearts. I believe He can also use
other people in our lives to speak to us. I believe God has brought us here to share what we know about Him. To not boast about convert numbers and
actually spend time discipling people who need to know more about Him.
