Recently I was blessed to go on a vision tour to Asia as part of the Discipleship Program.
Being able to go on this trip and see the work that God is doing on the mission field and that my life has been a part during my time in the Discipleship Program was an amazing privilege and a very impactful experience for me.
God used my time there to give me a greater understanding of the difference that the hope of Christ can make in the lives of those who are without hope and in desperate need. As we travelled to different areas of the mission field I saw much hopelessness and suffering and was reminded that Jesus is the only true Hope.
I was challenged by the example of the missionaries I met there whose joy was to serve and be the hands and feet of Jesus to those around them, whose love for Jesus shines on their faces and whose unity and oneness enables them to effectively serve as a team. Men like one of the brothers we met who is serving in a slum ministry. This pastor has given his life to living amongst and serving the hurting and needy people in the slum. When we met *Pastor David during our visit there, I was struck by his love for the Lord and his dedication to reaching the people around Him with Jesus’ love. He and his wife live with just the bare necessities of life in the same condition as those they are ministering to in the slum.
Pastor David is the only Christian in his family. He shared with us how as a young person he got into the wrong crowd and his friends were a bad influence on his life. He was involved in lots of parties and drinking. A pastor came to his area looking for young men to mentor and to send to Bible School. He met David and some of his friends and began sharing about God’s love with them. The pastor asked them why they were destroying their lives and told them that God loved them and had something better for them to do. God used that conversation to speak to David’s heart and he made the decision to commit his life to Christ.
Now Pastor David is able to minister to other people who are living in the same hopeless condition that he was. We had the opportunity to attend a house church that he is leading in the slum and meet some of the believers who are there. It was a blessing to worship alongside them and know that even though our cultures are worlds apart and we don’t speak the same language, we can still worship the same God together as brothers and sisters in Christ.
*For security reasons name has been changed.