Stateside

Dear Precious Handfuls:

Here’s my final wrap-up. It’s been more than two months since I returned back to stateside from the field. I’ve worked at my job 7 days straight at times, squeezed in time between commutes to do grocery shopping, do advanced laundry (my shirts retained several stubborn grease spots from my Southeast Asia excursions I had to look up how to treat), recharged as fully my sleep and energy meter as possible, and dealt with how to wrap up my condo repairs and followed up on my Aunt’s Christian funeral arrangments (she passed away October 13th @ 6:49pm).
It’s time I share lessons learned after I forgot everything (the essence of education). Also, I know some of you couldn’t make it to the November team sharing.

Observations in field:

1. Someone asked me about role of missionaries in field if local believers seem the most effective force propagating church plant within a people group.
   After visiting student ministries, I saw the power and beauty of testimony between peers in fellowship with my own eyes. A student shared about how she is most grateful for God’s love (out of all His blessings), while another working alumni working for a local prestigious bank shared about being persecuted by his coworkers who saw him praying during lunch but he still persisted in praying. A church member shared about how her relationship with God made her notice that what she formerly think was good was actually sinful and how her friends noticed her change for the better after her conversion. It’s an evangelist’s dream to see faith being passed on by local converts to the whole village and community.
   However, I also saw villages that’s proclaimed “Christian” was made possible from the hard works of foreign missionary many years ago. These individuals came with no superb language proficiency nor life skills to fly in a foreign culture, but they brought evangelistic shows and movies into villages who does not know Jesus, and they raised awareness of people groups and brought resources in from organizations passionate about church planting to build schools and churches, and dug wells for drinking water. If you remember reading the testimony of Joy from the Kuy village in our updates, he noted the blood, sweat, and tears of a previous foreign missionary who came to set up tents in the village for organized evangelistic programs and wondered why anyone would care enough to come to his village and do things for his people.

   I think dedicated full time ministers are a blessing where God moved individuals to be and placed in any given community. Maybe we all read the Bible regularly and can encourage one another with His Word and spur one another to doing good works, but pastors, ministers, and missionaries allowed themselves by God’s calling to be set apart and to focus on planting and building His church with the Kingdom perspective, whether in our own country or in midst of another people group.

2. Follow up converts, community-building, and church-planting are important after conversion, but if your role is evangelism, do what God calls you to do well and trust God will send others to disciple and be hospitable to His sheep.
   After my Cambodia trip, I visited friends in another country who introduced me to a people group village that’s now considered Christian. The restaurants of the people group had cups printed with “Jesus loves you” and the village recognized as a Christian village with Christian funeral with a pastor preaching about the world is not our home. But after the funeral ended, the community put away the decor and a lot of men gathered afterwards to set up for gambling, because the government is more tolerant about gambling after funerals (for the occasion not be too sad, and for the family who’s staying around watching over the dead body not be too scared or bored). Just because a people group might be considered “reached” doesn’t mean all individuals possess the self-discipline and encouragement from community to actively live out their faith in light of knowing God. That is the same way even in our city and community. God has no grandchildren, each must make our choices to deny ourselves and take up our cross daily.

3. In Phnom Penh, part of our team’s duties is to help encourage the alumni to come back to church. How many of us know those who we fellowship and do Bible study regularly as students together every week fell away from church after graduation? Some believers fellowship and do Bible studies when everyone’s doing it, but once graduated, it may be enticing to follow along, to do and want exactly what other coworkers do and want. Christian students have shared they felt pressured to go along with the hometown community when they go home, go with family to bring offering to pagodas, celebrate Buddhist holidays with the relatives because they will be criticized or ostracized by their home communities for not conforming to the religion embedded in their culture.

   If we don’t watch out for one another, some seeds will be eaten by birds or take shallow root in the thistles instead of growing strongly in fertile soil. For those who had fallen away, if they had genuinely accepted Jesus as personal Lord and Savior at a time in their life, God’s Word said we can trust Our God will go after His lost sheep and receive all prodigal sons who return one day (as long as they hadn’t commit the unforgivable sin which is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit).
   Bringing God’s Word into a people group is just barely biting into the skin of an apple. The whole picture is a lot more.
   But I want to put in a word about being understanding and kind to Christians with different roles God called each of us to do. For myself, every time I’m being sent by our church to East Asia, I could always find people who have never heard of the gospel before and I’ll tell them who God is and what is Christianity. People have questioned about proper follow up for those who accepted Christ during mission trips. For my part as a short term missionary, I have to know my place, which is to support local missionaries and churches in whatever their needs are, and help them safely raise awareness so they can have more prayers and access to more resources to continue the work they do. I focus on channeling converts to local ministers and keep in touch when possible to remind them to keep attending church.

4. When locals have access to the world wide web:

   I’ve had locals asking what’s our thoughts of Houston deporting illegal immigrants as they check the BBC news and know more about our country politically than we do. Gosh, my students even know who Victor Wembanyama is (Go Spurs)! I’ve had local students telling us of plans to apply for schools in the UK, Australia, Japan, etc and can readily move to a foreign country for a chance at a more promising future while I’ve not imagined moving away from Houston unless anything major happen in life. The challenge for this next generation of people groups is not only help them get access to information, but also educate them about discerning correct, factual information and how to responsibly share information.

Prayer items:

1. Pray for the attendees of my Aunt’s funeral to think about the message the pastor had shared. Most of her friends were made from the 30+ years she had been in the restaurant business in San Antonio, there’s former coworkers as well as customers from every restaurant worked or owned. Most restaurant owners can’t afford to close business on Sundays to attend church, so any chance of hearing the gospel is very good, even if it’s at a funeral.
   Picture is “lemon chicken” served at the repast. It’s an Asian American dish Chinese immigrants made for American tastebuds that I grew up eating. My Aunt fed many people over the years, sent people off to face various trials and challenges in life with a full stomach. Her recipe is the best, it is crisply light battered chicken breast, to be dipped in sauce made from authentic lemon juice. 😋 

2. Pray for student So Thay (pronounced So-Tie):
   So Thay has been living in the dorm for 2 years, participates in weekly bible studies, accountability prayer groups, evening fellowship and Sunday service, but he is still not a believer. He shared with me that he’s concerned about how becoming a Christian will be perceived by his home Buddhist community and also he observed how many students follow suit to believe as a group but he wants to make sure the faith is really his own before he makes the personal, individual step to accept Jesus. He attributes many things to be blessings from God, and he said he does ask God to reveal Himself to him personally. I told him to not give up, to continue to seek Him, because He truly is the source of all blessings. I hope the day won’t be too far away when the Almighty God answers in his personal reality and gives him the faith to believe and the courage to keep the faith within his home community.

3. Pray for the young professionals/alumni of the dorm ministry to find joy in their service and encouragement from community:
   90% of the dorm graduates became Christian over the past 20+ years of ministry. But only a handful still continue to attend church after graduation, even less serve in the church. Those who serve had long commutes to church from their home, coming to evening student programs after a stressful, exhausting day at work, play soccer with the students to build mentoring relationships, and some families even have several children of their own to figure out this parenting thing. They have to be the mature adults taking care of students, while scarcely have time to fellowship with understanding peers to lift up one another.

   Pictured is a local brother who had translated for all 6 of us on the team during our talks, came with us and took care of students while we visited the villages, played sports with the boys in the evening. The day we distributed school supplies, sang songs, made crafts with children in two villages, after translating sermon and played with the kids, he laid down right in the middle of the floor of the church building to catch a short snooze after the crowd dispersed. Serving is exhausting! A reminder for us to be gracious with one another, take rest when we need to (and have some fun!), lift up one another from burnt out while also looking outward and upward.

4. Pray/help me be a better auntie to my friends’ kids. There are a lot of precious kids in our community.

Lastly, a blurb on the power of God.

After Cambodia, my friends who are serving as workers in a nearby country graciously took me along with them to a people group’s Christian funeral where they are friends with a family member of the deceased. Though I’m pretty much a deaf-mute there as well (I can’t speak, read, understand, or recognize anything of the culture and language), God has not rendered me useless. He gave me the opportunity to share the gospel with a foreigner sitting beside me a the funeral. Later at the burial, a small choir assembled to sing a worship song together. As I had arrived early, I had time to ask (gesture) for a copy of the music sheet from them ahead of time. Praise God, my heart leaped for joy as I saw the song sheet is in music notation I CAN read, and the lyrics are written in phonetics (thanks to missionaries of the past who had converted the people group’s oral language into written Latin letter alphabet). I know I don’t understand the song lyrics, but I do know “Ye Su” must be Jesus, and God gave me the chance to contribute my voice and serve as part of the worship team singing praises to Him in a fellow Christian sister’s funeral, across language and culture. Once God’s worship team, always God’s worship team. Don’t worry, don’t be afraid, we are one family in Christ. God is the Almighty. He can use us even when we see ourselves incapable in every way. Like the boy with five loaves and two fish, the widow with two pennies, we surrender our talents and lay everything at His feet for His glory. He is God. What is impossible with men is possible with God.

Thank you for being a part of our journey together 2023. If the Lord wills, ta-ta till my next STM trip… or I can be supporting yours when you contact me for mission support as well! All glory be to Christ our king. It’s time to commit to a Bible reading plan at the beginning of the year if you haven’t already. It’s important we know God’s Word so that we pray for what God said, not what we think God said. Let’s build our structure on solid ground. Amen? :)