Teams return from Mozambique, Iceland, France, Nepal, Lesotho, Germany, and Australia!

Our January quarter schools just returned from outreach and they shared testimonies today about their 3 months in many, many different nations. Here are just a few of the many stories they shared! Enjoy!

In the Kimberley, the land in the north of Australia and hosts many Aboriginal communities, the Compassion DTS team worked with locals and saw a man set free from a bondage of fear. He had anxiety that kept him inside his house for 10 YEARS. He never once left during that decade. The team ministered to him, shared with him and prayed for him and he was set free. That evening he left his house again for the first time and attended the local church.

In South Africa, a pregnant woman in a township had been brutally beaten and her stomach stomped on. For weeks she felt no movement in her belly and she feared the worst- that her baby was dead. Team members from the Young People's DTS prayed for her, four people put their hands on her stomach. They felt the Holy Spirit bringing life to her again and within minutes the baby was kicking again.

In Nepal another YP DTS team was sharing the love of Jesus with local Hindu believers. They met two boys who shared that they were Hindu because their parents were. One of them showed the foreigners his bracelet with images of the Hindu gods. Then they shared about the love and power of Jesus and all of a sudden the boy's bracelet snapped. The two boys decided they want to follow this God and the team was able to give them a Bible in their own language.

That's just a little bit of how God is moving in the nations! What I find so encouraging is that these testimonies are from young people who are just figuring out their relationship with God themselves, we don't have to be pastors or evangelists or Christians for 20 years before God is able to move through us! He's awesome.

Getting God's Heart

I’ve been surprised lately… ministry has been really fruitful. It’s scary when a missionary says that fruitful ministry is taking her by surprise. But the fact of the matter is I’m just like everyone else – trying to figure out how to show people what the Father looks like. It’s not “easier” because I am a missionary. I am just doing it in a different country.

We all have to figure out what it looks like and how to do it.

Sharing the gospel.

I’ve heard many people reference St Francis of Assisi who said “share the gospel and if necessary use words." The first time I heard that I said “YEAH!!!” Because the gospel should be demonstrated. But I’ve mellowed my enthusiastic endorsement; too quickly do we use that as a way to hide. I think it is true that words are not enough. It pains my heart to listen to so many people week after week share that they were Christians, or were brought up in a Christian environment, but as an adult chose something else because what was being said and the way people were living did not match up. We must live out Holiness, because we love Him and want to look like Him. But I think it is also crucial that we use words, too. Or we will be chalked up as humanitarian do-gooders and our silence will confirm that God is superfluous in a world that just needs more random acts of kindness.

Our God is more than that.

That was a random tangent, but what I really wanted to share is that I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I AM DOING! I don’t have methodology or 90% success rate or any of that. I am not a super hero missionary but a goofy girl trying to figure it out as I go. But ministry has been so fruitful lately and I am literally puzzled, sitting here asking God "why?"

And I think simply it comes down to… desire. I genuinely desire to see people encounter God’s love and acceptance. It matters to me that people who are broken receive healing and restoration. I’m not doing it because I have to while secretly thinking about the 10 other things I’d rather be doing right now. Or maybe it’s just that one thing that ranks higher. Whatever the case may be, let’s be honest with ourselves, a lot of times we don’t see fruit because our heart is in other places, other things. And our time invested in other things, other people. At the end of the day something else is more important.

To be fair, sometimes the thing that’s hindering us is our own pain or need. We want to care, but we are still just trying to get filled ourselves. Over the last few weeks, (which have been some of the harder ones I’ve had to deal with) I have realized that at times the best thing we can do is… give anyway. Not because God doesn’t care about our hurt or our need, but because sometimes the way He wants to minister to us is as we minister His love to others. Counter-intuitive isn’t it? He is shocking, I know.

Now, luckily, whatever is getting in our way, whatever is causing the gap between what we’d like to see and what is really happening through our lives, the answer is not in forcing ourselves or “making” ourselves better. I believe it is to desire His heart, to ask for it, and to diligently seek it. And that may start with answering the painfully simple question: do we really want it?