Mission Made Possible

I have to write and tell you about such an awesome experience I just had. Today our schedule was personal devotions, intercession (just a time for prayer and for listening to what God has to say to us), and evangelism. When I first saw that evangelism was on the schedule I was so afraid and nervous. You might think this is funny because I have been going on mission trips for how many years bringing the Word of God, but this is the first time that I would go out by myself and try to evangelize. I was sooooo scared!! But we had a chance to intercede before we went out to Burnham park and tried to evangelize.

If you are wondering what intercession is, I did the same thing. Intercession is like a prayer that has 5 parts to it. The first part is to ask for forgiveness and to clean our hearts. The second part is to surrender to God and ask for his guidance. Third, take authority over our voices and the enemies’ voice. Four, is to pray for thanksgiving. The last part is to pray for us to obey whatever commandments God has given us through this prayer. And after we are done praying for those 5 things we sit in silence and see if God speaks to us in any way. I don’t think I have ever experienced God speaking to me directly but many people here have experienced it. They said it can happen through an audible voice, through songs or scriptures, or even just a strong feeling in your heart.

After our prayer we went around the circle and said what was impressed on us or any scriptures that came to mind. A few of us in my group were really nervous because we have never gone out and evangelized and prayed asking God guidance and impressions. After I prayed I just saw a vision of us going to the park and being really friendly and building a friendship first before any God-ly talking happened. Someone else in our group though of the scripture 1 Timothy 4:12 “Don’t let anyone look down on your because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity”. So with this verse it settled some of the anxious feelings about us youngsters going to the park and talking with people. After our intercession I was so excited and I felt like this might be something that I could be good at! And of course, me being a foreigner, it’s easy to start conversations here and Filipinos are so friendly to begin with. I just say do you know where a good restaurant is, where is this place, tell them where I’m from and what I’m doing here and the conversation is easy from there.  

When it was time to go I started to get really nervous again and I just prayed to God that he would give me words to say in these kinds of situations and that I would just find the person with an open heart to talk to about God so I wouldn’t look like a crazy lady! So I had Cherrie (one of my roommates), and Ate Tin (one of the staff) in my group and we set out looking for people to evangelize to. We were standing around and I saw a couple walking with a little golden retriever puppy. At first I was like you guys lets go talk to them so I can pet their puppy!!! But then I was like okay ash, ya gotta focus now. And we walked into the park and saw the couple again sitting on the side of the sidewalk and I asked if I could pet their puppy. We got to talking and I met a really cool girl named Kay. She is 25, working from home teaching English to Korean, Chinese, and some other nationalities on Skype. I told her about why I was in the Philippines and YWAM and the DTS and she was really interested. I asked her if her and her boyfriend went to church and she said she believes in the bible and God and has wanted to go to church but didn’t know where to go and her boyfriend was a non-believer, so I invited her to church with us on Sunday.  She said she has been wanting someone to talk to about Godly things and its hard because her boyfriend doesn’t understand where she is coming from.

You know, I wasn’t preaching exact words of out Gospel or proclaiming from the mountain tops or anything but it was really such a great experience to give my testimony and have someone listen, and talk about Gods plan for us. And just throw in there if they want to accompany us to church that we’d be happy to have them! Before parting ways she said that she would love to have some of our classmates over for dinner so she could cook Korean and Filipino for us. So I gave her my phone number and she said she will text me when she gets another phone on Saturday. So I’m really praying that we build a relationship there and that we can get her connected with a church here!

Today was the first day that I really felt Gods hand on my life. I prayed going into this evangelism to give me the wisdom and knowledge of how to approach this kind of situation because I was so nervous. So I think God led me to someone who I could build a friendship with first and talk about having pets, American culture, school, work, and then finally our relationships with God. God really gave me someone who was willing to listen to what I had to say, someone who wanted to have a conversation, and someone that had an open heart to hear more about God. I was really in awe after this experience and I’m so excited for our next Tuesday evangelism day!! And I really really pray that Kay will text me and end up going to church with us! :)