I've heard it takes one day to recover for every hour of time change you experience when traveling. Returning home from the Middle East meant 8 hours of jet lag recovery, which I think was pretty accurate.
After 6 weeks overseas, I feel like it's taken another 6 weeks to get back to a sense of "normal." But here we are, a few days away from the kickoff of another school year, and I realize I haven't spent much time blogging about the summer I had in the land we in Cru call "4th Journey."
This is the 4th country I’ve had the privilege to travel to in the last 2 years, and what I continue to find in every city I visit is that people are searching for purpose and hope in their lives. They are searching for something to put their trust in. Most put their trust in their government, or themselves, or their religion, or their family.
There are many stories I could share with you about students that we met and conversations that were had. I will tell you one story, about a man I will call "E." Our mission team met E early in the summer. Some of the guys on the team noticed that E had a tattoo in his arm that is from a video game, and decided to strike up a conversation with him. The guys talked about video games, and also got into several spiritual conversations about what E believes. One day, Troy, a student from a school in Wisconsin, had some free time. He decided to call up E and see what he was up to.
E was free and wanted to meet up! Troy knew that we only had a few days left in our city before we left for America. He decided to take a chance and be honest with E and share his life story with him. In the past, Troy had a serious drug problem, and nothing in his life made him happy. Troy explained that when he found out who Jesus was and what he had done for Him on the cross, he realized that everything he was searching for could be found in Christ. The hope and joy and purpose he was looking for could be found through a relationship with God. E was amazed; he never heard anything like that before!
E also had a history with drugs and was searching for joy and purpose in his life. E and Troy walked to E's house, and along the way, Troy explained the Gospel to him. E said he had a desire to follow Jesus, and asked Christ to come into his life right then and there. A few days later, E was able to meet the long-term team of missionaries in our city, and go to church for the first time in his life.
I hope that in the coming months and years, as I stay in touch with the long-term team in our city, that I will hear stories of how God uses E to reach his city and country with the Gospel.
What a powerful story of God’s work. It was encouraging to see our students take steps of faith and share their beliefs- but also to build bridges with people who believe something different than what they believe. Building these bridges because we love others as God has loved us, was our goal this summer, and should be our goal in and every day no matter where we are.
Our team had spent the summer prayer and fasting for God to work. Towards the end, our students were starting to realize that even though we were praying for big things, we might not see God bring someone to faith in Christ while we were in country. We had many conversations about the purpose of our trip: to plant seeds of the Gospel and to wait expectantly for God to grow them. We are not in control of the growth. We cannot reason someone into believing in Jesus; If we can "convince" someone into believing, someone else can "convince" them out of it. I think we all understood in a new light the "definition" of successful witnessing: stepping out in faith in the power of the Holy Spirit and leaving the results to God. We really understood this concept in a new way this summer. After talking through this, we saw E make a decision, which was like the cherry on top of an already awesome summer!
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