Desire of Ages 311.2 “God’s ideal for His children is higher than the highest thought can reach.”
This last week in BYT has certainly been higher than my finite mind ever could have imagined! So right here I will try my best to tell – though words cannot describe it!
“Every day will I bless thee, and I will praise Thy name for ever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and His greatness is unsearchable!” Psalms 145:2,3
The devil slammed us the entire week before evangelism.
- DuPe committed suicide on Sabbath,
2. The funeral, the burial, the sadness, all day Sunday,
3. BeLoo was at the point of death when we took her to the hospital.
4. Rain persisted just when we needed to go to other places.
5. BletJhaw’s 2 year old son got sick and came down with a temperature of 105.9!
6. Then just before we had to leave to pick up Pastor Jimmy, the Baptist people who had just moved in up the hill from us – moved in on us and put on a “Christian” rock concert just across the river from our compound. It was loud and wild. Furthermore it seemed that all the village people were in attendance. What if they kept doing this while we were having our meetings? Nobody would want to come to church, plus you cannot even think straight while all that was going on!
We brought Pastor Jimmy to BYT on Thursday afternoon. He had been in BYT before. He went right to work visiting people and becoming their friend. He is so enthusiastic, has a winning personality, and knows how to speak to the mountain people.
The Steck family arrived, with their piano and special music!
My best friend, Lisa Sharon came with Travis and her seven sweet Karen children! Five media people came in the new production truck with Daniel Bair, Jonathan Hill, and 3 other young men! Later we picked up a pastor and his wife from Illinois. – so many visitors like BYT has never seen! It was a wonderful re-union for the missionaries, as we had not seen each other for a long time. We prayed together and each day during the meetings, we split up in groups and visited other villages on Monday Tuesday and Wednesday.
Pastor Jimmy met with the people who wanted to be baptized and taught them. (I had imagined only 2-4 would be baptized). He also had a special training seminar on Wednesday for all the church leaders and organized the elders, deacons, deaconesses, clerk, treasurer, women’s ministry etc and taught them what to do. These things our little church never knew about. He asked us to expand our church and make it 2 sections larger, as more people attend when it is bigger. He met with the principle of the government school and she wanted to send the Christian students to us for worship 3 days a week – the ones who wanted to worship God and not Buddha. She also wants someone to teach English in her school. (We plan to do it)
For Friday Pastor Jimmy planned a special Thanksgiving breakfast for everyone. All day Thursday the people leveled the ground on 3 levels opposite the church, constructed the tables bowels and spoons from bamboo, and prepared the food. And the people came in droves! I imagined Jesus feeding the 5000! My joy knew no bounds!
We fell in love with Pastor Leonardo and his wife Vanessa at the very first sight. What a humble, godly couple they are and so encouraging to BletJhaw and I! They said they were changed for life and would never be the same again after witnessing the mission work being done in BYT and surrounding villages. They are so supportive beyond words! They had made a real sacrifice of their time, money, and energy, to travel all the way from Illinois for only a little over one week, just to preach in our little village! Pastor Leonardo did all the preaching, morning and night. He gave the people a simple, clearer vision of Jesus, his love, His second coming and heaven. We did not have just 2 or 3 in attendance! Away with that thought! The morning attendance was a little less, but in the evening meetings there were over 40- 50 every evening and then on Sabbath we just did not count them all! They came from 4 different villages maybe more. I felt the light from the throne room of God being shed abroad over all in attendance, the rays of which will spread out wider and farther until Jesus comes!!!
Finally Sabbath came, the highest Sabbath Day of my life. The little church was packed and others outside. The special music, the prayers, the piano, the songs, the sermon, filled with power from the Holy Spirit telling the people that they don’t want to miss out on heaven, and the 3 large video cameras catching every single word, was just too wonderfully amazing to put into words! Then we proceeded to the river for the baptism. People swarmed all down both banks of the river and across the bridge. There were not two people baptized, not four, but 16 precious Karen people baptized that day. Seems so strange to cry tears of joy. But when your cup of joy is full and it overflows and runs all over the place, unbidden tears come out. I watched one person after another follow each other into the river that day. People that I had preached to countless times. People that I loved so much. People that I had prayed for – my joy was intense.
You know I am so glad that God gave us human beings the job of soul winning! He could have sent the Angels to do it, but think of all the joy we would miss! I am told that in heaven our joy will be even greater as we meet those who are there because of our sacrifice for souls. I’m so glad we will then have immortal bodies then, otherwise I don’t think I could live underneath such an enormous cup of joy!
ChaPoe is so happy to be a member of the SDA Church at last! He dropped his membership from the Catholic church.
So . . . if your first priority in life is not soul winning, than I ask you to make it such. Until then you cannot know true joy!
