As I pondered over her words and wondering what I should say to encourage her, I remembered Clive’s recent artwork.  Yes, the rose!!  “Jessica, do you know that Clive has been collecting trash so he could make a beautiful piece of artwork with it?”  I remembered Clive telling me that he wanted to do that to bring across the point that God can turn every trash into a masterpiece!  How true is this!  Clive, who is an amazing artist, took the pieces of trash and turned them into a beautiful rose!  If only we were to choose to lay down the trash in our lives at His feet, he too could take those trash and turn them into many amazing stories!  The only problem is – whose hands do we choose to release our trash to?  The devil or God?

I was really encouraged by Jessica because though she is still feeling depressed and discouraged with her current situation, she chose to allow herself to grow in her relationship with God.  It would have been so easy for her to want to give up and choose to go the other way.  However, she is now choosing to commit her life to God so he could turn it into an amazing testimony.  Even though Jessica is now still dealing with her problem, she is already testifying to her friends the awesomeness and goodness of God.  I know that God is going to use her story in such a powerful way to draw others to Him!

Through Jessica’s story, I myself am reminded that I should not allow the hard times in life to draw me away from God but rather, to allow those times to draw me even closer to Him.

As the saying goes – Tough times do not last but tough people do!  We know that God has called us to last!

Eagle

When I was a young Christian, I was really touched by the verse ‘Jesus wept’ in the gospel of John.  This shortest verse in the Book was such a powerful verse.  Who could have imagined that the Son of God would actually shed His tears for us?

However, as the years went by, it was as if my heart has become “hardened” and I began to take a verse that was once so powerful for granted.

Hurley’s picture served as a great and timely reminder for myself.  Would I remember that Jesus understands how I feel when I go through difficult times in my life?  I have to remember that I’m not alone - that Jesus sees and understands.  Most importantly, I know that Jesus is still weeping over our Chinese friends – the ones who are lost without Him; the ones who are hurting…..

Yesterday, I met a Christian sister, Susie who was sharing with me that she was feeling really depressed and today, I got a call from another sister, Jessica whom I have not seen for three months and I could barely hear what she was saying because she was crying over the phone.  She has met with a serious problem and was feeling lonely and afraid.

I was feeling a little discouraged and frustrated after I hanged up the call with Jessica.  I couldn’t understand why our Christian friends were all running into different problems and I was wondering how I could possibly help them!  However, as I quietened my heart before God, I was reminded of Hurley’s picture – The Heeler’s tears.  When our friends are hurting and lost, Jesus has never stopped weeping over them and I know that when his tears touch their broken hearts, His love is going to fill every emptiness in their hearts.  I know their Healer will make them whole.

I should not feel discouraged but to cry out to Jesus on my friends’ behalf – knowing that He is close to the brokenhearted and He will save those who are crushed in spirit.

My Heeler, thank you for your tears shed for me and my friends. 

Eagle

Some months ago, I felt a really strong desire to go shopping for some language books.  I picked up a Spanish language book and an Arabic one.  I do not know any Spanish or Arabic but I felt I had to get those books or I would lose sleep over it!  Before I knew it, I began to find myself telling all my friends that I would want to be able to speak at least twenty languages in my lifetime even though I didn’t even know where this idea or desire came from.  It was so out of the blue!

Last month during our winter session, we had the privilege to invite P. Kirk from the States to come share with us and during our last session with him, he wanted to prophesy and pray over each one of us.  P. Kirk prophesied some really amazing stuff over me but what really caught me by surprise was when he began to prophesy that God is going to use me greatly in the language world where I’ll be able to speak different languages.  That really hit me!  It suddenly dawned on me that even before I was given this prophecy, God has already birthed forth this desire in me a couple of months ago even though I had no clue how I came up with the idea of wanting to learn twenty languages in my lifetime!  This is such a powerful confirmation from God that this desire was all from Him.

I am so grateful that I had the privilege of picking up the Chinese language when I was very little and it is so awesome to see how God has used my language skill to bless our Asian friends.  I have had so many friends who shared with me how easy it is to relate to me because I could understand their heart language.

Although learning a new language is a lot of work, I am so happy to know that God has given me His key where I could unlock the language world where I could possibly be ministering to people of different nations and touching different lives through first touching their hearts by speaking their heart language!

God had to confuse the languages of the world when men tried to build the Tower of Babel in the O.T. but now God has turned that curse around for good where He is using the gift of languages to draw people of all nations back to Himself.  Maybe I’ll really end up speaking twenty languages in my lifetime or maybe I’ll eventually be able to speak only ten.  However, now that I know that God has entrusted this task to me to share His love to the ends of the earth, I will be faithful to prepare myself for the task ahead.

Eagle

That night, as I was looking through my schedule for the following day, I thought about my little conversation with Rozanne that morning and I asked myself this question, “Do I actually feel bored?”  My roommate, Amilah, was away in another city to visit a Chinese friend for Spring Festival and I’m all alone in our little apartment.  Do I feel bored?  My answer to my own question made me smile!  It was “no, not at all”.

One of the tasks that I had to accomplish this past week was to send out a quarterly report to my home church and one part of it was to do a self-assessment on my strengths and weaknesses.  As I was writing this report, it finally dawned on me that being self-disciplined is one of my assets.  I tend to know how to use my time efficiently.  I’m always able to do something useful with my time.

God has also been teaching me a lot about “multitasking”.  Even while we may be engaging in activities that do not seem to have a direct impact on the work we are doing, if we would surrender these activities to Him, He’ll use them to teach us something.  I was learning how to bike on my own the past week.  Sad to say that I wasn’t making any huge progress and feeling totally discouraged at some points, I feel that God was even using this to strengthen the inner man in me.  It’s so easy for me to just give up and stop trying but with each failure, I’m also learning to persevere and perseverance is definitely an essential attribute that we need to acquire if we want to last long in this field!  While I was on campus ground learning to fail miserably at biking, God was also consistently reminding me to keep lifting up the campus to Him while I was there.

Time is a precious gift from God!  Once it’s lost, it’ll never be found.  Are you bored?  Take time to call a friend to encourage him/her, read a good book, learn something new, etc!  If we are faithful to be good stewards of the resources He’s given us and are being intentional that we want to do everything for His glory, He can turn around even an ordinary and simple activity into something extraordinary to bless us and others.

Eagle

However, as I expected, Hurley kept assuring me that everything would be fine and he promised that he would do his best to ensure that I would not end up with a bad fall.  It wasn’t hard for me to believe Hurley.  All it took was a simple faith.  I knew I could trust Hurley to keep his word.  After knowing him all this while, I knew he would do all he could to help me.

I was reminded of a story in the Book where Peter was excited to walk on water.  However, when he saw the wind, he was afraid and he began to sink.  He had forgotten who Jesus is!  He had forgotten that Jesus could and would protect him from sinking.  Peter just focused on the wind and he began to sink.  He didn’t believe that Jesus had the power to save him!

I feel that for me, riding a bike is as good as Peter walking on water.  I have a lot of fear that I need to overcome. Yet it helps me so much when I know that Hurley would be there to guard me from falling off the bike when the thought of having a bad fall paralyzes me.  If I can trust a good friend, how much more can I trust  the God of the universe whom we can rely on AT ALL TIMES!!  God will never fail us.

My life in Christ has created many opportunities for me where I could exercise my faith by stepping out into the unknown.  The future has also held many uncertainties where there was nothing I could do but to learn to walk by faith.  These uncertainties are also the very opportunities for me to learn to step out in faith to “walk on water”.  Although “walking on water” is a scary experience, I would remind myself who Jesus is and that he is with me at all times!  He will never let me sink.  He will protect me and save me!  His Word is trustworthy!  I know my God can be trusted!

Eagle

Although I’ve been a Christian for fifteen years, I’ve never completed the reading of the entire Old Testament before.  The only few times where I tried to, I was always stuck at the book of ‘Exodus’ where the Israelites were still stuck in Egypt.  As a result of that, I’m always a little confused whenever I have to address events in the OT with our Asian friends because I did not know a lot of the history.

I’m really thankful that Clive and Amilah are also excited to read the OT with me and our goal is to complete the entire reading before we fly home in May this year!  We would read a book or two each week and then get together every Wednesday to discuss what we’ve learned!

I feel that I’ve learnt so much from all the readings that we’ve done thus far.  Although the OT is a record of OLD events, it opens my eyes to a brand NEW world!  Most importantly, I now have a NEW revelation of what an awesome and merciful God we are worshipping!  There may be many things that seem confusing in the OT and even events that took place that I can’t make any sense of (eg. Why God allowed certain “good” people to die) but yet, I feel that God is teaching me to trust Him for all things even though when life doesn’t make sense sometimes!  It’s all about obedience and trust!

I’m now totally “addicted” to my reading and in fact, I’m already running ahead of the planned schedule for each week’s reading.  I know that God is using the OLD to teach me something NEW about Him, about myself, about people and about life.

As we enter into the NEW year and leaving behind things of the OLD, I could also now see how God has allowed certain things to happen in the past year to prepare me better for the new challenges ahead in the upcoming year. 

If we place the OLD things into His hands, He can make them NEW!!

Eagle

It is so easy to feel lonely and homesick when one falls ill in a foreign land.  However, I would’ve never known that I have had such true friends have I not been down with this fever.

This is definitely not the first time that I’ve not been doing well physically since the year began but God has opened my eyes this time round to see the great friends that He’s put into my life who have been a great blessing to me!  My friends are a sign of His faithfulness to me!

I have been blessed with a very caring leader who has shown me great patience and has never failed to encourage me especially during days when I fell sick and needed a kind word to cheer me up.  There are also other friends like Hurley who is on my team who has been an awesome friend and brother to me!  These were the people who’ve stood by me!  God has also reminded me of friends from afar who genuinely care for me too!  There were people who wrote a word of encouragement to me or gave me a call when they heard I was not feeling well.  These are the people I called my FRIENDS!!

Even my Asian friends like Jessica (who was our first sister to join the Family this year) was really sweet to keep checking on me to see how I was doing and if I needed any help. Her kind words and prayers really encouraged me!

Although things like this may seem like a small deal, it means a lot to me especially when I am all alone in a foreign land.  An adversity can be a blessing in disguise!  I am grateful for the fever that has helped me realize that I do have wonderful friends who love me and care about me!

Prov 16:24 says “Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones”.

Eagle

Decembers have always been a time of mixed emotions for me. It marks the end of a year but at the same time, it marks the welcoming of a new year! Most importantly, this is a time where I’m reminded of God’s love for me – I was saved on Christmas Day fifteen years ago.

I’m excited about the upcoming days despite feeling a little nervous about the busy schedule that lies ahead. I know that just as God has saved me in the month of December, He is going to reveal His love to many others this December too. I am already believing for a great harvest! I trust that many of our Chinese friends would also experience His love in a very powerful and yet personal way this Christmas.

For a long period of time, the enemy has deceived many Chinese people into believing that Christmas is a western holiday and that Santa Claus is the reason for this season. It is our prayer that many of our friends will get to hear the real message this season – that they would know that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world! He came to be born as a baby to die for all mankind…..including the Chinese people.

As we approach this important holiday, let us remind ourselves that this is not just another holiday where we get to enjoy a great feast, receiving gifts or even spending time with our families and friends. While these are all important traditions of the holiday, let us not forget to invite Jesus Christ to all that we are doing! He is the “Birthday Boy” – how can we go on celebrating His birthday when the “Birthday Boy” Himself is not present? May the true spirit of Christmas brings you great peace and joy. Eagle

In less than two weeks, we witnessed the new birth of another sister, Apple!  Apple was the girl who has witnessed God’s healing sometime ago.  And the cool thing was, Jessica got to play her part in helping Apple choose to walk this journey of faith.

Last Saturday, Jessica and Apple got to walk back to their dormitories together and on the way back, Apple was sharing with Jessica some of her fears about becoming a Christian. Jessica was patient to share with her her own fears and how God has helped her overcome those fears and lies.  Jessica’s words left such a great impact on Apple that night that it totally changes her destiny.  The next day, Apple decided to join the family!

It really blesses my heart whenever I witness a Chinese friend sharing the good news with a fellow Chinese.  I’m excited for them all to catch the passion of spreading the good news!  There is so much power when they share the good news with their “own people”.  They are able to relate to each other heart-to-heart!  There is a “territory” in their hearts that perhaps a foreigner like myself will never be able to reach.

May more and more Chinese believers rise up to reach the Asian people!  There is hope for this great nation.

Eagle

We sat down to have lunch with Peach and Yangming and it was really good.  Yangming has been faithfully attending our weekly Bible study and she’s so close to joining the family.  We invited Peach to also join Yangming at our next Bible study which she totally expressed a huge interest in coming!

The next day, I shared with my team how crazy it is that God is giving us all the “fruits”!  First, we had a friend named Apple and now we get to know Peach, maybe a Banana or Papaya will soon be on our list of friends!  And I was joking that our work is bearing much fruit!

Although it came across as a joke at first, the more I think about it now, the more I’m convinced that there is no mistake that this is what God had in mind in the first place!  Yes, He did command us to bear fruits!  I’m totally thankful to God that He has chosen Amilah and me to play a part in the lives of these girls to share with them His love and to see them grow in Him.

We have witnessed great things happening even within such a short period of time.  We now have 2 Bible studies which most of our friends have been faithfully attending each week.  It’s also exciting to see friends who’ve joined the family last year now sharing their faith with pre-believers!  Kelsey is one such good example!  It blesses my heart each time as she shares her walk with God with the others.

The day is coming where Amilah and I would enjoy the fruits of our labor.  We know this is all going to be worth it!

Eagle