Story #1:
A few nights ago, I went to this mountain village to visit one of my students sites. This little village is so quaint! To get to it, you have to cross this extremely long suspension bridge that is the most rickety bridge ever! There are a lot of extension bridges around here, but this was by far the worst with a bunch of missing planks and pieces of plywood just laid in place.
The village itself is really cute. There are a total of 200-300 people in this village and the village has three different churches—an Adventist church, a mosque, and a Catholic Church.
There are a total of about 65-70 people coming and 19 of them are non-Adventist. There is a whole group of Catholic young people that are coming to the meetings. One of the Catholic girls is the youth leader at her church. But she has chosen to come to the Adventist church for Bible studies since they actually study the Bible and they don’t in her church. That's pretty cool!
Here it is very difficult to evangelize Muslims due to very strict government laws. It is illegal to evangelize Muslims. If you were to invite a Muslim to your church, you could face imprisonment. So in this little village, the mosque is directly across the large field from the Adventist church. The two houses right around the church are both Muslim families. But even though they can’t invite them to the meetings, I think the sound is loud enough coming out of the church that they are probably hearing the meetings anyway.
Even here, we see the great controversy playing out. At this site, there is a former Muslim lady who was demon possessed. The Muslims tried to get the demons out of her, but failed. The Adventist pastor prayed for her and they immediately left. She has since become an Adventist. But she is going through new battles now. At work, she desperately wants to tell her Muslim friends about Jesus but every time she goes to say something, she cannot speak. Also when she prays, she hears these voices in her head that distract her from praying. The great controversy is real and there is definitely a fight of who will conquer. But we all know that God is more powerful and will be the victor. Wonderful thought!
Story #2:
The population of Adventists at these sites is very high. In fact, some of the sites have had no visitors at all. Unfortunately, some of the churches say it isn't their culture to invite non-Adventists to their meetings. And perhaps some of it is the trouble they could get into for evangelizing. Some of my students were discouraged to have no visitors at their sites. So I told them to ask if they could go door knocking in their village and personally invite people to come to their meetings. Two students went to their site early one night and invited people to come.
They weren’t sure what kind of success they would have, but they were excited to see what would happen that evening. Just as the meeting was supposed to start, all the electricity went off in the church and it was pitch black. My students started to wonder if people would even still come with all the power off, but they looked across the little extension bridge and saw all the little flashlights coming across. They started to get really excited. By the time the lights came on a while later, the church had the most people it has had since the meetings started. And within the crowd were 4 Catholics and 3 Muslims that had come from the personal invitation. They were some pretty excited kids!
Story #3:
On the way to one of his sites, a student saw two people walking along the road and felt impressed to invite them to his meetings. When the turned around to find the people, they weren’t there, but the driver knew where they lived. But they weren’t home. The neighbor lady took them to a house where they had gone to visit. This family were Catholics. He found out the two people he was looking for were already going to the meetings, but he took the opportunity to invite the Catholic family to the meetings. He didn’t see them once the meeting started, but after the meeting, a church member told him that they had indeed shown up that night. He was very excited about that!
Story #4:
Two nights ago, a student prayed that at least 5 people that were non-members would come to his site. Last night, he prayed that he wanted at least 3 of those non-members to be Catholics. Tonight he had 4 Catholics and 2 additional non-members come to his site. And the night was on the Sabbath. He was so excited that God answered a very direct prayer he had prayed just the night before.
Story #5:
The other night, one student was preaching and indicated afterward that this was the absolute worst sermon he thought he had preached. His words were all scrambled, he couldn’t think of what to say, and it was all choppy. After the meeting, the translator told him that was the easiest sermon he had translated yet. He said it was smooth, he knew exactly when to cut in and out, the message was clear and convincing, etc. I think the Holy Spirit must have been doing some translating between speaker to translator!
Story #6:
At one site, attendance numbers were starting to decline, so the students at that site began praying that more people would come. Three nights ago, they had 87 people and 2 non-Adventists. Last night they had 97 people and 5 non-Adventists, and tonight they had 100 people and 10 non-Adventists. They were pretty excited!
Also at that site, the speaker had eaten something funny for supper and right before getting up to speak, she began feeling extremely nauseous. She was sitting on the front row getting ready to speak and was thinking at any minute she was going to throw up. She and her partner prayed that they devil would not prevent them from speaking on the important topic of the Sabbath. During the song service, she said all the songs seemed to apply to her… ones like “God will take care of you.” Her partner prayed that at least the nausea would go away just for the time she was speaking. Just as she got up to preach, all the nausea left and she preached the whole sermon with no problem.
That is only a few of the stories here. I am excited to see how God will continue to bless!
