Tanjung Balai

To me, mission has always been a time where God places me in the very situation he desires and to teach me lessons about my life and his heart. For me, this trip is relatively very different from the last round becos we are focusing very much on the children. The last round we did a lot of visitations and other stuff that i never thought i will ever do back in Singapore - Singing christian songs in a salon to minister to a pre-believer, doing facials for the women ministry in Tanjung Balai and just talking to people in mandarin and hokkien.

But God is true to his promises. My prayer for myself as i go to Tanjung Balai was to be like a "white piece of paper" where God will write his plans and i will just do it in faith. Not basing on any past experience that i have had. God is always so "CUTE". From the changes to the ferry timing, originally estimated time for our preparation. having to make immediate decisions. There was practically no time for structures and proper planning. Anyway, God's ways are so much higher then ours cos of all the changes, we got more than enough time to really pray and prepare ourselves and also for all the things we had to do.

God is also faithful to bring the children on sat. After returning from our prayer walk cum invitation to the people staying nearby the church, i was amazed to see the number of children he provided and how he changes the spiritual atmosphere from our previous trip and allowed the children to be more receptive to us. Seeing how every macaddemian take the step of faith to lead and join in the various activities in hokkien or mandarin really show the faithfulness and the awesomeness of our heavenly father. Where he places, he empowers for his glory.

As i reflect on some of the lessons God has shown me. I realized that Witnessing is a Life Style. Meaning at every moment, we are to be ready to share our story and Jesus with the people God grants us the opportunity to meet. In (Eph 6:19 -20_Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should). Paul said that we are meant to be Jesus' ambassadors and mouthpiece to make known the gospel unashamedly and boldly. Our lives are supposed to be a mirror and testimony that points others to Jesus.

As i look back, this part of my life has been pretty dormant and thus it has caused some stagnancy in my walk with God. Whenever we share the goodness of Jesus and our own stories to people, it brings upon that real conviction of who Jesus is in our life. How much he loves us and how graciously he rescues us and calls us his own cherished one. The true extend of his love for each one of us.

Seeing how simple and little the people of Tanjung Balai have. Some of them needed to travel quite a bit to come down to church yet they still make the effort to come to church to worship God. For us, we have so much abundance in Singapore (air con, full set of musical instruments, technology, freedom to worship etc) yet at times, we are still not really grateful to God and we come before our God with that flippant attitude.

Being placed in Singapore, with all the comforts that we have. i consider myself very blessed but yet at times i still do not count my blessing. As i examine myself, there are moments where i take all these comforts, God's grace and his providence for me for granted.

So being there in Tanjung Balai allows me to recognized the fact that i cannot take God's grace for granted but to cont to be very disciplined in my spiritual walk, to always have a deepening desire for God and to constantly spend precious moments with my Abba Father.