Tomorrow evening I will be traveling again for another alumni visit. I am bringing with me all the ladies in my office. I have done this every year for the past five years, but this is the first time we will go outside the Philippines. We plan to visit Thailand, Laos, and Singapore. Please pray that God will use us to bless and encourage the IGSL graduates in each place. We will be gone for eight days. We are looking forward to this adventure!Sunday, April 13, 2008
On the Road Again
Tomorrow evening I will be traveling again for another alumni visit. I am bringing with me all the ladies in my office. I have done this every year for the past five years, but this is the first time we will go outside the Philippines. We plan to visit Thailand, Laos, and Singapore. Please pray that God will use us to bless and encourage the IGSL graduates in each place. We will be gone for eight days. We are looking forward to this adventure!
Monday, April 07, 2008
Graduation Day
It's that time of year again, that happy/sad time when we send our students home. We had 65 graduates yesterday, from 13 countries. That means there are 65 amazing stories unfolding. We have had the privilege of being part of their stories for the past three years. Time won't permit us to tell you all of them, but I want to let you hear one.
Two and a half years ago, a first-year student from Vietnam named Thuan visited my office to share a prayer request. He was engaged to be married to Esther, a girl back home in Vietnam, hoping to marry her after graduation. He was enrolled in our three-year Master of Divinity program. But as he had spent his first six months in our program, he was convinced that Esther needed to be exposed to the same kind of training. He was wondering if he could have her apply for our two year M.A. program and get married during Christmas break, so they could graduate together. I didn't know anything about Esther, but Thuan was a good guy and I trusted him, so I told him it was "possible."
We brought it before the Admissions committee and in just a few weeks, Esther was on her way! They got married soon after. Getting to know Esther during the past two years has been my great joy. I will share her story below -- just one glimpse of the 65 who all have their tales to tell. A few weeks ago we had dinner with them, and Thuan said, "I will always appreciate you because you are a 'possible person.''' I said, "Huh?" He said, "When I told you my prayer, you believed it was possible!" This is their wedding photo from two years ago. The photos in the entry below are from our graduation banquet last week.
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Esther's Story
My name is Esther Phan. I come from the middle part of Vietnam. Together with my husband, Thuan, we have been studying here in IGSL for our future ministry. My father is now a pastor and most of my siblings are in the ministry. That is the story of today, but I would like to share with you the story of seven years ago, when I started to know that God has written the story of my life in His everlasting love.
Have you ever been in despair? It was a terrible experience in my life!
I was born in a religiously diverse family. My grandfather was a Confucian and my grandmother was an ancestor worshiper. My father was an atheist and my mother was a Buddhist. Following our mother, my five siblings and I went to the Buddhist pagoda regularly. We had no relationship with Christ, and we did not like Christians. When I was about two years old, I fell down from the bed while playing and became unconscious for few hours. My grandmother feared that an evil spirit had caught my life. A sorcerer advised her to build an altar and worship that spirit on my behalf. So she did, and I became conscious again.
We had a prosperous life in our remote mountain village. My parents lived comfortably, so during my childhood, I was safe under their care and love. However, trouble started when my grandfather got cancer. We sold all our property to heal him but he died, leaving us poor. We worked hard to maintain our status as a well-to-do family, but could not. Quarrels began to happen regularly in our family.
Not long after that, my father was arrested because he refused to receive a bribe to sell the forest land in our area. He was sentenced to three years in prison. As a 14-year-old girl with four very young siblings, my darkest time really came then. We intensified our prayers to Buddha and ate vegetarian food more than usual, hoping that Buddha would save us.
However, many other troubles came. To my horror, my mother became seriously sick, and my older brother began going with bad friends and causing many problems. I both studied and shared my mother’s burden by doing various kinds of hard work, such as selling food in markets and streets, serving at bus stations, and working in the fields. It was such a miserable and hopeless plight.
After that, my father was released but our situation did not improve, and we could not live in our village any more. So, we moved to a city, hoping to survive. And yet, there we fell into unemployment, hunger, debt, and lived in a poor rental slum dwelling. My father could not bear the situation any longer; so he returned to our hometown and left us in the city. We were in such despair that many times we wanted to end our wretched lives. My mother tried to kill herself but she did not succeed.
We tried to cling to each other in our pitiful room until the time came that we could not even pay the meager monthly rental; then we had no place to live. After wandering overnight, we sat down on the rubbish area of the city. My mother comforted us, "After a storm comes a calm. Tomorrow is another day. Tomorrow will come. . . The brightness will come. . . ” I asked her: “Mommy, when will be our tomorrow?" In the darkness, I knew she was crying.
Finally, “tomorrow” came. One old man shared with me about the hope of life found through Jesus’ salvation. He said that Jesus carried my entire burden and if I came to Him and brought Him my burdens and misery, Jesus would carry them all for me. I was like a drowning person grasping for a lifeline. He was just a one-week old believer himself. He also lived with us in the same place, in the rubbish dump, experiencing the same despair and misery, but I saw something different in his life. He looked happy, optimistic, and peaceful. In my mind, I began to have a concept that Jesus must be very powerful to be able to change his life like that. Though I did not understand clearly who Jesus was and how he could share my burden, I willingly accepted Jesus with three other members in my family. I wanted to be like that old man, experiencing joy and peace.
Truly, Jesus was my “tomorrow.” He was the true and eternal hope for which I was longing. I invited Jesus come into my heart and offered Him my burden. I told Him that I no longer wanted to die; but, from now on, I desired to live in order to discover who He is and experience how good He is. I also asked His forgiveness for worshiping other gods. The four of us promised together from that very moment, we would worship Him only. Also on that very night, we threw away the idols of two gods that we were worshiping; one was the god of money and another was the god of soil.
I will never forget the unusual hope filling each of our hearts at that moment. Actually, I cannot explain why I experienced that feeling but I just had faith that Jesus was in my heart and that He would bring me a new life. Even though I did not know how He would help us, I trusted in Him absolutely. I told my mother that Jesus was so real, unlike Buddha. We all agreed that we did not experience anything when we prayed to Buddha, but that night after praying to Jesus, an overwhelming joy poured over us. We eagerly planned how we could attend Christian meetings to know more about Him and we also discussed the best way to share this good news to my father who was hard-hearted in his atheism.
Miraculously, God started His good works through our lives to unify us in one faith. During the next six months, seven others in my family, one by one, received Jesus, including my father. Jesus became the God that my whole family worshipped and adored, since He is the source of all true hope for us. I still remember the joy that I experienced when I led my grandmother in the prayer to receive Christ. And on that very night, in the name of Jesus I destroyed most of the altars in our house, including the altar of my grandfather and the altar of the evil spirit she had worshiped on my behalf when I was a child.
God helped us to face all of our difficulties by His strength. My whole family sat down together, prayed to Him, and shared our troubles. Amazingly, God provided us a place in the city to do our business. Therefore, we were able to live and even to pay our debt. Furthermore, He changed each of us in different wonderful ways. My father enjoyed his work and cared for my family, my mother got strength from God to do her job, and my brother left his bad friends.
Though some financial troubles remained, we absolutely trusted in God’s help. We knew for sure that He had a wonderful plan for us. Therefore, we lived hopeful and meaningful lives.
Three years after our conversion, we returned to our village and my family became the first members of the first church established in the area. Jesus Christ came and shined the light of hope in my life. Living in Him, despair turned to hope; as it says in the Bible, “In His great mercy, He has given us new birth into a living hope (I Peter 1:3).
Now as Thuan and I are preparing for our mission in Vietnam, I trust that the God who brought me from death to life will be with me in all the journeys of my life. And the good news of salvation that I received seven years ago, that brought my family from darkness to light, despair to hope, distress to joy will work in many families in the same way because our Lord Jesus is still the same. As a new couple, young and inexperienced workers, we still desire to live for the mission that He has called us to as evangelists in our country. By God’s grace with what we have been trained in IGSL, we are also praying to teach in underground Bible schools in order to fulfill the vision that He has granted in our hearts for the future of our people, the Vietnamese.
Have you ever been in despair? It was a terrible experience in my life!
I was born in a religiously diverse family. My grandfather was a Confucian and my grandmother was an ancestor worshiper. My father was an atheist and my mother was a Buddhist. Following our mother, my five siblings and I went to the Buddhist pagoda regularly. We had no relationship with Christ, and we did not like Christians. When I was about two years old, I fell down from the bed while playing and became unconscious for few hours. My grandmother feared that an evil spirit had caught my life. A sorcerer advised her to build an altar and worship that spirit on my behalf. So she did, and I became conscious again.
We had a prosperous life in our remote mountain village. My parents lived comfortably, so during my childhood, I was safe under their care and love. However, trouble started when my grandfather got cancer. We sold all our property to heal him but he died, leaving us poor. We worked hard to maintain our status as a well-to-do family, but could not. Quarrels began to happen regularly in our family.
Not long after that, my father was arrested because he refused to receive a bribe to sell the forest land in our area. He was sentenced to three years in prison. As a 14-year-old girl with four very young siblings, my darkest time really came then. We intensified our prayers to Buddha and ate vegetarian food more than usual, hoping that Buddha would save us.
However, many other troubles came. To my horror, my mother became seriously sick, and my older brother began going with bad friends and causing many problems. I both studied and shared my mother’s burden by doing various kinds of hard work, such as selling food in markets and streets, serving at bus stations, and working in the fields. It was such a miserable and hopeless plight.
After that, my father was released but our situation did not improve, and we could not live in our village any more. So, we moved to a city, hoping to survive. And yet, there we fell into unemployment, hunger, debt, and lived in a poor rental slum dwelling. My father could not bear the situation any longer; so he returned to our hometown and left us in the city. We were in such despair that many times we wanted to end our wretched lives. My mother tried to kill herself but she did not succeed.
We tried to cling to each other in our pitiful room until the time came that we could not even pay the meager monthly rental; then we had no place to live. After wandering overnight, we sat down on the rubbish area of the city. My mother comforted us, "After a storm comes a calm. Tomorrow is another day. Tomorrow will come. . . The brightness will come. . . ” I asked her: “Mommy, when will be our tomorrow?" In the darkness, I knew she was crying.
Finally, “tomorrow” came. One old man shared with me about the hope of life found through Jesus’ salvation. He said that Jesus carried my entire burden and if I came to Him and brought Him my burdens and misery, Jesus would carry them all for me. I was like a drowning person grasping for a lifeline. He was just a one-week old believer himself. He also lived with us in the same place, in the rubbish dump, experiencing the same despair and misery, but I saw something different in his life. He looked happy, optimistic, and peaceful. In my mind, I began to have a concept that Jesus must be very powerful to be able to change his life like that. Though I did not understand clearly who Jesus was and how he could share my burden, I willingly accepted Jesus with three other members in my family. I wanted to be like that old man, experiencing joy and peace.
Truly, Jesus was my “tomorrow.” He was the true and eternal hope for which I was longing. I invited Jesus come into my heart and offered Him my burden. I told Him that I no longer wanted to die; but, from now on, I desired to live in order to discover who He is and experience how good He is. I also asked His forgiveness for worshiping other gods. The four of us promised together from that very moment, we would worship Him only. Also on that very night, we threw away the idols of two gods that we were worshiping; one was the god of money and another was the god of soil.
I will never forget the unusual hope filling each of our hearts at that moment. Actually, I cannot explain why I experienced that feeling but I just had faith that Jesus was in my heart and that He would bring me a new life. Even though I did not know how He would help us, I trusted in Him absolutely. I told my mother that Jesus was so real, unlike Buddha. We all agreed that we did not experience anything when we prayed to Buddha, but that night after praying to Jesus, an overwhelming joy poured over us. We eagerly planned how we could attend Christian meetings to know more about Him and we also discussed the best way to share this good news to my father who was hard-hearted in his atheism.
Miraculously, God started His good works through our lives to unify us in one faith. During the next six months, seven others in my family, one by one, received Jesus, including my father. Jesus became the God that my whole family worshipped and adored, since He is the source of all true hope for us. I still remember the joy that I experienced when I led my grandmother in the prayer to receive Christ. And on that very night, in the name of Jesus I destroyed most of the altars in our house, including the altar of my grandfather and the altar of the evil spirit she had worshiped on my behalf when I was a child.
God helped us to face all of our difficulties by His strength. My whole family sat down together, prayed to Him, and shared our troubles. Amazingly, God provided us a place in the city to do our business. Therefore, we were able to live and even to pay our debt. Furthermore, He changed each of us in different wonderful ways. My father enjoyed his work and cared for my family, my mother got strength from God to do her job, and my brother left his bad friends.
Though some financial troubles remained, we absolutely trusted in God’s help. We knew for sure that He had a wonderful plan for us. Therefore, we lived hopeful and meaningful lives.
Three years after our conversion, we returned to our village and my family became the first members of the first church established in the area. Jesus Christ came and shined the light of hope in my life. Living in Him, despair turned to hope; as it says in the Bible, “In His great mercy, He has given us new birth into a living hope (I Peter 1:3).
Now as Thuan and I are preparing for our mission in Vietnam, I trust that the God who brought me from death to life will be with me in all the journeys of my life. And the good news of salvation that I received seven years ago, that brought my family from darkness to light, despair to hope, distress to joy will work in many families in the same way because our Lord Jesus is still the same. As a new couple, young and inexperienced workers, we still desire to live for the mission that He has called us to as evangelists in our country. By God’s grace with what we have been trained in IGSL, we are also praying to teach in underground Bible schools in order to fulfill the vision that He has granted in our hearts for the future of our people, the Vietnamese.
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