O The People You Meet! (Testimonies)

Happy New Year! I thought to be more original Jess and I would do a update on New Years rather then Christmas. You know, because we are cool like that :)

For this update I am going to attempt to summarize some of the peoples stories Jess or I (or both) have heard while here in Thailand.  These are all amazing testimonies of Gods faithfulness and work! Hope it blesses you as much as it has us. It has been amazing to be involved even in small ways in some of these peoples stories. Note: I am going to attempt to keep these people anonymous, however if by some chance of God you know these people by their stories please do not say who they are.

Lin is a new Christian. Like three-four months old. She has also been at The Well for about that time (no coincidence there). Before coming to The Well she was a free lance prostitute on the China town streets. Suffice it to say, this is not a nice or happy place to work, and she found her self there because she had no other option to provide for her family. She now has one of the strongest and simplest faiths in God I have seen. She may not have every detail of her life figured out, she may need discipleship, however her faith is a fire if I have ever seen one. Now if you havn't seen God at work yet just wait. Her three year old daughter gets in a motorcycle crash. This daughters head smacks the pavement straight on. She thankfully gets transported to a hospital really fast. The doctors do emergency surgery but it looks grim, they don't think she'll come out of a-coma and if she does they think she will be a vegetable. Of course we tell everyone to pray, but the most amazing thing is the mom. Lin, who although scared, has faith that "her God will heal her baby." Her daughter now is continuing to recover at one of The Well staffs home. She is awake, and making continued progress recovering. Thank you Jesus for answering prayers of simple faith!!!

Rahman is from the middle east. He fled from his home country because he was being persecuted. While still there God changed his life and he rejected Islam. The crazy thing is he did not know the name for this God. He just knew he had to follow the real God that kept on appearing to him. This led him to have to leave his family and be rejected by all his friends. He even was thrown in prison and beaten. Then he was taken to a public hanging. Get this. He survived. And then fled. All this while not knowing the name of the God he was serving, or having any information about the Bible. When he came to Thailand someone told him about Jesus, and he finally realized this was the God he was serving. Then someone told him about church, and he came to church for the first time. Jess just walked up to him one day to meet him and he told her his story. God is FAITHFUL!

Joseph is a refugee (there is more to this story but the details are sensitive). He came to Thailand to start a new life as a computer program tester. He met our church pastor about four years ago, and was intrigued that a man would move half way around the world to talk about Jesus. It seemed excessive. Though a devout Buddhist, he wanted to hear who this Jesus person was that would make some one do this. So he started following the pastor around and was amazed by the grace found in Jesus. He was one of the first church members. One year later he became a Christian and was baptized. He started being discipled by the pastor and three years later felt called to go to Cambodia to help start a sister church there. With the help of the church in Thailand, he now has a congregation of 100+ in Cambodia.  We see Gods work building his church when he uses a man who is 32 and has no formal Bible training. Its also very humbling. An added bonus (at least I think so) is that his church is almost 2 to 1 young males. Thank you God for raising up young men in Cambodia!

Amara was in jail for being an illegal prostitute. The only problem is that it was not her choice to come to Thailand illegally. She was brought here from Ethiopia after her family was tricked into believing that a guy had a promising job lined up for her in the middle east. After being forced to work there for a couple years she was brought to Bangkok. She was able to run away and get to a police station. When she told them her story they asked for her passport. She obviously did not have one, so they put her in jail as an illegal immigrant. While there she meets another lady with a similar story. She however has become a Christian and leads a church inside the prison. Amara soon becomes a Christian and starts to grow. She is connected to our church and they begin to help her try to get back to her home. They are able to complete the paper work and raise enough money for her to fly back home. Her most prized possession she is returning with is a new Bible that was given to her. She wants to share with her family and village about the God who saved her literally from slavery. Our God is for freedom!!

Please God use me. Change me. Fill me with faith. Let my life be about what you find as important, not the trivial problems I get caught up in!!

Have a great 2013 year. And please keep praying for the multi-ethnic population of Bangkok. Pray we can be humble enough to let ourselves be part of peoples stories no matter how small.

Johnmark and Jessica