Back from South Asia

On Monday, September 15, 2008 I left for an eight day trip into a dark dying portion of creation half way around the world. I went with two trusted brothers, Scott Patty and David Atchison. Scott is the pastor of Grace Community Church in Nashville, Tn. If you are ever in Nashville you should take advantage of the opportunity to worship with some of the greatest people in the Kingdom of God and sit under a gifted Bible expositor. David Atchison is a Christian Business man and an elder at Grace Community Church.

I partnered with Scott and David for two reasons. One, Scott is a man God has used to disciple me for 20 years now. He is a dear brother and a strong voice in my life. The second reason is because we each have a family from our church serving together in the region we visited. Scott and I both believe in global missions and have sought to raise up missionaries from our respective congregations. We were going to visit the outcome of our prayers and efforts and encourage their work and experience something of what God is doing through them for the praises of His glory and name.

The plan for the trip was simple. The impact on my life was immense.

We led a pastor's conference for approximately 60 people from this nation. Some were pastors who are actively sharing Christ and seeking to build house groups to develop them into house churches. Some of them were family members of these pastors, leaders involved in their churches or groups, or people that were on the edge of committing to Christ.

To commit to Christ in this culture and be baptized is a great sacrifice. The believer must truly die to their old life in order to live a new life in Christ. It will mean that this person and their family will miss out on financial opportunities. There might also be an estrangement from family for having faith in Christ. Those who are in Christ are being heavily persecuted in parts of this nation. You can click here to see an example of this persecution from a couple of weeks ago. Be warned that this is very disturbing footage.

We saw eight people choose to follow Christ by faith and decided to be baptized. It was overwhelming to see such great faith and a willingness to suffer for the cause of Christ. I was humbled and reminded of what a great honor it is to know Jesus and be filled with the Holy Spirit. In American it is easy to take God for granted. Thankfully, I don't know that I can do that anymore.

In a later blog I'll provide more insights and details from the pastor's conference. It was a glorious encounter with the risen Christ and with my Spirit-filled siblings.

Next we headed to the mountains to do evangelism. We hiked in the foothills of the Himalayas and shared Jesus with people who had never heard His name. The entire experience of hiking for hours in the pouring rain, falling down the hill and getting knocked silly, seeing poverty and pain, sharing Jesus, and seeing new in Christ begun was overwhelming. In a later blog I will share the details of this experience. It changed my life.

We had a precious worship time on the Lord's Day with our hosts in the mountains and then were to head back down to do some additional evangelism before getting back in the valley, but a rock slide changed all of that. Instead we had to take an eight hour detour into the heart of darkness past the Ganders River where it seemed we enter back into the New Testament world where Paul had sought to share Christ. Here were pagans worshipping idols - demons that did not know and had not heard of Jesus. It was surreal. The darkness was oppressive to me. I will share more pictures and insights from that experience later.

Finally, we began our trek back and experienced some fellowship and made some new friends from the IMB who involved us in a documentary they are doing for their focus on India next year.

This experience has made me a different man. It was not at all what I thought it would be like. Even though I got sick, the physical aspect was not the difficulty for me. I thought it would be. The challenge for me was the spiritual realities I had to deal with. My faith, which is content full, but weak in spiritual warfare, was challenged and strengthened. The emotional trial I faced was also exhausting. Seeing children begging in the streets was more than I was ready for. I'd seen pictures, but it is something altogether different to have a mother holding a naked baby with waste running down it's rail thin legs asking you for food in a busy traffic intersection in between red lights. That's just something that you don't get over.

I was asked by my small group last night, if I would do it again knowing what I do now. And the answer is yes. If God called, I would go. I would go out of obedience, but also in the hopes that what happened in me would happen again and enable me to believe in ways I can't even imagine now. There is no way for me to estimate the impact these days had on me. I only know that I am not the husband, father, friend or pastor I once was. God has changed me eternally.