Friday, July 23 - Last night was a time we mutually encouraged and blessed each other, so here is a little more information about the church we went to last night, the Gereja Duta Injil. It was founded by two Chinese pastors who were with Hok Im Tong (Caleb Tong's organization) but these two men wanted to move more in the realm of the Spirit and not be so rigid and stuck to the liturgy which the mother church (the one across the street from Hotel Trio in Bandung) controls rigidly, so Caleb released them 12 years ago from the Hok Im Tong family of churches. This church evangelizes quite openly, in arenas and to all kinds of people (mostly non-Chinese), including Muslims (they have baptized 12 Muslims). One of the founding pastors we met last night, Rev. Chen, shared with Marshall a miraculous story how an Iman (leader of Muslim mosque) attended one of their rallies. This Iman has been blind for the last 7 years but during the worship and praise time (no special prayer time), God restored his sight. He came to testify of God's healing and proved his sight by reading a passage. The desire of this church to evangelize gives us great hope for the direction God is leading Indonesia but we are also concerned about how this church deepens the roots of its believers. This is one reason we agreed to go sing there again to the Sunday evening service (which is attended by a lot of youths). Pray for discernment if Vision should get more involved with their ministry in the future.
Today, we ate breakfast and after a short devotion time, started our tour debriefing. We basically sent from 8:30 to 4 with one break in the morning and afternoon and lunch. We managed to debrief 19 of us during this time leaving 8 more to go. We canceled our planned batik museum tour for tomorrow morning so we could finish before lunch.
Here are some anonymous comments from the debriefing:
- "I never knew I could pray for people without knowing what to pray for, but I learned that (how to listen to God while I pray) about myself this year."
- "When we went to visit the places I've never been to, I saw that God is converting ... there were a lot of people crying. God answered our prayers when people were sick."
- "Praying for Juliana at the cancer ward really touched my heart because of her condition. She's already ... converted all her siblings and brought her mom back. Seeing someone in the first 10 years of her life doing all of that for God was an inspiration."
- "Like the other Indonesian kids here, this is my first time doing missions, and I enjoyed it. It was my first time ministering in the prisons, and I saw many people know God."
- "I saw God's glory when we would sing spontaneously to our drivers and the people at Circle K; they would look really happy even though we're not sure if they understood. When we sang, their faces would light up. Something I learned was to give God the glory and remember that, when we sing, we're singing to God. "
- " I would love to go to another mission trip, and I'm sure the Lord will allow me to go to more."
- "I want to take home the gift of praying in tongues.:
- "Some of the ministries reminded me how passive I am in my daily life at school, so I want to take back with me; to be more bold in my walk with Christ."
- "God is trying to make me change a lot of the habits I don't do. When it comes to devotions, I don't really do them unless I'm on a retreat or missions trip. I want to really try to do devotions daily and pray more because seeing the power of prayer work on the trip was really amazing, seeing people get healed or recover from an injury."
We spent a few minutes correcting some mistakes which have crept in during our many times of singing before we got ready for the program tonight, a farewell dinner with the parents of our Indonesian members (this is suppose to be the official ending of their stay with us but all of them are staying until we leave because they can't stand to depart). One of our members comes from a different island so his parents could not come, but at least one of the parents and most of their siblings came for dinner and to listen to us. about 16 in all. We sang one of our better concerts in this intimate setting as each of the six Indonesian students gave wonderful testimonies of how they saw God working during their time with us. Our short 45 minute program included the Indonesian skit and about 7 songs. We also invited Anita, who is the administrator for SPH. Anita had set aside part of the school's excess missions budget to pay for over half of our transportation costs in Jakarta, saving Vision over $1000. After the parents left, Eileen, Lippo Group (of which SPH is one project) founder's daughter in law met us and we thanked her for her generosity in providing free lodging for our team here in Jakarta (girls' dorm rooms and guys' and couples' hotel rooms). Her generosity saved Vision well over $4000 in lodging costs (12 rooms for 10 days total). This is one way God has provided for Vision's needs and we are so grateful. We sang The Lord Bless You and Keep You to her in the basketball court, then got ready for bed.
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