POINTS OF ENCOURAGEMENT

Tatsuki-san

Something of great encouragement was that Tatsuki-san who we blogged about earlier apparently became a Christian through God’s work in the English Speaking Society at Hokkaido University. As the missionaries in Hokkaido all speak English, they’re quite welcome at the English Speaking Society :) Tatsuki-san said that he didn’t get baptised for a long time because his parents weren’t okay with him getting baptised but he got baptised eventually. How much encouragement is that!

Being the Youngest in the Team

There has been days where I’ve wondered how God can use someone like me - so young and inexperienced in life, quite naïve and sheltered in her Sydney bubble – in His mission field. It felt like because all my experiences in life had come only from studying, I couldn’t really relate to the parents or grandparents of family here or anything and I didn’t feel like I had much to share, and I’d felt like I couldn’t articulately recount what God had been doing in my life to encourage anyone.

However I was really in awe to hear from Grace that Mrs Maruyama’s 21 year old workmate at Starbucks (who works 2 jobs a day) questioned who we were and when Mrs Maruyama explained that we were missionaries from Australia ranging from 20-46 years old, she was really surprised that someone as young as 20 could believe in Jesus Christ, and that she wanted to meet us!

For me, it was so humbling that all this time I had been thinking all about MY inadequacies, MY struggles and MY problems that I had robbed God of His glory completely and I had taken His spotlight away. HE was the one that deserved all the credit for HIS work in my life, and it is so amazing that He chooses to show His might through our weaknesses. I think this realisation caused me to view everything in a different way as to why we are here, and what we’re doing. We’re not here to show that we’re good Christians, because it isn’t that we won a race to get here: it’s to show that even though we are broken and so flawed, Jesus unites us because He is our ultimate treasure that we want to share with the world. Please pray that He may use this opportunity to speak through me to encourage others :)

PS: I SAW ERENE IN A BATHROOM IN AN OUTLET HERE SO RANDOMLY!!! she is a missionary from our church who went to taiwan :)