Setapak Mission Trip~

Shalom. Greetings I bring to you from the brothers and sisters from Sitapak. My team consists of Joanna, Gillian, Zhang Pei, He Lu and me. This team was led by Matthew and with Uncle Chee Guan as our driver.

Our faith had been tested many times during this trip. And one important lesson that we learnt is to put our trust in God and not on our own strength. God’s grace, mercy and provision were clearly displayed to us throughout this trip. For example, we are supposed to bring along the stuffs for the children’s program, but we forgot about it. Fortunately, we arrived at our motel early which gives us time to shop for the items. Once again we got to thank God for His provision; our motel surroundings have many shops that sell stationery and other handcraft items we need for the children’s session tomorrow. So we managed to buy most of the items and borrow the rest from the church.

This led to an interesting faith challenging issue. Because of this sudden additional spending on the items, we found our financial forecast has been affected. Instead of being worried, we decided to turn our focus on God, knowing that He’ll provide for our needs and we placed our trust in God. After doing the accounts, it turned out that we actually had enough funds to last us till Sunday’s lunch. Praise God for that provision.

Matthew had given us 3 objectives. One objective is to obey the call in Matthew 28:18-20. The second is to pray for pre-Christians to come for the evangelistic outreach, the musical nite. The third is to show our support and encourage to our fellow brothers and sisters in the church.

Before this trip, Matthew was encouraging us to pray, to have faith and by telling us what is faith. What is faith? Faith is to attempt the impossible and when it does not, you are in big trouble. What struck me when this comes into my mind was that how many people are we going to expect for this musical nite? How motivated are we to eager to serve to bring the good news to others? Then this sentence just came into my mind. How special are we is the Signature of God in our lives. To the many out there, who doesn’t know Jesus. We maybe the only bible that speaks out His name. We need to pray for ourselves, to pray for the church, to pray for the lost soul. We also need to put on the armor of God and to experience Him personally by inviting Him to put on the armor for us. We need to get ready and be equipped with His word.

We also had a session of tracking. We went into the neighborhood to tract. We started off quite slow. Because their houses are those terrace type, it became hard to interact with the owner. In the end, we had to just drop into their mailbox and say a little prayer to invite them in our hearts to come for the outreach. In fact, I was disappointed later that this guy called Steven didn’t turn up for the outreach. I was wondering whether I actually stayed on to share more about the Word and not just on the information on the flyer we’re distributing. There goes one opportunity missed. Life is precious, we need to understand the true meaning of evangelizing and that the Lord’s 2nd coming is near, we should not be complacence and take our time. We need to pray for them and pick up our faith, our boldness to share the good news. We got a race to run.

Zhang Pei shared with the kids the story of Noah during the Sunday school session. All thanks to Aaron who came up to idea of having a sock puppet. It was a unique idea given by God. So thank God too! Praise His name. I was also encouraged by the story of Noah. I was thinking how it will be to be in Noah’s shoe. What will I think if God ask me to build an ark that would take me so many long years to build? What will others think if I start to build one? Will I be able to be like Noah and simply obey God’s instruction?

It then slowly revealed to me that just like Abraham; God’s promise to us. Both Noah & Abraham had in common - Obedience. That is the one act of faithfulness that they exercised. And the result of obedience is God’s covenant & promise to them. I was encouraged by her words. It stirred in me a motivation to believe that everything was in control and to know that all things work for good of those who believe in Him – Rom 8:28.

I also believe that the kids enjoyed her story telling. I do pray that they will remember this story. This simple act of obedience; to listen for God’s voice and to response to it. Just like what we are trying to do. To response with boldness. Thank God for Zhang Pei. It was not by chance that she was asked to come for this mission trip. I pray that like in Psalm 119:11 says that “I have hidden Your word in my heart that I might not sin against You.” that the kids will understand, remember and apply the story of Noah in their lives. Learn to obey their parents, teachers and elders.

The musical nite started off with an ice-breaking game. It was then followed by praise & worship, then our group item: You are holy. We thanked God for despite even though we only had little practice especially for the whole group to be on stage. Although He Lu forgot a line or two, we managed to put a performance on the stage. I was once again encouraged when friends said it was a good a performance. But I know in my heart that the only performance or the reason why we perform is to please our God. May it be a sweet sweet sound to His ear. After that Samuel, from Sitapak performed 2 songs. (composed by him – I believed that God will use him mightily) Matthew also performed an individual song called “There’s no greater love than this.” He then gave a testimonial which was translated by He Lu about his acceptance of Christ. How Christ changed His life and coming into the ministry to serve. What it is like to be born again?

After that we had the combined churches song item before Bro Steve actually came to share the gospel. I find it rather interesting to say each of us is a superstar. To be a superstar for God, whom we can choose to use our talents wisely or not. Each of us has our own individual talents, and only when we come together to use these talents then we can function as a church. He also used the illustration of Joseph as an example, the life of Joseph.

We also had He Lu giving his testimonial on the Sunday’s service. He shared about his encounters with the devil and God. How God changed the way he is today.

To sign off, our team learnt many things from this trip. God had been so real to all of us in this trip. We experienced God’s love and mercy. So therefore, I encourage you, my fellow brothers and sisters that we need to learn to be bold and dare to ask for more, in prayer and in meek humility. Only when we go out of the ordinary then God will come in with the extra-ordinary. May God continue to bless the reading of His word.