The Worst and Best Day

Have you ever had one of those extremely terrible yet completely wonderful days? Imagine you are pregnant and nauseated. You are dodging potholes, traveling in an already bouncy vehicle. Just before dusk, your destination is a small village where everyone is sitting around the edge of a bridge, smoking a pipe, and chatting. As you pass over the bridge any curiosity of whether there has ever been a foreigner there (and more importantly a presence of the Gospel) is answered by the lingering stares that follow you. Finally, after many alleys you reach your friend's home, who is probably one of the sweetest people in the whole world. Using a huge wok heated by a fire underneath, she begins to cook you and the rest of the group dinner. And because she knows you are pregnant, she is kind enough to go the extra mile especially for you and make you what is considered the most nutritious food that she has-a big bowl of eggs. She adds lots of extra sugar- since foreigners like sweet things. Unfortunately she didn't know that the things your stomach just can't take right now are: eggs, sugar, and rice. So, you only have to excuse yourself twice during the meal to run find the outhouse, which is very dark, and for that you are incredibly glad!
 
After the meal, you still have the rest of the evening ahead and all the socializing that goes with it. Of course, all her friends are invited over to see the foreigners. And then, things start to get good, real good. Because your friend's family was too poor to send her to school, she cannot read. But this has not slowed her down from growing in Jesus, and tonight is no exception.
 
 She begins telling everyone in the room all about Jesus. But the way she shares is by singing! She sings a line from a song and then she stops to explain what it means! The friends seem very interested and want to know when they can get together again to hear more. And, as you think about it all, you realize any discomfort was more then worth seeing your friend go from never having heard of Jesus a few months ago to becoming a preaching machine. What a privilege to witness the beginning stages of a church being planted and people being saved from hell!

-Anonymous, Asia

Back to Stories Archive Index