October 24-27, 2012



Long Beach, California.  We have been at the First Baptist Church of Long Beach for a Missions Conference.  There are several other missionaries here from all over the world.  We are staying with a family from the Philippines who are the sweetest people.  The wife’s parents also live in the house; they have two children.  Such a sweet, Christian family.
   
Thursday night we went to the Hispanic service where one of the missionaries spoke in Spanish.  His main point was that it was time for the Hispanic Christians to take the light of the gospel to the world; there are few Hispanic missionaries serving around the world.  The Hispanic Pastor then said that he is a first-generation Christian, not like the missionaries here whose parents and grandparents were missionaries.  He did not have that personal family history.  The invitation time came and literally everyone went forward to pray and ask God to use them to spread the gospel message.  It was amazing; I’ve never seen anything like it. 


The highlight was the Friday night meeting.  We had an international dinner with nine different cuisines.
 

             International Dinner above,  children and adult choirs below
During the service, numerous ethnic groups sang in their native language and dressed in their native outfits: Korean, Philippino, Cambodian, Hispanic, Thai, and the children’s choir and a hand choir which was amazing in black light.

After all the music and before the offering was taken, all the missionary families were asked to stand in an aisle around the auditorium.  A young man with our name on a sign stood next to us.  Then Pastor said it was time to give the offering.  All the people (it was a f u l l auditorium) stood and made their ways to the aisle and walked passed every missionary and gave us hugs and envelopes and money.  I hugged numerous people who said they were praying for us and thanking us for going to Japan.  I started crying.   It was so overwhelming.  For at least 20 minutes people came by and gave us their offering.  It was so amazing; we do not deserve what these people sacrificed to give to us. 

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