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.
