~ Jackie Kim, a missionary from the Campus Ministry
In October, I went to Melbourne with 7 other new campus missionaries for training. It was amazing!
Follow up...
Last time I wrote, we were celebrating answered prayers of God bringing spiritually-open, non-Christian students who wanted to meet again. I actually got to follow-up with a couple of them which was pretty exciting!
We continued reading the Bible with Miles and looked at Jesus’ crucifixion in Mark. I was so amazed when after the study Miles could explain the whole thing clearly in his own words (including reasoning for Jesus’ death). We’re still not sure he believes it for himself but he seems to like meeting up with us every week!
We also met with Emily, who shared her life story with us for almost 2 hours! I was a bit disappointed at the lack of Jesus in our talk, but I am reflecting on the importance of relationships and investing in friendships that don’t have any agenda other than just friendship.
One cool thing she did share though, is that she's written her 1st song dedicated to herself and it's about her faith and God! I hope I get to listen to it when/if we meet again!
Please pray that we will!
Story about Sarah…
A couple of weeks ago, I was really not in the mood for doing walk-up evangelism and a bit tired of getting rejected. But I felt the Spirit was urging me, so I decided to try talking to just 3 people. I was rejected by the first 2 but the 3rd girl was happy to talk! Amazing right? It’s always the last one before you’re about to give up…Anyway, Sarah said she used to be a pretty strong atheist, but during high school she was trying to make sense of her identity, and felt like she was missing something, and now she is SUPER spiritual.
She said she definitely believes in God now, but doesn’t necessarily know what that looks like (e.g. is everything and everyone God in some way?) and she wants to talk about these kinds of deep questions but has no one to talk to! She practically led our whole conversation, telling me her ideas and asking me about mine, which was amazing because I didn’t really feel like leading the conversation that day. Amazing how God knows these things and how He is working in people’s lives and how the Spirit works! Sarah was planning to join our Bible study group :O (so cool right?!!!) but ended up being caught up with an assignment :( I'm planning to keep in contact and ask again next year!
Please pray she will come!!
Reflection from planning week...
The past couple of weeks my team has been planning for next year. On Friday we went to a seminar about engaging with our communities as Christians.
And I really wanted to encourage you because whether we are in full-time ministry or not, one of the best things we can do as Christians is to have non-Christian friends. Non-believers are so much more likely to have a positive view on Christianity and God if they know a Christian, and are so much more likely to be interested in and come to Christian events if personally invited by one. But 2/3 of non-Christians in Australia don't have any Christian family members or friends! Let's invest in our non-Christian friends!