Working shoulder to shoulder
01/07/2009 12:00 pm John Watts <au-mediaSPAMFILTER@omf.net>
“Get out! Get out from our area! We don’t need you Christians! You are nothing but trouble and I will do everything to move you out!” screamed the housing resident.
This East Asian community is particularly leery of Christians. Ancestral worship and money/gambling prevail here, and its people feel that Christians are not there to help but to change their religious beliefs. Particularly after most Christian relief workers left, there was animosity towards the Christians left behind. All the residents watched them carefully.
Many children were asked to avoid going to the library that Sarah and her team had started. One grandfather who found his now-believing granddaughter had been given a Bible and was reading it every day became livid, immediately fi ling a complaint with the local police and government housing authority.
The police came to the library to seek out the only known Christians in the area. However, by divine intervention, Sarah and her team left the library for a long unscheduled lunch at that very moment. Upon returning from lunch, many of the temporary housing residents were amazed to see the team still around, and again threatened to have them removed.
Prior to working in this area, Sarah had been a volunteer at a community organization, The Lighthouse Centre – preparing books, talking with students, and learning to be a story-teller. After some time in training, she sought to help people in earthquake-affected areas. She settled a few hours away from the disaster’s epicenter with a couple of others who shared her heart. They were given permission and resources to set up a community library – complete with an after-school homework help program.
Upon learning about the community’s move to scare and force them out, Sarah’s team decided to stay, to pray and to fast. They did not want people to think that Jesus and subsequently his followers were easily scared and powerless.
After 3 days, there was still no sign of police. In fact, the grandfather who filed the complaint decided to withdraw it, explaining to authorities that the library was operated by good people, and had nothing to do with his grand-daughter obtaining a Bible. The family invited the team to converse with them on several occasions.
Subsequently, the grandparents, a great aunt and uncle all became believers. Five others from the temporary housing complex also became believers - two of whom were government housing authority offi cials who had come to expel Sarah and the team, and a lady who had vehemently threatened them.
Since then, one-on-one discipleship has begun in this community, and a home club has formed to help sustain, encourage and grow this newly-formed group of believers. The grandfather has in 2 months read the entire New Testament 3 times and the entire Old Testament once (at 68 years of age, he now leads the home club). The coming of faith of these 10 believers and the planting of this home club all happened within the last 8 months.
Note: The Lighthouse Centre is a community based training and support centre for youth and young adults. The names of individuals in this article have been changed to protect their identities.