Joy's story
Joy was just one of the people we trained this year. She lives in an outer suburb of Melbourne. This is her story.
My family live in a small town close to border of Russia. My parents used to work in the field and have hard life in labour. When I first baptised on Easter day in 2003 in Beijing where I studied and worked, I immediately shared the good news with my mum, and she accepted the Lord to her life right away later the same year. But she lost fellowship four years later since the house church she attended was scattered because of the destroying residential area for redevelopment.
In the past, I tried to encourage my mum to read the Bible, to pray, to be faithful…….I don’t know what should I say, I even tried to ask my dad and my brother to believe in Jesus….I blabbed blabbed over the phone over the years…. but all were in vanished. I was very frustrated. In prayer, I hope the Lord will send His messenger to my family.
But since I attended the “Following Jesus, Fishing for people” eight weeks training at our church commenced in September, everything was changed!
The training teaches me how to make a bridge conversation from general talk to “Jesus talk”; how to share my story and God’s story in 3 minutes; how to lead a Bible study, how to pray for people at market places, in workplaces…. basically it teaches what Jesus did when He was with us. I was thrilled.
The following week of the training, I called my mum, after a few words general chat, I quickly bridged to asked her if she wanted to do a Bible reading with me, she was very happy about it. So together with my brother and my 12 years old nephew, we kicked off our first Bible study by reading and studying Mark 4:1-9 & 13-20 (a part of the homework of the training) over the phone. After that, I encouraged them to start reading the Bible daily starting with the book of Matthew.
The next week, I called them again to follow up, I have planed to do the 6 verses card (we practiced at the training) with them. But they told me they have been reading the book Matthew from 1-9. So I leaded them to reread the first two stories of Matthew 9 and by asking them questions of which the training recommended at Bible reading part.
During the questions, my brother confessed his sins and surrendered himself to Jesus and was willing to be baptized. He said yes to Jesus immediately as Matthew said yes when Jesus called him!
I was amazed by his answer! I thought I don’t want to leave my brother in this conclusion, no church no fellowship. Let’s baptise right now.
So I asked my mum to get some clean water straight away. While I said the baptism pray over the phone my mother poured out the water on my brother’s head!
I knew it was not me who baptised my brother.
It was the Holy Spirit! It was the Lord he has already prepared my brother more ahead before me!
It was the “Following Jesus, Fishing for people” training equipped me enabled me to reach out at the right time!
It was Jesus! His movement.
Following the baptism of my brother, I have been doing the “7 Commands of Christ” Bible lessons” (the training provided) with my family on Saturday nights, still over the phone.
The seed we’ve received we will sow. By faith, in prayer, May the word of the Lord spread through the whole region where my family lives. Acts 13:49
Thank you Steve! Thank you MOVE! thank you Jesus! We follow.
UPDATE: Joy has translated the 7 studies of Following and Fishing: Getting Started into Chinese.
