Jesus in Vietnam Ministries

THE POWER OF GOD’S WORD

Yen, one of the members of the Binh Chau Church, recently rented a one room house. The previous tenant had 2 mantles on a wall with idols on them. Yen shared this with Kim and asked the church to come to take the idols down and pray over her house. Kim stated it would be better to ask her land lord to remove the idols before the church came to pray for her. Yen stated she would do that. However, the day Kim and one of the church’s witnessing/visiting teams arrived at Yen’s house (picture below), the idols were still there. Yen informed them her landlord was on her way to remove them. However, after waiting for some length of time with the landlord not showing up, Kim went ahead with the blessing of Yen’s house. Kim began her prayer by reading from Psalm 115:1-8. As Kim and the witnessing/visiting team finished their prayers, the landlord arrived and removed all the idols from Yen’s house. Unbeknown, the landlord’s daughter had been outside the house all the time and she had videoed Kim’s reading of God’s Word on her phone. The daughter apparently shared the video with her mother later and the mother posted it to the web with harsh comments directed towards Kim and the church. 5 Christians responded with positive comments that Kim had spoken the truth found in God’s Word. However, in 2 days only, over a 1,000 negative comments were posted towards Kim and the church. Initially, Kim was very concerned she had caused such a commotion against the church, but we reminded her of what Peter tells us in 1 Peter 4:12-17. We then began rejoicing and praising God for giving Kim the opportunity to teach the truth of God’s Word to over a 1,000 probable idol worshippers. Kim then responded online to the landlord stating she had the right to express her religious views found in the Bible and, in fact, the Bible is printed in Vietnam by the government for Christians. Kim requested the landlord to apologize/take down her post. Praise God as the landlord did and deleted her post. Then, the local authorities called Kim to their office to question her about all the uproar from this post. They asked her if the church had some “new” evangelism program they didn’t know about. God then gave Kim the opportunity to share with these officials the truth of God’s Word she had quoted from Psalm 115 and she had the right to express her faith and belief in the Bible. The local authorities told Kim next time just make sure the idols are removed before she (the church) gets there to pray.

YOUTH ON THE MOVE

Our youth leaders, led by Khanh (picture above), have started planning for our Christmas Evangelistic Outreaches. They will again perform a play telling the true meaning of Christmas as we celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. They will also be singing several songs during the outreach. For the next several weeks about 15-16 of our youth will stay after Sunday Worship, eat together, and then practice for the Christmas outreach the rest of the afternoon.

VISITING PASTORS

For the last 3 months we have been blessed to have pastors from other churches come to preach on Sunday as we wait on the Lord to provide a new pastor for the church. Pastor Hue, an 84-year-old “retired” pastor comes the first Sunday of the month. While Pastor Khai sends a pastor the 2nd and 4th Sunday of each month. Pastor Khai, the head of about 20 PCA churches here in Vietnam, came 2 weeks ago himself. After church we were able to have a fellowship meal together and meet with Pastor Khai and his wife (picture above) to discuss further his helping the church during our season of change. Pastor Khai offered to come spend a week in Binh Chau with 1 or 2 of his pastors to help disciple/strengthen the congregation. Please pray God will help us work out the details (mainly people being able to take a full week off from work to attend) so this might be scheduled the beginning of next year.

PRAYER REQUESTS

“How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you.” 1 Thessalonians 3:9