We’ve been waiting 30 years for you to come.”
Charles Stoddard won’t forget the day he heard those words from a family of five living in a squalid shack in Asia. Family members hadn’t eaten in three days, but food wasn’t the reason they invited the Southern Baptist representative to their home — they wanted to know about Jesus.
Stoddard and his wife, Nicole — who completed a three-year term overseas in early July — were among 21 representatives appointed by the International Mission Board at Urbancrest Baptist Church, Lebanon, Ohio, on July 12. Speaking to a crowd of more than 800, Stoddard recounted that the Asian family’s grandfather had come to believe in the existence of “one true God” many years ago.
Shortly before he was martyred for his faith, the grandfather told his family members to wait for the day someone would come to tell them more about this God. Three decades would pass before one of the family’s sons happened to overhear Stoddard talking about Christ in a public park and recognized he was the one they’d been waiting for.
“I suddenly realized that this family, who had never met another Christian, who didn’t even know that a Bible existed — God had been preparing their hearts for 30 years to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ,” Stoddard said. “That family accepted Christ that day, was baptized, and today a church meets in their home.”
And as a result, at least 40 others have come to faith in Jesus.
“Billions are still waiting to hear,” Stoddard said, which is why he and his wife are returning to Asia with their three children to continue spreading the gospel.
And that is also what’s sending Tricia Van Lesser and her husband, Tony, back to Central Asia after completing a two-year term there in 2008. Van Lesser remains haunted by the sound of women wailing at the funeral of a Muslim grandmother she had come to know and love.
“That evening, as her cloth-wrapped body was carried by her sons to the grave, the sound of the wailing became deafening,” she recalled. “As I stood with the family, I was overwhelmed at the hopelessness. They wept because they did not know where their devout Muslim grandmother would spend eternity. I wept because I did know.”
Kirsten Hale and her husband, Geoff, also are heading to Central Asia. Introduced to missions through Girls in Action, Hale was drawn further into the Great Commission when she volunteered on two short-term missions trips with her church. But making the commitment to serve overseas for an initial term of two to three years — instead of two or three weeks — proved difficult.
“I valued a college degree, getting married, having a nice home and raising my kids in a safe neighborhood,” Hale said. “Would I be OK without these things? Would I be able to be satisfied in Christ alone?”
God answered her fears through Matthew 13:44. “Its value is worth giving up everything,” Hale said. “God has convinced us that taking the gospel to Muslims in Central Asia is worth the cost.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — Names changed for security reasons. (BP)
Share with others: