Every year during this season of giving we support our Global Journey Partners through our GIVE GLOBAL campaign. Our gifts are given in the name of Jesus to extend the message of the gospel throughout the nations. Please consider a gift to GIVE GLOBAL to continue funding brave global mission partners who share the good news of salvation around the world. Please read this letter from one of our newest global mission partners.
Dear Christ Journey Family,
It is an honor and privilege to be able to partner with this wonderful church where I grew up and that has been instrumental in my walk with Christ. I am deeply grateful for your commitment to help us in the work that my wife and I are doing in East Asia.
In my last year of college I felt the Lord calling me to be His witness in Asia. After spending some months praying and seeking counsel, I decided to find a job as an English teacher, to live here and learn the language and customs. After a year of doing that, drawing nearer to Him and attending a church in that city, I found a new job working in a university in another city. It seemed good to me as I prayed and considered this opportunity to take it. A few weeks after I moved to my new job, I met people who were also here for the Lord and specifically seeking to reach out to college students. After spending some time with them, I prayed and sought counsel and once again felt it was good to join their group.
I have been working with them for 4 years now and it has been a blessed time in which I have seen God at work among the students we reach out to as well as in my own life. In that time I also met Maggie, who became a Christian through the ministry as a student. When I met her, she had already graduated and felt called to continue serving as staff. After serving together for a few months and getting to know each other more, we started dating. A year and a half ago, we got married and are on this journey of doing life and post together.
We are so blessed by the many people here and at home that pray for us and have given us help, advice and support. Now that Christ Journey Church is partnering with us, I wanted to share a little bit more about our partner organization River of Life East Asia.
River of Life East Asia outreach is a missional organization that is particularly focused on college students and the Asian Church. We have a three part mission statement.
1. To share the gospel with college students in East Asia and help them to become followers of Christ.
2. To mentor and disciple Christian students so that they too serve and become leaders in our ministry and in the church.
3. To connect our students to local churches and empower local churches to have college ministries.
My current job as an English and business teacher in my school allows me the opportunity to meet many students. Maggie and I then hold various activities on and off campus in which we get to connect with students and get to know them. Through these relationships, we share the gospel and invite students to church and other gospel activities. We are careful about who and how we share with as there is a danger of government opposition if we are caught.
Maggie and I also provide assistance to another campus, where we work with a local student, who recently graduated, in leading students at that campus. Both schools have student led Bible studies. We do not lead these studies but instead train and disciple Christian students to lead the studies. This is because we want the students themselves to be able to lead. We do not want to simply fill the pews of our church, but want to equip students to be able to serve and participate in church wherever they go after they graduate.
Finally, we host a monthly meeting in the church and are working with people from the church (which we are members of and attend regularly) to train them in Bible study teaching so we can gradually hand off these responsibilities to them. Our dream is to help the church be fully responsible for our two campuses so that we can go start a new outreach on another campus somewhere else and repeat the process. In this way we can help local churches have a much larger impact on the student population. The struggle is finding people willing to step up in this role, but I am glad to say that our cooperation with the church has increased in the past few years.
There are other locals and foreigners in our group that are responsible for additional schools in our area. We also have a few service areas where we work in projects aimed at helping underprivileged migrant worker communities and orphans. Though these are not our main focus, we are partnering with other groups and encouraging our students to also be active in serving their community.
Finally, we are looking ahead. We are currently going through an exciting time of brainstorming. We are praying and considering expanding to new cities, and even considering expanding the scope of the activities we do. Some in our group are praying about how we can help at-risk mothers or raise awareness about sex trafficking issues. Maggie and I in particular are praying about moving in a couple of years to a new city where we can replicate what we are doing now in our current city.
I am so glad I can share with you about what our ministry does, but I would also like to ask for prayer. First, please pray that we would stay faithful to God’s call, and keep prioritizing our relationship with Him. Second, please pray that the Holy Spirit would go before us, convicting hearts and guiding us in the decisions and opportunities before us. Finally, please pray for more workers in the harvest as there is a desperate need for locals and foreigners to make disciples in the cities and schools of East Asia.
May the Lord bless and keep you,
Lukas & Maggie
