Sharing faith with Muslims

Posted on August 17, 2014 by Mark McMillion

Over 30 years ago I was on a local train in Austria, heading in to the capital, Vienna. Sitting across from me were two young men who seemed to be foreigners and they had a large Koran which they were reading. I struck up a conversation with them as they spoke English. After a while, I told them I’d read the Koran some and suggested they read Surah 3:55. They looked it up, read it, read it again, looked at each other, said a few words together and then looked back at me.

Surah 3:55 says, “Behold! Allah said: “O Jesus! I will take thee and raise thee to Myself and clear thee (of the falsehoods) of those who blaspheme; I will make those who follow thee superior to those who reject faith, to the Day of Resurrection.”

I had studied the Koran just a bit and somehow remembered that reference which of course says things about Jesus of Nazareth which most people would never think would be in the Koran, including these two young Muslims.

That was one of my first experiences sharing my faith with, and talking about God with, Islamic people. During the 6 years I lived in Vienna, we’d rather often have Islamic people over to our house or would meet them while we were out.

Then years later I worked for 3 weeks at the Nagyatad refugee camp in southern Hungary where thousands of Islamic Bosnians were being housed during the Yugoslavian war of the early 90’s. Again my experience with those people was a positive one. My friends and I would daily go to this camp which was an old Russian army camp, deserted since the fall of Communism, which had be converted into this refugee camp.

At this camp was an elderly woman and her husband and she was considered the spiritual leader of the camp. As it turned out, there was a young Islamic woman at the refugee camp at the time who was obviously being tormented by spirits that were not of God. The spiritual elders of the camp had not been able to help this woman to be free from the torment of those spirits. Some of my friends had asked if they could pray for the tormented woman. Permission was granted and when my friends had prayed for the woman, she was delivered from her torments and possession and was made whole. So the woman who was the spiritual leader of the Muslims there told everyone that we were the people of God and that they should receive us from then on, which they did.

This woman was the spiritual leader at the refugee camp of around 2000 Bosnian Muslims in southern Hungary.

In the centuries that the Ottoman Turks ruled over southeastern Europe, the only people who converted from Christianity to Islam was a portion of the people who live in Bosnia. Sarajevo later became at one point the northern most Islamic city in that part of the world. But others in that area didn’t convert from Catholicism or Orthodoxy to Islam. And the animosity between these peoples has been a running boil that has festered off and on for over 400 years.

With my translator, Rebecca, a Christian from Sarajevo, at the Nagyatad refugee camp

Perhaps the experience I remember most from being at that refugee camp was when my translator and I were invited into a room to talk to some people. As soon as we entered the room, my translator, Rebecca, said quietly, “Uh-oh.”

Sitting in the room were around 15 young men who looked to be around 25 to 35 years old. They were all sipping thick black coffee and talking quietly with each other but I soon found that these were all front line fighters who’d fled the fighting. I knew I wanted to and needed to share my faith with these men but how could I do that? Through our conversation I found that several of them had seen their wives and children killed in front of them. They all had been in prolonged, often hand-to-hand combat recently. I could take it for granted that they’d all killed enemies of their people in combat.

What could I say to these ones? “Jesus loves you”? Well, yes. But how do I communicate that to these ones who were alive and mostly well on the outside but extremely traumatized on the inside? I searched deeply to find some way to connect with these soldiers and hardened combat irregulars. And the Lord led me to share with them what was for me the most traumatic and excruciating experience I’d ever gone through. I won’t relate what that was here but it very nearly killed me or permanently scarred me. And I told them that at that time, I had to find the grace, the love and the power of God in order to not let that event completely destroy me. I had to find a way to rise above that injustice I experienced and that unutterable pain that took the life and humanity out of me.

One of the young men I talked to from the group of fighters. His wife and children were killed in the war. He turned his face to the side here because he had a very large scar on the other side.

It was a very intense time and my translator was doing good to hang in there and translate what I shared with her to pass on to them. Because these guys were killers; violence was what they had lived in for years.

But they listened. OK, maybe it helped that I was a little older than them and that I was an American. I just told them that for their own sakes, they somehow had to find the grace of God to not let their experiences conquer their hearts and souls and turn them into permanently evil men.

A question I was asked by one of them seared my soul. I had told them of what I felt had been a crushing injustice I’d suffered and which nearly snuffed out my soul and my heart. One of them then in the group spoke up and quietly, very sincerely, asked me, “Why didn’t you kill him?” I had to answer that question, with God’s love and wisdom, as well as with humanity and reality.

Yes, they were Muslims and they knew we were Christians, the people they’d been at war with. But, in that room that afternoon, God brought us all to a deeper level. We were all human beings. We were all wanting to find and take the high road of life. We found that we had a common ground of empathy and even faith in God that we could look toward together.

Even these Muslim “killers” were human beings. They listened to me and my friend, responded and asked questions. I believe the Lord used that time to at least plant seeds of His love in their hearts that day. We need to be “always ready to give an answer of the hope that lives within us” (I Peter 3:15), even to Muslim warriors.

More good news from Bulgaria

Posted on March 26, 2014 by Mark McMillion

A month ago I wrote an article called “Good News From Bulgaria“. This was about a new friend who’s written me from Bulgaria to tell about how she’s been using the videos on the book of Daniel which I’ve been doing to share with two home church groups she ministers to on the countryside of Bulgaria.

Communion in southern Bulgaria

We’ve continued to keep in contact as she’s gone through the book of Daniel with her flocks and now she’s started going through the book of Revelation. Although I don’t have material myself on that book, I have friends on the mission field who’ve written some good classes on Revelation and I’ve sent those on to her.

But the best would be to just share what she’s told me and to add in some photos. First, about that photo above here, I’m not certain but I believe the objects in front of those dear people are glasses and a bottle of wine, and some broken bread, to be used in communion. They are sitting on a mat or carpet on the floor; the women have their heads covered. Just to mention it, if this looks like what you think of Greece or Turkey, that’s because it’s midway between those two and just a little north of there.

This all just thrills me. When people at the grass roots, in countries that don’t have a historically strong “Protestant” tradition, spontaneously come to the Lord and are zealously “hungering and thirsting after righteousness” (Matthew 5:6) and are seriously seeking to be taught the things of the Lord, then that really draws a response in me. If “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:10), think how much joy there is in heaven when hundreds of people take their time and change their ways to “sit at His feet and hear His words” (Luke 10:39) through this dear Bulgarian sister who is doing what she can to feed His sheep.

In fact, my friend told me that it’s a little unusual because their fellowships are a mix of ethnic Bulgarians, ethnic Gypsies and a local people who have Turkish roots and an Islamic heritage in former centuries. So I was told that it’s unusually for these ones to come together in this way but the Lord is doing it.

Their church

And here’s their church. It doesn’t look like yours, does it? No huge parking lot, no football stadium to go with their high school. The wood stacked up under the stairs is for the stoves to keep the church warm in winter. But it kind of reminds me of what the Lord said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Matthew 5:3)

Here’s a little of what my friend Vaska wrote me about the Christians she is ministering to there and their Sunday classes.

We have just finished chapter 2 of the Book of Revelation. We are so slow, because it turned out that there is so much to say about the letters to the 7 churches that it is impossible to finish one chapter each time. So we decided to do one church at a time. We discussed the letter to the Thyatira tonight. All these letters to the 7 churches are so important and full of depth and there are lots of questions to answer and people want to know more. So, we slowed down and next Sunday we will start Chapter 3.

Now we have three different study groups – on Wednesday we study the Book of Genesis, on Friday we study healing in the Bible and on Sunday we study Revelation. It’s all so amazing. We all learn a lot and are excited. There are more and more people coming and more and more people receiving healing from the Lord. But not only that, spring is coming and the weather is lovely – sunny and warm. We went for a walk in the mountains and went swimming in a hot spring swimming pool. [End of the part from Vaska in Bulgaria]

I consider it one of the greater blessings of my life to have been able to be in contact with such a wonderful and diverse mixture of Christian brethren in many countries. So often I think of another verse from the Beatitudes when musing on folks like these ones on the southern Bulgarian countryside, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5) I’m looking to the Lord for ways my friends and I here can be a help to these ones who are coming to the Lord and growing in their Christian lives. I hope these testimonies of these sweet people are a blessing to you. “For our vines have tender grapes.” (Song of Solomon 2:15)

Good News From Bulgaria

Posted on February 23, 2014 by Mark McMillion

Recently I’ve been in communications with a woman in Bulgaria. Her name is Vaska and she wrote me after she began to show my videos on Bible prophecy and the book of Daniel to two churches she ministers to in Bulgaria. It’s been quite an encouragement to hear from her and to know that the material I’ve been working on is being used by her to “feed the flock of God” (I Peter 5:2) in places I’ve personally never been to.

Actually, I was in Sofia, Bulgaria for four very wonderful months in the early 90’s. It was a tremendous time of witnessing the Lord’s truths and it seemed like everywhere you went, there were people who were extremely hungry to hear about salvation and to learn what the Bible says. So it’s a joy to know that the videos and blog posts I’ve been placing on line are being used weekly by this dear new friend to share with two home-church type congregations in her part of Bulgaria.

Maybe what I can do is to share parts of letters Vaska has sent me in response to the Daniel videos she’s been showing there. This letter is from mid January, the first time I heard from her:

Dear Mark, the videos are an absolute blessing! We watch them on a big screen in our Bible study classes in church and the church is always full and everybody is so blessed and thankful. They say they understand everything so well. Thank you so very much for this great job and huge help in understanding these difficult chapters.

Vaska explaining to her flock a Russian chart I sent her about the 7 world empires of prophecy

After seeing the video everything is more than clear. So the whole church blesses you and thanks you very much. But I can’t find a video on Chapter 9 and in two week’s time we will be studying Chapter 9. Is there a video on Daniel Chapter 9? At the end of the video on Chapter 8 you say there is one on Chapter 9 but I can’t find it.

So I wrote back to Vaska for the first time, explaining that the Daniel 9 videos are the ones that I’m working on now and that they won’t be ready for a few more months. Here are parts of Vaska’s reply:

Thank you very much for working on the video on chapter 9, we look forward to seeing it in a few months. Your videos on Daniel are the best. We’ve seen all of them and the video about the tsunami too. And the “Introduction to Prophecy” as well, all your videos. God bless you abundantly for everything you do to help.

We are going to study Daniel chapter 9 this Sunday and repeat the Bible Study again when your video is ready because you make everything entirely clear. After watching the video everything is well understood and remembered. So thank you in advance for the new video. I have a lot of questions on Chapter 9 but I’ll wait until the video is ready.

Vaska is an English teacher in her city and she translates the classes live in the churches she visits. She wrote:

Haven’t you thought of doing the same type of Bible Study lessons on Revelation? You have a great gift of knowledge and it would be a great blessing for all Christians who are interested to know the Bible in depth. Yet, you know whether you have the time to do that, because it’s much longer than Daniel.

Then she told me some about how she became a Christian, when she was in Moscow in the early 90’s, going to high school there.

I thank the Lord very much for my American brothers and sisters because I became a Christian soon after the collapse of Communism by the testimony of American missionaries in Moscow. We were living in Moscow, Russia, at that time and I’m so grateful to those wonderful Christians who traveled the long way to come and preach the Gospel to us.

As you know during Communism, Christianity was forbidden and we were in total darkness about any spiritual matters. And after my grandfather died I was absolutely terrified of death, because they taught us that everything finished with the grave.

And also while studying astronomy at my last year at high school in Moscow, they told us that the Universe was in absolute chaos and there is no order and nobody knows what would happen next. That also left me in terror. The Communists were so proud of their knowledge of Space and still they couldn’t give me a reasonable answer of Who is in charge.

But I’m so grateful to those missionaries who came from far away America and told me that if you accept Jesus as Savior, you will never die but live eternally. They also told me about the Mighty Loving Creator who made everything and is in control of everything. What a relief and what a joy! So, I immediately accepted the Lord as Savior and was saved. And ever after I’ve lived my life for Him and my greatest concern is to tell the others about Jesus, because they might be lost as I used to be.

One of Vaska’s flocks in their large room at their church

So now the Lord has given me two flocks to care of – one of about 60 people and one of about 30 people. We have a nice small building and there on the wall we see your videos (I interpret for everyone to understand) and try to study the Bible in depth. So, one day, if the Lord helps, you might come and visit us and rejoice together. We have other friends from the States too who come and visit us regularly and we are very happy. And I will always be grateful to the American Christians; they have done a lot of good in my life even until today.

Blessings, Vaska

So, needless to say, this has been a real thrill to get to know this new friend and to know that what I’m working on here is being a help to her in ministering to people in her far off corner of southeastern Europe. A very fitting Bible verse that comes to mind in regard to all this is, “As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.” (Proverbs 25:25)

There’s more I could share from Vaska but I think I’ll put it into another blog post for another time. There have been a few others like this, friends in central Africa who use the videos in their Bible studies there and also in other places. In many ways this is exactly what I’ve hoped would happen, that this material can be useful for Christian disciples everywhere to teach and explain to their flocks the wonders of God’s Word and the hope we have in Him and in His future to come. More soon on all this, your friend in Him, Mark

The Miracle Suitcase

Posted on February 6, 2014 by Mark McMillion

There were so many experiences I had from the time I spent on the mission field which basically were supernatural. The other day I thought of one I included in a newsletter around 2008.

I was living in Ukraine and I planned a trip to Norway. Along the way one of those “God’s little miracle” situations happened which is almost possible to overlook if you’re not sensitive to the hand of God when He intervenes in a miraculous way. Here’s what I put in my newsletter from August of 2008

Just to get from here in Ukraine to Oslo, Norway is no small thing. Flying from here would be extremely expensive. So I found a budget airline that flies from Warsaw, Poland to south of Oslo, Norway. But to get to Warsaw from my city in south east Ukraine was a 700 mile (1200 kilometer) two-nights-and-a-day ride on a bumpity, former USSR train. There was next to no sleep.

After the flight from Warsaw, I landed at the airport about 70 miles south of Oslo, got my small suitcase off the luggage carousel at the airport and found my way to a bus that would take me to Oslo.

Virtually as I was boarding the bus, way out in the airport parking lot, an elderly man quickly came up to me, speaking Polish. I understood that he thought I’d taken his suitcase. He produced the baggage tag that went with the suitcase and, sure enough, it was his.

I looked real closely because the suitcase I’d brought on the trip was borrowed and it seemed like one that not a lot of folks have. But I did notice that the one I’d brought out of the airport to the bus was somehow newer than the one I brought on the trip. About that time, one of the Polish man’s friends came up to us with my suitcase, identical in every way to his except mine was just a little bit older.

What happened was that, when the one I took had come around on the luggage conveyer belt, I saw it and took it. The plane had not been full and it never occurred to me that there could possibly be another bag on the plane that looked the same as mine. It was virtually a miracle that he found me in the airport bus parking lot, just before I was getting on the bus with his suitcase for the ride into Oslo.

I don’t care to even think of how much of a hassle it would have been if I’d not been found by that man just seconds before I boarded the bus for the 90 minute drive to Oslo. I suppose something might have eventually worked out if I had needed to phone the airport about it. But in Oslo, one of the most expensive cities in the world, it would have been a nightmare of time and expense.

That’s how good things can happen to you when you’re praying and others are praying for you. I really thought about all my friends who were praying for me at that time. It was surely just the Lord doing that little miracle to keep me from having to suffer for days from that mix up about the suitcase. Thank the Lord! And thanks to all of you for your continued prayers.

Isn’t that amazing? I was seconds away from boarding that bus with the wrong suitcase for the long ride to Oslo. Those folks found me way out in the parking lot at the last moment. Some would wave all this off as a “lucky coincidence”. For those of us who know and live for the Lord, we know it was more than that. It was “…the Lord working with them, and confirming His Word with signs following.” (Mark 16:20)

God’s Little Miracles: Palaces & “Signs Following”

Posted on December 1, 2013 by Mark McMillion

I believe in miracles. I don’t only believe in them, I’ve had a few happen to me over the years. One of them, in Budapest, Hungary 22 years ago, was very precious, very personal and very amazing. I’ll need to give you a little background to set the stage so that you can see how it was so amazing.

I went through a heartbreaking marriage breakup back in the 80’s. My wife and I had been missionaries based in Vienna, Austria for 5 years, with the goal of reaching what then were the Communist countries in eastern and central Europe. But our breakup meant that we needed to leave that part of the world which I loved and felt called to.

During those months right after the breakup in 1984, I had an amazing dream. I dreamed that I was in a large house full of joy and laughter, also full of young east European people who were happy and full of faith in God. And I remembered that the place in my dream was on or near the Hungarian-Czechoslovakian border. It was an amazing, happy dream. But I just tucked it away as being something encouraging but certainly not something that could ever really happen.

Budapest, Hungary

Then through a series of events and the road of life that the Lord often leads us on, it happened that around 5 years later I was able to return to central Europe in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of Communism in 1989. I moved to Budapest, Hungary with several of my children and was overjoyed to be able to again be back where I felt the Lord had called me to.

Northern Hungary

It ended up that I was looking to find a large house in the Budapest area to be a mission station for the extensive missionary work going on in Eastern Europe at that time. My translator and I found an amazing place but I personally thought it was just way more than we could afford with the budget we were working with. But then in negotiations with the owner of the place, it turned out that they trusted us with their property more than other people who were also interested and could pay more. We were able to agree to a rental fee which, although not cheap, was an incredibly good deal for that property. (And, yes, as you may have guessed, this was north of Budapest, up near the Czechoslovakian border, just as I’d dreamed of years before.)

But here’s the little miracle part, or perhaps I should say the icing on the cake. There came a fateful day in June of 1991 when we were handed the keys to the place and spent our first night there.

A Hungarian “panzio”, a pension or hotel

It was actually not a house but what is called a “panzio”, kind of like a little pension or very small hotel in a village.

So four of us were there for the first night in what was a pretty big place. We decided to have a time of devotion and prayer as some of us had some devotional material with us. Here’s part of what the first passage we read for that day said,

“God has promised us palaces and cities and the cattle on a thousand hills. So if you find the right place, claim it for the Lord and march around it, like Joshua’s people did with Jericho when they conquered the Promised Land.”

We were blown away! “If we find the right place”. Wow! That’s exactly what had happened and we’d just moved in that day! What a confirmation!

But then there was more. We read the second devotional book for that day. Its opening statement was from an obscure verse in Haggai which says, “The glory of the later house shall be greater than the glory of the former house.” (Haggai 2:9) We were speechless! A second confirmation, also talking about houses, promising a greater time than what we were already experiencing! We took all this as a powerful sign that the Lord was going to do mighty things.

And He did. The work that went on there, and in the generally area of central and Eastern Europe over the next few years, was some of the most fruitful and inspiring that I’ve every experience in my 40 years of missionary work.

That wave has now passed and those times have come and gone in a sense. But that time was an amazing fulfillment of the hopes and needs of the many millions of people who’d lived under Godless regimes in those lands for many decades and who finally were able to hear the gospel and to come to know the truths of God.

For me, that happy dream I’d had in my discouragement in 1984 was sent by God as a promise of wonderful times to come. And it even had a specific literal fulfillment some 7 years later in a house near the Hungarian-Slovak border, full of joyful east Europeans, exactly as I’d seen in my dream. It reminds me of the last verse in the book of Mark. “They went forth and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming His Word with signs following.” (Mark 16:20)

Asia Tsunami Video

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Mark McMillion

This video I am posting here is very personal and significant for me. It was filmed during what was the most intense, indescribable 11 days I ever experienced in the 36 years I lived outside North America. Eight days after one of the worst natural disasters to hit our world in the last 100 years, the Asian tsunami of December 26, 2004, I landed with 3 friends in the city worst hit by the tsunami, Banda Aceh, on the westernmost tip of Indonesia. Scientists called it a “once in 700 years” event.

In 15 seconds, a dry downtown street in Banda Aceh became a 13 foot high raging river of death as a result of the tsunami that hit the city.

My friends and I lived in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, a 3 hour flight from the capital of Aceh province, Banda Aceh. An earthquake of 9.3 magnitude had hit in the Indian Ocean, just off the coast of Indonesia, generating a series of waves that not only hit Indonesia but also the beaches of Thailand and reached as far as Sri Lanka and even Africa, 1000’s of miles away.

One of the things that I remember the most was just how I would be at a loss for words to describe what I was seeing and experiencing. The birds chirped, the wind blew, the clouds rolled by as they always had. But all around was devastation and loss on a scale that really could only be compared to a large atomic explosion, without radiation.

My friends and I went there to do what we could, whatever that might be. We found that actually there was a lot we could do. But with this post I am not really going to be describing so much. Instead I want to make available some film footage I was able take while I was there.

We had received backing from people in Jakarta as well as in the States to help us do what we were doing. The filming was to help those folks know what we were able to do and where their support had gone. I personally ended up being very involved in doing recognizance at the innumerable refugee sites that sprang up throughout that area.

We’d go to one after the other, get info on what conditions were and what they needed, and then get in contact with much larger international organizations. They had quickly filled warehouses with food and resources with physical and medical supplies but they didn’t have the workers on the ground to know the individual local needs. That was the part I was able to play.

My other friends all spoke Indonesian and English so much of their work was in translating for foreign doctors in the camps, doing trauma counseling and just being available and ready to help with whatever the need was.

But if a picture is worth a 1000 words, as they say, then perhaps this film footage will give you an idea of what it is like to be in a place where an almost indescribable destruction and loss of life has occurred. And hopefully how a handful of individuals can try to do what they can.

Teaching in Jakarta

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Mark McMillion

After a year in Jakarta, I made a trip back home to the US in the spring of 2004. Then, back again in Indonesia, I made this Fields newsletter which highlighted the classes I’d been having with young people there. And these ones I had classes with were themselves learning to be teachers and ministers to their own people.

Hello and greetings yet again. It’s been around 6 months since the last Fields newsletter and I’ve visited quite a number of you in Europe and Texas during that time. In April I traveled from Jakarta to Sweden to see my kids and former wife. The two weeks I spent there was really great, doing almost nothing but just having time with my family, catching up with what’s been happening in their lives.

From Sweden I flew to Austin, Texas, basing there at my parent’s house. They are now in their 80’s and are both doing well. I was able to bring back from Austin, a series of vinyl “banners” that I’ve been using in the classes I teach here. These banners are something I’ve been working on for over two years. But producing them here in Indonesia has proven to be very expensive. So it was a thrill for all the pieces to come together when I was in Austin and to have these done at last.

The new banners that are used in classes, one on the book of Revelations and the other on the book of Daniel.

In the pictures here you can see some of the young people who have been coming to the classes, mostly ones in their teens and twenties. Some of these regular attendees are the people I wrote you about who recently made a “road trip” far into the jungles of the Borneo (now called Kalimantan) to witness to some of the small villages there and to try to bring the “good news” to those of their own nation.

This is during one of regular weekly classes that I would have with friends in Jakarta.

It’s been very rewarding to see these students with whom I’ve been having classes and personal time over the last year begin to blossom into teachers themselves and being able to do much more to minister to people. A good example of this has been Steve and Wulan, the young people who’ve faithful come here to do typing and proofreading for around a year. I’ve started going with them to an orphanage that focuses on the very worst case situations with young people in the city: abandoned kids, living under bridges, beggars and the worst.

Many of my students seen here went on the trip to the villages in Borneo, featured in another newsletter.

The main orphanage has around 100 kids like this. The folks who run the place have rather radical views as Christians so we fit in quite well, ha! They say the thing they need most is inspiration and spiritual input for the young people. Steve and Wulan both come out of a similar background to these new kids but their background was more a foster home type place rather than being real rough cases themselves. So they know how to relate to these street kids and the kids can see them as examples to look up to.

Steve & Wulan (center) sharing songs in an institution for children just off the streets

And the main thing that it looks like we are going to try to be specializing in is music. A lot of these kids are 12 or 14 and they can’t read. But I’m really encouraged about this new project and part of that is just that Steve and Wulan are now getting a chance to pour out and use all that they’ve been learning over the last year. We’ve been working on songs they can play and it’s neat to see these young Indonesians finding their feet and being used as they want to be.

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In some ways I’m continually amazed at how the Lord has led in my life over the last few years. At times this is not an easy place to stay in. It’s somewhat off the beaten path and not what “I would have chosen”. Having had so many changes so often for many years, it’s rather strange for me that this place and calling seems to remain stable as I begin my second year here. And there seem to be some interesting things up ahead which I’ll let you know about soon, hopefully in the next newsletter.

Your friend, Mark

East meets West

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Mark McMillion

This is a “Fields” newsletter that I sent to friends in October of 2003, after I’d been living in Jakarta, Indonesia for around 6 months.

God bless you and greetings again. This time, instead of giving you “the big picture”, I want to zoom down to just one of the many events that make up what it means to live this life. More than anything, it has to do with just being God’s partner, flowing with the rhythm and timing as He leads, makes a way and does the work.

“Great”, you might say, “but what in the world does that mean?” As in any human endeavor, there are golden opportunities and occasions where you have to respond, sometimes quickly, before the chance is gone. Over the years, it’s been something to see these possibilities not just as coincidences but as “God’s set ups”. There was one recently and we even were able to get a few photos of it.

The street kids’ school project here in Jakarta is still one of my major concerns. At the beginning of September, I went there with my friend Thomas to bring their monthly gift which some of you have sent, and to just “see how they do.”

The director looks over the cards to see if they would be useful for the school.

One of the things we offer people is a set of 40 colorful flash cards in English for children. Some are explicitly Christian and would not be acceptable there. But others strike at themes that are found in both the Christian and Muslim faith, drawings illustrating “All things were made by God”, “Be kind”, “God loves a cheerful giver” and others. We felt that, because of the warm and positive nature of these cards, plus that they could be used for learning English as well as reading Indonesian, possibly the teachers and administrators at the school would want to receive a set.

As you can imagine, finding common ground between Islam and Christianity can be a challenge. But it is there and perhaps more than some realize. After our customary introduction and snack which they served, we brought out our cards as we explained our idea that perhaps they would find them beneficial to their work.

After counseling with the English teacher, they feel the cards would be a help.

The founder of the school and his team looked them over carefully. There were around 20 which we felt they would like. They could see that they were very basic and embraced themes that were as dear to them as they were to us. It turned out that, after they counseled together, they did feel the picture cards would be something they could use.

The founder of the school excused himself and we were left in the room with one of his teachers and one or two of the students and helpers. I’m sorry I don’t exactly have the photos to show the transition of how all this changed into what happened next. But there was a real interest in the simply, colorful pictures which had text in English and Indonesian.

It’s wonderful the faith and power God gives for times like this.

I struck up a conversation with a few of the ones there, as best we could, considering that neither of us spoke the other’s language. So I pointed at a picture of the sun and said the word. And they said “mati hari” (literally “the eye of the day”), the word for the sun in Indonesian. Or I would say “prayer” and they would nod and agree and say their word. The teacher from the school who was still there was the English teacher. He doesn’t really speak much English but he was able to help a little in bridging the gaps.

Our joy is seeing their joy, the happiness of those we share God’s love and truth with.

As it went along, I was noticing that there seemed to be more and more kids coming in. Pretty soon the room was full of 30 elementary school kids who were really listening, watching, participating and wanting to know what it was all about. We talked about love (“kasih”), faith (“iman”), peace (“damal”), friends (“sahabat”), God (“Allah”), and cleanliness (“kebersihan”), all themes from the drawings.

Gestures and facial expressions can get the thought across when words fail.

What could have been a pretty rowdy atmosphere instead had almost a hush over it. The kids’ natural respect for instruction of this type was mixed with their curiosity and surprise to hear someone of another faith communicating to them on values they perhaps thought were only their own.

My friend Thomas came back and he saw an opportunity to catch a special moment on film. At times like this, it’s not always easy to remember to get out the camera and to try to capture the moment. You can ruin the atmosphere by getting everyone distracted. So you try to take a few shots while being as unobtrusive as possible.

The flash card that drew the most discussion was “Angels watch over me”, something they seemed to know a lot about. They told me about Gabriel. I agreed and asked if they knew about Michael, which they did. They were surprised and pleased. We looked, talked, discussed and agreed. Talk about East meets West! But I was having fun and doing my best to make it fun and exciting for them, pantomiming things when necessary to make the idea understood and just really being thrilled by what seemed like a spontaneous open door to reach out to all these young people who had dropped by to see what this stranger from the other side of the world was talking about.

Sweet kids hearing old things from a new angle and a different light.

I hope somehow the special-ness of the occasion is portrayed here. For me at least it felt like a minor miracle that such a coming together could be engineered by God’s Spirit between me and people of such a different age, background, and religious upbringing. Truly He is the one who can break down the walls, bridge the gaps and put people on common ground when there is a mutual respect and faith for Him and His ways. If I was a musician I would have played them a song. But in this case the Lord used what we had: a gift for teaching and the joy of sharing Him with others to make an interesting and special occasion for young people who probably don’t have many opportunities like that.

I do appreciate your support and your continued prayers. The spiritual battles here are much stronger than when I was still living in Texas. My health has been good and I bounced back from a very strong flu earlier this month in less time than was expected. It’s always such a blessing when I hear from you, to know how you are doing and to know that these newsletters are somehow a help to you. I miss you but I’m glad we can keep in touch this way.

Sincerely, Mark

Far Country Photos –from Borneo!

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Mark McMillion

[This is another of the newsletters that I sent to friends when I was living in Indonesia between 2003 and 2008.]

In November, 2004, 21 friends of mine took a 12 day trip into the interior of Kalimantan. This is the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo, 80% the size of Texas and home to over 10 million people. Some of those who went on this trip were young Indonesians that I have Bible classes with here in Jakarta. Others are children of social workers who grew up here in Indonesia. And there were a few adults around my age and of a similar background, heading up the team. Their primary goal was to bring aid and God’s love to 12 villages they would visit, through personal visitation, skits, songs and classes, as well as to distribute several tons of goods which had been donated for this project.

This “Far Country Photos #3” will give you a pictorial glimpse of some of what went on during that time. These pictures will begin from the time after the team had left the capital of the province, Pontianak (population: 390,000 and situated directly on the Equator), and had driven into the interior to a training camp deep in the jungle.

Trucks pull in to Tikalong training camp, 4 hours drive into the jungle.

Rolling out to the first village. “Do you think those planks will hold that truck?” “They should, they’re teak wood.”

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Hawks and doves Part 3 – Proud to be an American

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Mark McMillion

Having lived outside America for 36 years in Christian service, my relationship to my country has been affected by that time abroad. Part of it is identity. It is very common, if not completely normal, for individuals everywhere to identify themselves, in more than any other way, as being of their nationality. They’ll say “I’m Chinese” or “I’m German” or “I’m Brazilian”. And certainly for Americans their sense of identity is strongly fixed around being Americans.

For me, it’s not totally the same. I am American; my relatives came here in 1650. But my years abroad brought me to where I think of myself more than anything else as a person of faith in the God of Abraham, and specifically as a Christian.

I suppose most people want to be proud of their country. For Germans, their attitude to things like that has been altered by two world wars. Still, they have a lot to feel proud about. Even people from small countries feel proud of their country. But for Americans, to be proud of America is a major element of the national culture. I haven’t always totally felt the same. But I’ll tell you two times while I was abroad on the mission field that I really did.

The first was around 1996 or 1997 when I had returned to Budapest, Hungary after living a year in Moscow. What happened was that a former President of the United States came to Budapest. There was no 21 gun salute, no military parade, no fly-over of fighter aircraft.

Former President Jimmy Carter, working with Habitat for Humanity to help provide housing for the poor

This former US president and his small team traveled north of Budapest to an area near the town of Vac, not far from where I’d lived before. They were there to start building low cost housing for the many “Romani”, the Gypsy population which make up a large minority of Hungary. Almost all live in deep poverty. He had his hammer, he was working on building houses, this former US President. He was Jimmy Carter. That was one time when I really felt, “Well, son of a gun, there’s an American and some Americans I can feel proud of”.

The other time was a little more than 8 years later. I’d been living in Indonesia for around 18 months when the Asian Tsunami of December 2004 struck. The worst hit city of all was Banda Aceh, the capital of the province of Aceh, at the northern tip of the island of Sumatra.

As it turned out, 3 friends and I were able to make it to that city 8 days after the tsunami struck, when aid workers were only just beginning to arrive in the isolated, war torn area. Within a day we were in a large refugee camp to the north of the city, assisting some Korean doctors who needed translators and trauma councilors to work with them. There were thousands of people in the makeshift camp, the weather was very hot and there was nothing there that wasn’t brought there by trucks, no water, no food, nothing.

Suddenly an unmarked helicopter circled overhead. Everyone noticed and watched. After it looked over the camp, it landed a few hundred yards away and began throwing out aid before taking off again.

The USS Abraham Lincoln, a US Navy aircraft carrier that provided critically essential services to Aceh province, Indonesia, in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 Tsunami that devastated the area

The USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier that provided critically essential services to Aceh, Indonesia, in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 Tsunami

It was a US navy helicopter, coming from the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln that had steamed to the area to see how they could help. Refuges from the camp brought the boxes back to the camp. They were marked “US AID”.

“Doggone”, I said. “There’s something I’m glad to see: using my country’s vast resources to genuinely and freely help people in their desperate time of need, even people who are Muslims.” In the next weeks the US navy became one of the only ways that my friends and I could travel south of Banda Aceh to the even more seriously destroyed towns and villages down the south coast where the destruction was the worst. Every single bridge was washed out and the only way to reach people was by helicopter. The US forces worked eagerly and tirelessly with aid groups to help people in that time and to do medical emergencies on the ships off shore as well. It was a great time to feel good about my country.

Speaking of pride, someone has said that, of the 31,000+ verse in the Bible, there’s not one that speaks well of pride. While in this world, pride is extolled and honored, in God’s eyes it’s not. “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.” (I Peter 5:5) So I don’t think too often about feeling proud of my country. But I’m sharing here some times when I felt really good about my nation and how they were “going everywhere, doing good,” (Acts 10:38) like Jesus did.

Mark McMillion

Creeds and Deeds, Facts and Acts

Category Archives: Mission field news