2014 Summer Missionary - Greg Wan

2014 Summer Missionary - Greg Wan

  Sunday, August 17, 2014 at 5:47 PM    Darren Lo

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God Working in Me 

Hi. It’s Greg Wan! I’m going to share about how God has blessed me this summer.
First off, my missions experience (or Summer Project, as Campus Crusade puts it) deals with a lot more than just my time in East Asia.

First, there were so many factors that led me to fully believe that God wanted me to go. My parents letting me go was its own miracle with its own story. I had also turned in my application late, but coincidentally the team was extremely lacking in guys... on top of that, because of my late acceptance, I only had one month to raise a monstrous $5600 for the six-week trip.

I was frustrated with myself for waiting so long to start, but I sent out letters hoping for at least a portion of the support I needed. Little by little, support came in the mail. I was floored at the amount of money that was coming my way. Most of the people that gave were distant friends, and among the largest contributors were people I hadn’t even met! I quickly reached the goal of $5600... and then quickly passed it... and raised a full three-thousand dollars more than I needed. At this point I was like, “okay God, I thiiiiiink you want me to go...” God had systematically blessed and surrounded me with people who cared about me. Without them, nothing would have been possible.

Accepting God’s call can be tough at times, but in my case, so many doors were open that God’s will couldn’t have been clearer.

Then the real work began in Asia.
At first, it was cool having to talk in code. God was Dad. Jesus was CJ. The Bible was the “book”. If you said you were “cool”, that meant that you were Christian. But we soon realized the weight of our words.

For us, getting caught means that we would be deported to the States. For locals, it most likely means jail time. Not being able to associate ourselves with anyone on our team took some getting used to. The job me and the rest of my team had was to pose as students at the local University and make friends with anyone in the cafeteria area during lunch.

We really looked like Chinese students, too, carrying our lunch trays around. But as you can imagine, the language barrier made things a little difficult. The routine that we settled on after tons of rejections was: 1.) Look and see if they had enough food on their plate so that ‘I’m done eating’ wouldn’t be an out for them 2.) say “Do you speak English?” 3.) and if they do, ask them if we could eat lunch with them, and start getting to know them. One time, we were trying to explain the Gospel using an analogy about God giving us grace, like someone giving someone else a cake they didn’t deserve. The poor student kept asking who got the cake and where it went.

Talking with students helped gain an interesting perspective on that part of the world. If I asked if they had any religion, they would answer for their entire country or their entire family. If I probed more, they would still say “No, people my age don’t seem to have a religion”. The collective society was a stark contrast to the “BE AN INDIVIDUAL” campaign that America always seems to be promoting. The Gospel was even more of a surprise to them. It took them a long time to come to grips that there was a God out there that offered undeserved grace. One student mentioned that he knew something was off about the young people in Asia... that having no religion was bad for them. The people in that culture are all searching for something, but don’t know what to look for or how to find it. This is when God brings us in.

Hanging out with students was the best part. I met a girl who was a student in one of the cafeterias, and I knew God was working in me from the start. We had a hard time getting the conversation rolling... until I mentioned Bruno Mars. Her eyes lit up, and we started singing in the middle of the cafeteria. I’m pretty sure we were the only people in all of East Asia to be singing that loud in a school cafeteria.

There was also this thing the University set up called Forced Friends. It was exactly how you’d imagine it to be. We sat in four groups, each in a circle, (local students and the team were in alternating seats) and we had an hour-and-a-half to just... talk. The locals looked unapproachable to say the least. Stoic. Deadpanned faces. So we started off with the normal things, like... have you ever visited America? or how old are you? It was pretty awkward ... until I mentioned Taylor Swift. All the girls screamed, and said they would sing if I sang... so I sang my own worst rendition of Love Story, but luckily everyone joined in. At first, it was only our group singing, then slowly the next group, and then the next group... until all the groups were playing Who Can Sing Louder Than The Other Groups. I could barely hear myself speak. I looked around and saw God moving in us, and it was amazing to see what God could do with two groups of people who barely even speak the same language, to bring Himself glory.

Overall, God used me this summer in ways I never could have imagined. I learned a few important things involving God, missions, and even myself:

1) God can use the weirdest of things for Him
Nobody in East Asia skateboards. It’s only bikes and mopeds. So it was odd when I bought a penny board to get around. My teammate was boarding one day when a student came up to him and asked if he could ride with him. He had a board, too! God found the only guy in Asia who skated and brought him to us. We weren’t even trying. We eventually shared the Gospel with him.

2) Missions is as much for ourselves as it is for the locals
My faith was tested and strengthened through the six-weeks, exercising and explaining the things that I had been taught all my life. I’d had a period of major doubt a few years ago, but God used that to help answer the students’ hard questions about the Gospel. Explaining it to them and hearing myself proclaim this good news was exhilarating and it helped my faith become more ingrained in me. Sometimes I would step back and think... wow... God is awesome. Christ suffered for me. The Gospel becomes real to you.

3) You’re not a hero, and God doesn’t need you (per se)
Many people come in with the mindset of “I’m gonna come in and rescue the locals from certain death and hellish destruction. If I don’t talk to them, who will?!”
God will. If God wants that person to be saved, He will send other people. God does the heavy labor, not us. Missions is about being used by God for his purposes. He doesn’t need us. He could just as easily come down to earth and appear to each person so that they would believe. But he wants us to answer his call and go in faith so that others will come to salvation through real faith.In that way, I should be completely honored to be part of His work.

4) The Mission Cliché
If we go into missions and come back with, “I’m grateful for what I have, because maaan the locals don’t have much”, then we’ve completely missed the point. Again, it’s not about appreciating the things we have. It’s about using those things to glorify God, and doing something about the broken and lost. The thing that we all really need is salvation.

5) Building real relationships works
I had questioned the methods of our team in the beginning. Why are we only making a few friends and then sticking to just them? What about the number of believers we need to cultivate?

People aren’t numbers. People are people. The purpose is the Gospel, but the goal isn’t to stop at the Gospel. Spending time and investing in a few is better than brushing past a million. One or two well-trained, strong believers (who could then start churches and movements) are better than a mass of baby Christians. For me, when I invested in a few students and built a real friendship with them, sharing the Gospel became less of a necessity, and more of a natural progression toward yearning for their salvation.

In closing, God’s work is such a privilege and I was so grateful to be a part of it this summer. I’m going to miss the sweltering heat, 75 cent burritos, and 25 cent baos, but mostly the people and culture that I was blessed to be able to experience.