If you live in America and want to be more actively, physically involved in work overseas, you might wonder how much you can really do when you’re continents away from the Hui.
My family’s life here is a living, breathing, walking, talking testimony to what you can REALLY do and how it REALLY makes a difference in how we serve in our community.
For years, my husband and I had been looking forward to coming over here. Our heart’s passion is for the Hui to know Christ. We thought we would do this in a small village tucked away in the middle of nowhere. We thought we’d be surrounded by Hui and would live our lives each day as an example, building relationships with Hui and sharing from our hearts about the love we found in Jesus. We had it all planned out and couldn’t wait to get started.
And where did we end up? Tucked away in the middle of nowhere? No…we ended up in a megacity.
Not just a city. A megacity.
My husband and I are from cities in Southeast United States that, while not the smallest, are not the biggest around either. We are used to having cars, going to the grocery store ONCE a week, speaking English as functioning adults, and easily finding places for our children to play outside in grassy areas.
Now instead, we use public transportation (child safety…what’s that?), walk to several markets daily to buy food for that day, stumble around a new language while sounding like a child, and go to parks where our children can look at grass while playing on concrete.
In a megacity.
All those Hui that were going to be surrounding us and watching us live our lives – that would be open to the Gospel because of the difference they saw in us and our family – well, we came to the megacity and instead of being surrounded by Hui, we couldn’t find ANY!
To say that we were not disappointed would not be true. To say that we were never discouraged would also not be true. But to say that God has not been faithful would be a downright lie.
We began praying. We began asking God to show us where the Hui were in our little corner of this megacity. We prayed, but we needed help.
We asked our partners to pray that God would open our eyes and show us the Hui in our community. We prayed together for months. We kept searching, meeting people, sharing the Gospel and even discipling others, but still the question burned in our hearts, “Where are the Hui?”
Then one day, as I was walking into our gate, I saw them. The first Hui family I’d seen since we’d arrived more than half a year before. Walking into OUR BUILDING! WHAT? An answer to prayer! We rejoiced over that discovery even though we hadn’t spoken to them, but because we knew that God heard the prayers of His people.
We began to get bolder with our prayers: “Father, show us more Hui. But don’t only show us, give us opportunities to engage them naturally so that we might share the Gospel.”
We continued to pray, and we began to see more and more Hui. We began to meet them, greet them, see our children build bridges faster than we could blink and all of the sudden, we’re forming relationships with Hui! And then, we’d meet some more!
Is our life what we originally thought it would be? Are we now surrounded by Hui and “living our dream?”
No. Instead, our life is exactly how God planned for it to be. Instead of us fulfilling our plan, we’ve learned a greater reliance on the Lord. We learned that it isn’t going to be just us, tucked away by ourselves, reaching out on our own to the Hui we love so much. Instead, in a beautiful picture of the body of Christ, we get to partner with thousands of people around the world who also love the Hui!
Next time you think about the Hui and wonder what a difference you can really make in their lives for eternity’s sake, remember us. Remember that we’re over here, wondering something similar – what can we really do…without YOU? Your love for the Hui, your prayers for their salvation and your prayers for us rise up to our loving Father as a sweet, fragrant offering to Him.
We need you. We need your prayers. We’re praying hard too, but we need your partnership to reach out to the millions of Hui in our country. It’s going to be hard to find and share with those millions, but I know we can do it together.
Oh, and by the way, just on my way home from the market today, I met two more Hui.
Prayer Requests
- Pray for workers that live among the Hui that God will help them to meet Hui people and form relationships.
- Pray that God will give workers wisdom about what stories from the Bible to use when sharing the Gospel with Hui people.