A touching Mother's Day

It was a touching and inspiring moment when we together thought of our mothers' love, care, sacrifice, and dream for us. To many of our young new believers, this was their first time thinking of their mom in Mother's Day in a very special way. I personally thank God for 18 people attended our service, the biggest number up to now. God is the God of wisdom. He used this opportunity for us to manifest the beauty of Christianity regarding honoring parents. Christianity is known to Vietnamese as a religion forsaking parents or origin when we do not worship our dead ones. So Mother's Day has become a great opportunity for us to teach and demonstrate our love and respect to our parents. We all cried in tears as we sang "My loving Mom." Among our 17 new believers, 3 of them made known to their parents about their faith. We are praying that we all demonstrate life-transformation to lead them to Christ, too.

Phuong's Testimony

Before accepting Christ, because of the broken family, Phuong was a timid, unconfident girl, with very low self-esteem. Finding herself being loved, treasured, and cherished by God, Phuong is now an active, confident, happy, and energetic person who seeks to improve self-esteem of others. Acknowledging that Jesus forgave her sins, she sought to be right with God by courageous deeds. Last month, she asked her mom, a divorced lady to sit down and said thank to her mom for accepting herself and loving her. She then came to a teacher who got hurt by her during Phuong’s high school to say sorry. She found a great joy in repenting and having true forgiveness from God.

We know Phuong is a woman of peace that God had prepared for us to reach out to her broken family and her friends in college. While Esther did follow-up with Phuong in her dorm, she introduced her with 10 other roommates who need help for their English listening and speaking skills. An English class on Saturday was started in a park nearby our house where Esther taught them Christian values through life testimonies and Bible characters. Phuong had been praying for these students and started making them known about her faith and planning to share Christ with them, one by one.

Sisters' testimony

As we apply Evangelism Explosion Method into our personal outreach, Thuan led his two students who are also in our church planting team to go to the park for practice. There they met and shared with Thao, who ran away from her father because of his mistreat, to live with her sister to whom she could not open all of her painful secrets. After hearing, Thao “ran” into the Father God for acceptance, love, and protection. We started praying for her sister and three days after that when Thao came to our house for Bible Study, her sister dropped by to pick her after class, Esther took the chance to present God’s gift of eternal life for her and she willingly received Christ. They are faithful attendants of our church Dawn Watch, Follow-up class, and are growing in Him wonderfully.

Hung's testimony

Hung is a student of Law University who comes from a very poor family of 10 people who even do not a house to live. Though they are Catholics but they do not have any personal relationship with God. Through a pastor’s reference, we came to help him with his school tuition. As he often comes and goes to our house to be comforted and encouraged, he had found that he needed to have a personal relationship with Jesus, the One whom he knows just by name. A week after his profession of faith, Hung’s mother and sister came to visit us. According to Hung’s desire, we prayed to God and boldly shared Jesus with them, they confessed their faith in Jesus alone for salvation and also for present delivery. Two weeks after that, Hung’s father came to our house and we also shared Christ with him. God is working! We trust that He would save this whole family from darkness to light, poverty to prosperity, and despair to hope.
Hung is also the man of peace of his family and dorm. He brought Sang, son of a sorcerer to us. He joins our service weekly and shows very special interest in the Bible with a lot of questions.

14- attendants in our Sunday Bible gathering

The work is in process and we thank God for doing great things among our new believers. They came to worship God with us right after they received Christ and our challenge for follow-up and fellowship. We know it's Him who is touching people's hearts. We are looking forward to seeing these young people and believers receive baptism.

English Class at Park

Phuong, the 3rd seed of our labor &Tram (left)

In November 28, Phuong received Christ after hearing my gospel presentation about God's unconditional love, I started doing follow-up with her and also seeing life transformation in her life. Not being so strongly and passionately but Phuong experiences God simply and deeply. She comes to me once for baptism doctrine study this week and the week after that I will come to her dorm. I met there 10 girls in her room. Phuong was so proud of my English skill that she asked me to test her friends. They all got amazed and wanted to be my students. =) We then schedule 2 conservative Saturdays in a park to study and here they are...

Kairos is sleeping beside the class....cute!

What touches me is they have to travel more than one our to come to our "outdoor" class. I taught them how to read and converse in English. While teaching I insert Christian values in our contents. I thank God for Phuong and realize that she is the woman of peace to reach these ladies. After a month I know these ladies, Phuong gained confidence to share the gospel with them so we are praying for God's directions and wisdom to reach them through this bridge.

Tien saw our class and wanted to join, too!

200 workers heard the gospel

This morning Thuan had a chance to share the salvation through Zacchaeus' life in front of 200 workers of a clothing company. That audience also heard my testimony last week. Friends, we really thank God for the opportunity.
Last month, a lady talked to me about this clothing company of a Christian family who holds Monday prayer time before the week work, and she asked if I could come and help their young workers and staff. I doubted that if there was really a company praticing that great custom. One week after that, the lady phoned me at 10:30 pm to ask if I could go there tomorrow morning with a song and a short speech. I agreed after discussing with Thuan. Then, we got there that Monday, full of workers, full of energy in a warm and clean factory room. We were requested to greet them, to sing a song, and to encourage them. And we did it in both excitement and nervousness.
The factory owner seemed to like us and officially asked us to be the chaplain of her company because she wanted to open Bible Study every Saturday for few believer workers and for those who are interested. And this is the third time we came where Thuan had a chance to share the gospel. We started praying for the salvation of these workers.
We thank God for the open door. We thank God for the opportunity to serve. And we thank God for those who have heard and will be saved into His Kingdom.

Training & Practicing

This week, we started training our 4 disciples, 2 for Thuan and 2 for me, in our church planting team (we are 6 in all) and began demonstrating for them the gospel outline in our personal outreach time. It was exciting but nervous! Though I had been sharing the gospel for 10 years since I received Christ but to be an example for my students, I felt nervous and a bit pressure. It caused me to pray harder then. =) But it turned to good. Though the hearers did not respond to the call but they got a better understanding about the gospel. This is an exciting journey@! I am looking forward to the end of the training to see how God will bring people for us to share and how my disciples will grow and benefit in this.

The new and first-hand Experience

I heard many testimonies about people who came to Christ after joining Bible Study but we experienced that the first time in our life! I met Son in a business conference where I served as an interpreter. He came to me, wondering about my friendliness and warm look to people. I told him because I am a Christian! He came to my house sometimes and we sat and talked. He came to our church Christmas event and we shared with him the gospel. He introduced his girlfriend for us and we soon became friends and we went out for coffee. We shared the gospel with them again. They said they wanted to have Bible so they can understand more about God. We then told them that we wanted to help teaching them some main truths in the Bible for them. And surprisingly they accepted. I was so happy on the way home because this is the first time I see non-believers agree to join Bible Study to know more about God. I know for many, it's not much to be really happy but I am just really happy!

Sept-Jan, 2010 Prayer Letters

Dear co-workers in Christ,

We should have written to you in updating our life and ministry earlier but we could not make it. And now as we are putting many events, activities, and prayer requests into this prayer letter of ours, we would like you to know how much we long to the moments that we can share our hearts to you in a deep and an intimate way, believing that you are always willing to appreciate God’s work in and through us. Thank you for always standing beside us to live for the cause that God has laid in front of us. Beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ, we believe that you understand so well: we need you when we are pursuing to fulfill His call for us.

Thuan continues to enjoy the privilege to teach in Bible school with the Minor Prophet class this time. He has learned so much in preparing the materials and seeing how the class impacted on his students. What is more wonderful for him is that his great friend visited him and was in the class for a short while. This special friend of his just came to see God's work upon him and was there for him to share in a very deep and very special way. And then he left with the assurance of his fatherly love, care, prayer, and support to us.

Esther had a great time with the charity trip to her hometown, helping the poorest and the church there with a Korean team, living in Vietnam. It builds the hope in her about a better community of her hometown. It is also a proof of God's amazing works upon her life, saving her from those poorest and now work through her to bless the community.

It was a great joy for Esther to organize the women conference and interpret for a powerful and strong speaker. She was so inspired by the speaker by her messages, life-experience, and sacrifice for God. She is truly an inspiration! Esther also thanks God for creativity, many ideas, and wisdom that God has given to her.

The evangelism training Esther organized and co-trained the youth was effective when 12 attendees among 16 went out and shared the gospel with 27 people in an afternoon. They have committed to share to 127 people in the next three months. Updates show that God is working powerfully on them.

In the same month, we suffered many relationship problems in and out, both from our families and with partners in ministry. As a couple, we survived through different wrong relationships by reflection, prayer, sensitivity and sort of humility. We know that God was working to mold us and to direct us to the right partnership and ministry involvement. Undergoing all of these, we appreciate Jesus' teaching in Matthew 18:15-20. Esther took initiative to come first to an old leader who is in high position of leadership, and who hurt her by his words. In all, she thanks God for Thuan, who encouraged her and prayed for her to do the right thing though it was not easy at all!

In Vietnam Teacher's Day, Thuan was invited to come to Mekong Delta, around 200km far from Ho Chi Minh City, to visit a student group there, to train them and to speak in their evangelistic event. There he learns to always keep his first love for God and obey the Great Teacher when he sees so many new believers serving God with their sincerity, passion, and love for God.

Christmas is the spiritual harvest of souls in Vietnam with so many Christmas evangelistic events. This year Esther had privilege to be the MC and co-organizer of several big events and she learned a lot to improve her gift in public speaking and leadership. We are grateful that God has used many in different denominations to bring salvation to our people.

However, our highlight of this Christmas is our church Christmas party in our house where we had 15 non-believers came. Esther shared her salvation testimony and it stirred their hearts. God added His chosen ones into our church and now we are 11. In gratitude with the very few that God has entrusted, we are doing follow-up with them and in contact with them closely.

It was a great privilege and opportunity for the three of us to contribute ourselves into a trip to the orphanage and the poor villages. We have learned so much from the team of more than twenty wonderful people. We have been impressed by their heart for God, moving out of their comfort zone, giving themselves as God's extended hand to bring hope to the orphans and the poorest of the poor. For more details, please check: http://www.lostorphans.org

You might still remember Esther's testimony of how God saved her whole family and caused them to share His love in their hometown and that they were praying to build the church there. By God's grace and faithfulness, the church building was finished and dedicated last Jan 26 in glorifying God's power over her family and His church.

We are now closing our first month of 2010 with our great thank to God in celebrating Kairos' 1st birthday- Jan 30. Though God did not grant Esther a natural delivery as she prayed but He did bless Kairos so much in the first year. He is always strong, healthy, active, smiling, and stays blessed by His grace. We are still raising him up in expectation that God will send revival to Vietnam in His appointed time, in Kairos' generation.

We are grateful for your partnership during the past year 2009. Please continue to pray for us and join us in our ministry move this year as we consider to join Evangelism Explosion in fulfilling our long-term vision of an evangelistic organization in Vietnam.