Hey everyone! I am excited to be back.

I took a break from writing the blog so I could prepare and go on a mission trip to a closed Muslim nation. Have you ever been to another country? Have you ever experienced what it is like to be in a new culture? Sometimes it can be challenging; overall, it is usually a great growing experience and can be quite amazing.

My favorite part is always getting to know the people and the culture. This trip was cool in the fact that God used the people’s own culture to draw them to Himself. Have you heard of the stories of the Muslim people having dreams and visons of Jesus? They call him the man in white. We got to meet one of those people.

He told us that the highest honor is to die for Allah, which is why he went to work for ISIS; through a series of events he got kicked out and ended up living in the nation we were visiting with a Christian family.  In trying to prove that the Bible was corrupt, he prayed to Allah a traditional prayer for guidance, to ask permission to read the Bible. There are four ways Allah is supposed to answer this specific prayer, two of those ways being dreams. That night he had a dream of the man in white (Jesus) reaching out his had to him. Jesus said to him “I am the way the truth and the life.”  From that moment on he was sold out for Jesus and is now telling others about him.

Another way I saw God working through their own culture was in evangelism: you can ask anyone on the street to come have coffee with you and they will come. While American culture often prioritizes schedules, they prioritize people over time.  When we went to talk to people about Jesus, their love of coffee and relationship made it a bit easier.  We would pray and ask God to bring us people who could speak English or would be willing to talk with us through a translator.

I think my favorite story of many is when we prayed and God gave us a picture of a man in a wheelchair. Not long after we prayed and started walking around, one of our teammates found him. He asked the man where the best coffee shop was; we invited him to join us, and we talked to him through Google Translate for three hours about who Jesus is. In the end, we were able to pray for his healing and give him a Bible.

God is so creative, isn’t He? He creates the people and parts of the culture and then uses it to show them who He is; that is how much He loves and enjoys those whom He created, and you just can’t help but love them too. By being willing, you can meet the people that He loves so much and share the gospel with them. That was a wonderful thing I learned on our trip.

Next time you get the chance, even if it is in your own culture, look around and see if there is any way you can hop on board with God’s plans and love the person next to you. Please tell us in the comments about the opportunity you found and how God moved!