Wednesday 06 Mar
Tim and Melanie share stories of Yawo friends mending relationships with God and others through Jesus.
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Video Transcript:
TIM: "G’day! I'm Tim and together with my wife Melanie and son Clayton we're part of a Baptist Mission Australia team here in Malawi, Africa.
And today we're sitting in a village with some friends at their house under their roof, near the river and just discussing how it's been nice that God has sent us the rain today. And you know, when you're part of a subsistence farming community, when you get the rain it's not an inconvenience but it's always seen as a blessing from God.
And that acknowledgment, that God is the Creator and giver of all things is really evident in this culture. We work with an Islamic people group. So in some ways our starting point is that there's a bunch of people who are already of the position where they know they're accountable ultimately to a creator God. And there’s this hunger that says, “I want to know how to build and to mend that relationship that I have with God.”
Sometimes that's pretty tough. If you don't have a community of faith where you can worship, if you can't read, if you can't write, if you don't have the scriptures in your own language, if you don't have your favorite podcast, if you don't have the whole myriad and range of different ways that we connect to get closer to God.... This Creator God that you know you're going to be accountable to seems very distant and far off.
And I think this is the favourite part of what we call our calling, I'm not going to call it a job, is that we get to sit down with people in situations and settings like this and just help them unpack. Because you know what? There's been a way made where you can restore and you can mend that relationship with the Creator!
Actually God has gone before you, because there's a hunger that He’s put in your heart and He's made a way that you can do it. And I guess we have the opportunity of sharing with people who have a hunger for God just how through the Saviour, through the Messiah, they can come into a relationship with God. To not just be people who go to the mosque, but actually enter into that relationship where they can say, “now we are sons and daughters of God”. What a fantastic opportunity we have to be part of!"
MELANIE: "I was sitting with a group of ladies, just like this lovely lady next to me, and we were talking about God's Word. And what I love is that this is the first generation of believers, they have not heard God's Word before... and so this lady was listening to what God was saying about forgiveness and she just sat there wide eyed and said, “Do you mean this is real for us? God forgives me if I forgive other people? If that's the case, we need to stop. I need to go home!”
And so she just left the group and she went home straight away and restored relationships. She asked for forgiveness and she apologised and she made things right, just like Zacchaeus in that story with Jesus, how he went to make things right. She did exactly the same thing and I was dumbfounded, I was convicted and I was actually really honoured that I got to be part of that journey.
And that's been our journey here that as people have come to faith and they've listened to God's Word and they’ve moved closer to Jesus. What happens is there's a multiplication effect. There's this tapestry of connections and people, and we don't actually know how many faith communities there are now because we don't run all of them. We don't connect all of them. We have leaders and group leaders and they travel around, and as they share someone else will hear the message and then they'll go and share and that's the story here.
And it's beautiful. And we get to be part of it, and you're part of it. That's what brings us together. This is God using ordinary people like us, to do incredible things. Thank you for tracking with us."
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This is just one of the many videos from our teams that will flesh out the May Mission Month theme of 'Mending!'. Find out more here >>
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