Below is what our coworker Gary wrote about a very exciting miracle of God that we got to witness yesterday. God seems to be opening the door for us to go to our neighboring village M. to teach them God’s Word after all 🙂 !!! Thanks for praying with us,
Ralf for us Schlegels
My fingers can’t type fast enough to tell you all the events of the day. So let me just get it out there and then you can read more of the details below.
The village leaders of village M have had a change of heart and have asked us to come and meet with the entire village and discuss the possibility of doing the creation to Christ evangelistic teaching in their village!!!!!
The way God orchestrated all this is amazing so I encourage you to grab a cup of coffee (or tea) and read on.
Today is the 10 year anniversary of the community school here in our village that services the entire Dinangat area. They wanted to have a celebration and asked if we would speak during the service. So we met with the bible teachers here and we discussed this and realized that it will be a good opportunity to do a little pre-evangelism type message to create curiosity. The reason we thought like this was because people from other places including mainly people from village M would be coming. On top of this the community school asked them to be a part of the ceremony  by also doing some speaking and officially “closing the door” of the school for the end of their school year (we are in the southern hemisphere remember). So we knew that the main leaders would at least be coming and we would be “working together” with them.
We decided that myself and Basa would do the preaching and we agreed that doing the story of Noah’s ark would serve our purposes well in creating curiosity. You know, kind of “get em lost” first and point out that there is only one road to salvation. When the meeting started the young men from here led in singing and did a really neat presentation in song and dance. It truly glorified God. Then Basa and I tag teamed and preached. A few times in my life I have felt God’s Spirit speaking through me and this was one of those times! It was so amazing. I’m still shaking from it.
Afterwards, the M leaders did their thing and simply read from a church book. After everything was done, one of the believing leaders from here got up and said that we wanted to apologize to village M and ask their forgiveness and shake their hands in front of everyone. We missionaries did not know they were going to do this. I guess there has been some communication from young believers from T village that have made the leaders in M feel hurt. The kind of things that some of us have all done in our zealousness – like “you guys are going to hell, but we are already in heaven” those are the kinds of things they have been saying I guess and this has affected our relationship with them. So leaders from here wisely apologized for it to these M leaders.
Well, immediately after the hand shaking the main village leader of M with a huge smile on his face says, “What Gary and Basa shared today was exactly what we needed to hear! I see that I do not have this understanding of how to get to God. So we want to tell you all that you are welcome to come to M next Sunday and we can sit and talk about you all coming and teaching us.” Upon hearing this two of the bible teachers let out a huge scream of joy. The leader who led in the apology reached over and hugged the main M village leader! (very unusual for this culture!) We are all in awe of what God is doing. We had no idea how this was going to work out and frankly found ourselves struggling a bit because of it all. But God – two of my favorite words! But God kept us encouraged and looking to Him. He orchestrated this entire thing and I feel like we’ve just witnessed the parting of the sea to the souls of the M people.
Please rejoice with us and pray for the meeting next Sunday (Nov 27) with village M.