Fruit of Labor: Testimonies from the Mission Field in Vanuatu

To you as a church as well.

This is not from us personally.

So our friend and colleague Eileen that you saw in the video,

she made a profession of salvation, a profession of faith

in Jesus in 2006, but had not understood the gospel.

She was depending on her attendance to church and the good

works that she was doing for her salvation.

So it was 2017, Lydia got to disciple her, and that is when she

realized she was not actually trusting Jesus for salvation and

she accepted Jesus Christ as her savior at that time.

So she's been growing along with us.

She's a great encouragement to us.

But when she heard we were coming to America, she understands

our relationship with you all as our supporters in prayer and finances.

She asked us how many churches we were visiting, and we thought

she was curious.

We told her a rough number.

And then a few days later, she came back with a sarong or a lava,

lava for each and every church that supports us.

That's at considerable cost to herself.

It was about a month's wages.

But she said, I want you to go and present this to the churches

and tell you all, tell the churches, thank you so much for getting

behind us to send us to Vanuatu.

She said, I understand.

If it was not for those people praying and supporting you, I would

not have had the opportunity to hear the gospel when I did.

So I'd like to present this to the church as itself.

It is not very significant, but the symbolism behind it immense.

So thank you so much, Pastor, on behalf of the church, we'll present

that to you, Eileen, is fruit of your efforts in global missions.

So thank you so much for that as well as there are many others

as well.

For the sake of time tonight, I will not go through and list every.

Every person that we have had the opportunity to impact with the

gospel.

I would like to focus on a few that I'm really fired up about because

we've been doing a lot of planting seeds, it seems, over the

years, and a lot of watering.

But then some of the fruit we thought we had turned out not to

be fruit.

And now we're starting to see some true fruit from the efforts

of our labors there.

So it's exciting for us to see, and we would be negligent if

we did not share that with you.

It's also, on another note, it's so encouraging to see the newsletters

from our missionaries read.

I mean, it's encouraging to us to see that you have such an investment

in missions.

So thank you so much for that.

It's not just another letter on A wall.

But you are paying attention carefully to what happens.

We really appreciate to see that in churches.

So for those of you maybe that have started attending here in the

last however many years it's been, I would like to go back a little

bit and explain a bit about the spiritual background to Vanuatu

and what we've been learning.

You see, when we went in 2011 and even the years following, we

felt like we knew a bit.

I wasn't arrogant enough to think I knew everything, and now

I realize how little I know even now.

But God's been teaching us a lot about the belief system and the

culture of Vanuatu as we attempt to share the gospel in a

way that they can clearly understand it.

Because we've been sharing the gospel, preaching, teaching for quite

a while, but we were starting to realize a few years ago that the

same people were continually falling back into the same patterns,

were raising their hands for salvation, and even just their lifestyle

just did not match with the message of the gospel that we had

been teaching them.

So I'd like to go back a little bit and share a little bit

about that.

I would also like to take us to second Corinthians, chapter four.

It ties in quite well to what we've seen in Vanuatu and also hits

on a few things about the state that the country is in.

2nd Corinthians 4.

I'll start in verse 1, and we'll read through to verse 7.

2 Corinthians 4:1.

2 Corinthians 4:1

Seeing therefore we have this ministry, as we have received mercy,

we faint not, but have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty,

not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully,

but by manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every

man's conscience in the sight of God.

But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost in whom

the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe

not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is

the image of God, should shine unto them.

For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves

your servants.

For Jesus sake.

For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath

shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the

glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency

of the power may be of God and not of us.

Let's pray.

Lord God, we thank you so much that we can be part of the effort

to win souls, lost souls across the globe.

Thank you so much for this church and the part they've played,

not only in the ministry we are a part of, but many, many others

in this world.

Lord God, especially as we hear of the team returning from Honduras.

Thank you so much for the soul saved there.

Thank you so much for the people helped.

Thank you that we can be a part of what you are doing.

Lord God, I pray that tonight as I share testimony of what you've

done in Vanuatu, it will be very obvious it is in spite of me

and that this is all glory goes to you.

Through this, you are the one doing the work.

We thank you so much that we have the opportunity to be a part

of what you're doing.

In Jesus name I pray.

Amen.

So we see here Paul is giving us an overview of gospel ministry

of evangelism and he's giving some warnings as well.

Especially if we look at verse three, we have a scary warning where

he warns us if we hide the gospel, we're not hiding it from

those who need it.

If you're a believer in Jesus Christ, if you're a Christian here

tonight, you have trusted Jesus Christ for salvation.

The gospel has done that work in you.

God has done that work in you through Jesus Christ.

So you can now benefit from the rest of the word of God.

But you've already benefited from the gospel.

But if you hide that, then with you and do not share that with

other people, you're hiding it from those who need it.

They have a great need for it, just as you did.

So the fact that the gospel has done a great work in you should

be a driving force for you to share the gospel with other people

as well.

Then if we read along in verse four, we see a bit of a downer, you

might say, in whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds

of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel

of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

Who's he referring to?

Who's the God of this world?

Satan.

Satan.

Satan is.

And you know what?

He has had millennia to figure out how to blind people's minds more

effectively.

We may think it's only overseas, but looking around America,

it seems like he's doing pretty well here too, as he uses

distraction to get our minds off the word of God and onto other

things.

As he uses commercialization to make us forget the reason why

we mark certain days and celebrate them as we're distracted

by the glittery lights and things around us.

So Satan has blinded the eyes of the people to the gospel.

We see this very clearly in Vanuatu and in very raw ways.

You see, if you googled Vanuatu on Google right now, you'd

come across a few things.

One of those things is called the.

Let me check the name.

The Happy Planet Index.

The Happy Planet Index.

They go around the world and they try and figure out what's the

happiest place in the world.

And in the past few years, Vanuatu has ranked first in that.

This year again, they were ranked first, first in the Happy

Planet index.

And they base that index off a lot of things, you know, sustainable,

well being of the people and that kind of thing, like how happy

they appear and different things like that.

But how well do you think that translates to the day to day life

of a new Vanuatu person?

If you're a cynical like me, you'd say probably not very well.

And you'd be right.

You see, it can appear like Vanuatu is a very happy place.

You go into the country, everyone is smiling and greeting

you.

Depending on how busy it is at the airport, they may even hang our

leis saloo, Saloos, we call them flower chains around your neck.

They're greeting you with a band.

It's amazing.

You jump into a bus, everyone's smiling and happy.

And then if you went into town, most of the two towns there,

the capital is a little different.

I wouldn't go everywhere there but the town that we're in, you could

get up and walk into anyone's yard, house, you could sit down,

not even say a word to them.

Food.

Time comes around, they'd feed you.

When it comes time to sleep, they'd give you a bed.

You haven't even introduced yourself.

They might ask your name or something, but they would just be

very hospitable to you until you had stayed the length of time

that you're going to stay and you leave again.

I've seen this happen.

We had these.

I was going to say crazy, but that might be a little unkind, but

we had some people from Scandinavia there for a while and

that's what they did.

They had come to be a part of an Eden Project where somebody was

trying to create a Noah's Ark for the apocalypse there.

And they ran away from that.

They didn't have a way to leave the country.

So they just went from house to house in the town, just eating

with people sleeping in their houses and so on.

And people were just happy.

That's who they are.

So it seems very happy.

But if you look deeper, you'll see as you get to know them, A little

bit better and understand the belief system.

There is a lot of fear.

A fear of the spirit realm, a fear of the witch doctors, a fear

of people being jealous, of people harming them through witchcraft.

They live in a lot of fear on a daily basis.

I'd like to share a story that I may have shared here already, but

I'm sharing it again because I have more of the story now, years

and years later.

So I started to get to know a little bit about the belief system

in the islands of Anahuatu when I followed a missionary up to

a village called charakoru in 2007.

Or 8 or 9.

I can't remember exactly.

I'm terrible with dates.

That's why I don't even know the last time we came here.

But one of those years, 2008, we'll say that.

2008.

Lydia's nodding.

2008.

We went up to this village with a missionary I was accompanying.

And as we walked into the village, we heard people wailing

and screaming.

It sounds like death, because that's what it was.

They grieve in a very raw way.

Just screaming and wailing and crying for days, five days.

And we asked around and found out a mother had died giving birth

to a baby girl.

A little bit more investigation, and we saw the baby.

There was in the corner of the house, just on a blanket, nobody

taking care of her, just crying away in the corner.

And we asked and said, well, what's happening with the baby?

And they said, oh, the baby's going to die, too.

And we looked at her and the baby seemed fine.

Nothing wrong with her.

We said, what do you mean?

They said, the witch doctor has prophesied her death because

he went down to the river the other day and he saw a vision of

there was some sort of something to do with a goat, I'm

not sure exactly.

And he said, two people will die.

So when the mother died giving birth to a child, which is unfortunately

quite a common occurrence in the jungle, he then said, well, that

baby is going to be the second death.

That's the second death.

Seems very convenient for him that things line up like that.

So anyway, the missionary I was with and myself as well, we felt

like this is pointless, like somebody could save this baby.

There's nothing physically wrong with her.

It's a spiritual thing.

And, you know, like, we're about that.

So the missionary said, well, is it okay then if we try and save

the baby's life?

Because he said, I believe our God can save the baby regardless

of what the witch doctor.

So they said, oh, you can try, but it's a waste, it's futile, don't

worry about it, you know she's going to die.

So he said, okay, we'll pray.

We prayed in the village, in the middle of the village and asked

God to save this baby's life.

And then he managed to convince an aunt of the baby.

One of the believers actually in Taipu now convinced her to start

breastfeeding the baby.

She had her own child.

The mothers would have been happy to take care of her before

we interacted with them.

But they said that they are then jeopardizing the health of their

own baby for one that's going to die.

So for them it was like choosing someone else's child over

their own.

But she said, I'll take care of it for a few days.

We went to town and we brought back formula, baby formula for that

baby.

It was a bit of a drive, a few hours driving, four mile hike up

into the village.

So it took a bit to get back there a few days later.

But we showed them how to use the formula and it was all good.

And they started feeding the baby.

The baby started getting healthy and growing and growing.

And after a while they realized the baby wasn't going anywhere.

So they rewarded her success at living by giving her her custom

name, Vetavui, which is a name she inherits automatically.

And then they gave her her own name of Delphia.

God intervened in some pretty amazing ways in that whole situation.

Once the missionary I was with, he had a feeling, a sense that

the Holy Spirit, from the Holy Spirit, that we should go up to the

village and take more formula, even though they should have had

enough for another month.

But we went ahead and did that.

We took it up there and as we entered the village there was a group

of men sitting around chatting.

And as we went in, we found out that the formula had finished

that morning.

I don't know who else had been drinking it, but the baby wasn't

drinking that much.

Somebody was mixing it in their morning coffee probably and

they had run out.

And they said, well, how do we get the missionary to come?

The cell phones back then weren't.

They didn't have the coverage up there.

The witch doctor said, well, I can do it by using the spirits.

But he said, the missionaries, they don't listen to the spirits,

so you should probably talk to the spirit that they listen to, which

is God.

You see, for them, God is just another spirit.

He's on the same level, just different.

People work with him, not the witch doctors.

So they buttonholed one guy and they said, you used to walk around

with missionaries and stuff.

You know a bit about this God, so why don't you pray?

So he said, I don't know what he said, but he asked that God would

send us.

And less than an hour later, we walked into the village with that

milk.

So that was pretty awesome to be a part of.

Well, that little girl kept growing and growing and she didn't

die.

But this is just gives you a snapshot of the belief system that

they have there enough that they would trust the witch doctor's

word over what they could see with their eyes.

The baby's healthy, she's okay, there's nothing wrong with

her.

The only thing is she needs food.

But they would leave her to die because they trust the witch

doctor implicitly.

They have a witch doctor to control the weather.

2020, thank you so much for your prayers and for the finances

that your church was a part of sending to help us get people back

on their feet after tropical cyclone Harold destroyed the community

up there.

That was pretty amazing to be a part of.

I enjoyed the cyclone.

I didn't enjoy the cleanup afterwards.

But when we were up there and we saw the cyclone brewing on our

weather app that we have, I kept telling people, I said, this

is the strongest cyclone I've seen.

It's brewing out in the ocean, it's coming towards us and it's going

to pass over Santo, our island.

So you need to prepare.

And they all just laughed and said, matthew, you don't understand.

We have Toville, the witch doctor.

That's his job.

He will figure out what devil is controlling the cyclone.

He'll spit at it and the cyclone will go and hit Australia

instead, which is very generous of them.

Australia would have appreciated that.

Well, you know what happened a couple of days later, the cyclone

started turning and going towards Australia.

And I don't like being secretive about these things.

So I showed them, I said, oh look, it's going away.

And they said, yeah, yeah, Sisi.

Toville did his job.

The witch doctor did his job.

It's going away.

Well, that night it just turned around and came straight for

us.

Gathered more power as it came and passed.

The eye of the storm passed directly over the top of the community

and destroyed everybody's houses, crops and everything.

We were picking up pieces for months.

Later on, after the cyclone was over, I thought about Toville

and I went back and asked some of the community who I'd been talking

to prior, prior to the cyclone.

And I said, well, what did he have to say for himself?

Because he definitely didn't chase the cyclone away.

It hit us.

And they said, oh, yeah, we did ask him about it.

And they said he decided he had started sending it away, but

he decided, you know what?

Nobody around here gives me the respect I deserve.

People aren't listening to me like they should.

I need to teach them a lesson.

So he said he let that cyclone pass over them to teach him a lesson.

How can you ever get ahead when the witch doctor, the person

you trust to lead you in spiritual matters, just makes it

all up, makes up the story and deceives you as much as he can?

Well, we didn't have much more to do with that community over the

years following that.

But then in 2014, we were invited back to that community by

the chiefs to go and start a church.

As we said in the video, we went in not really understanding

how to approach them as a community in that setting.

We made a few mistakes, we rectified those mistakes and we started

trying to teach people on a smaller group basis their understanding.

Their belief system is, you have a witch doctor in the community,

his job is like Toville, you know, the weather.

We're covered, everyone's covered.

Even if you don't buy into his ideas, you're covered by him.

So when we went and built a church, we paid right into that mentality

and they said, we have a church building here, we're all set,

we don't have to worry, don't even have to go into the church building.

But Matthew is liaising on behalf of us with whatever God is,

that spirit God, and we're all set because of that.

So we had to change the way they saw that.

So we started teaching people in a smaller group basis.

Last year is when it really started to gain traction.

Last year, in May, the chief of one of the villages, there's lots

of chiefs, there's lots of witch doctors.

It's only a community of 500 or 600 people, but we have at least

six or seven witch doctors.

And every family has a chief for that little area.

So this chief, Avakin, his name is, he came and asked me.

He said, I'd like you to come and teach my family the Bible.

We're interested to learn from you.

So we went in there, but this time we tried to do things in a better

way because we had found out in the time in between our last interactions

with them that for them, they didn't see the Bible as we see it.

We see The Bible as a book that is to be read, it's to be studied,

it's to be preached and learned.

And it is a transformative book.

It will change you if you believe and follow what it teaches.

But for them, they're witch doctors, they all make things for

them that they carry around for protection, for prosperity, for

fertility, for all those sorts of things.

And they felt like the Bible was just the same.

So many people there will own a copy of the Bible whether they

can read or not.

And they keep it around the house to keep away some of the spirits

because they believe.

Well, surely it's going to keep some of them away, maybe not

all of them.

So we had to go back and say, no, no, this isn't just another charm

that the witch doctor will sell you for a pig or whatever.

This is something else.

So we started teaching in May.

And over the months between May and December, I made weekly trips

up to that community, sat down with the four or five people that

were there, and just started teaching them through taking them

back to the beginning, hitting the high notes, making sure they

understood the Savior is coming through the old testament

on December 10, after teaching on Jesus ascension back to heaven.

I felt like they should have enough knowledge now to believe in

Jesus Christ or to say, I don't believe that's an option as

well.

And so I gave them the day.

We were preparing for a feast, we were butchering a pig.

So we just took the opportunity.

Whenever somebody had something else to add, we'd stop

and sit down together, and they would share more of their testimony

of why they believe Jesus Christ is the Savior.

I would like to share those testimonies with you.

Not because it's anything new you haven't heard before, but because

this is the effects.

This is the fruit of your missional vision and endeavors through

us.

So Chief Avakin, he told us he didn't have any interest in Jesus

or church attendance before.

Even when we were running a church in the community.

He said, I could see the people that were going to you.

They didn't really want what you had to teach.

They wanted to get stuff from you.

They wanted to, you know, continue living the way they were

living, but feel good about it.

He said, even when we started studying the Bible together, I wasn't

too interested.

But he said, then I heard that God counted Abraham and the patriarchs

as righteous because of their faith in the promised Savior.

He said, I realized I needed to pay attention to who the Savior

was because I could believe if it was him, I would believe as he

heard of Jesus birth and saw the lineage confirmed and the prophecies

fulfilled, he said, I know this is the Savior.

He told us this morning.

I've learned that Jesus died for my sin debt.

Now I am free, and through him I can be joined to God.

His wife, Vikoy, she said, among other things, I'm condensing

these testimonies down.

It was a day of us sitting around talking.

Now I have learned what God says in his word.

I know I am a sinner and cannot earn my own forgiveness.

Jesus had to die to pay for my sin.

Now it is settled.

Avakin, the chief's brother Sorry.

Alatui Avakin's brother I believe the promises God has given

us.

His word is true.

And I trust that Jesus did what God required.

He has taken my sin.

The things I did in the past, things I do now and any sin I commit

in the future.

I'm his child forever.

His wife, Kyle Rose.

I used to trust the traditions of our ancestors and depend on what

the witch doctor told us to do to make the spirits happy.

When the church started, I simply added religion into those

beliefs.

Now I believe that the only road to God is through Jesus because

he died as the punishment for my sin.

These are among some of the testimonies.

We have a few more people as well.

Eileen, she has an amazing testimony.

Her sister Linda, their brother Edwin, and some others as

well.

But we'd just like to share what is happening just in the last

year with you to give you an understanding of how things have

been going.

But I'd like to take you back to the passage we read because we

get to see it played out.

Verse 5.

We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus, the Lord, ourselves,

your servants, for Jesus sake.

For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath

shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the

glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

This is not us.

This isn't the efforts of our labors.

This is God working through the Holy Spirit in a powerful and

amazing way that we could not do.

To be honest, if it was just us, we would have messed things up

so badly in that community.

There would be no coming back from it and we would be leaving.

But God did an amazing work through the Holy Spirit, through

the Gospel.

Verse seven is where we come into it.

We have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency

of the power may be of God and not of us.

I take a lot of comfort in that verse, strange as it may be.

Because all I am is an earthen vessel.

You can break me.

You can.

You know, in Israel, they dig up so much pottery from, this is

a side note, pottery from the archaeological digs there that they

use it for paving the national parks trails.

That's how much pottery they have.

There are so many earthen vessels just smashed up, people walking

on them.

You know, I'm happy with that.

That means I still have a purpose.

I'll just be an earthen vessel.

God can break me if he wants.

I'm not going to enjoy it.

He can let people walk over me.

I won't enjoy that either.

But hey, at least I can do that.

But the excellency of the power is of God and not of us, because

we are just broken humans.

You know, wherever you're at in your life, whatever you have faced,

whatever you're struggling with, we're all the same.

We are broken humans.

But through Jesus Christ, through the gospel, we can be so

much more.

We are the children of God and we can serve him as servants to the

most high God.

So it's exciting.

It's also exciting to be learning from the believers as well.

If you've had any part in discipleship over the years, you

will understand that you are not discipling somebody.

You are being discipled as well as you study the Bible together.

If you are not involved in discipleship, I know your church

has a discipleship program.

Maybe they use a different word for it, but get involved in

that because it will be one of the most meaningful things for you.

It's a selfish thing.

You're going to learn from it, you're going to grow from it, but

you'll also be able to share life with somebody else and help

them grow in the word as well.

And it's the same with us, these Christians that we're interacting

with and discipling and teaching that believed for such a

short period of time.

But they challenged me with their faith so often, especially

because the circumstances they find themselves in are way more serious

than mine.

Every day they face the opportunity to go back to the belief

system that they grew up in, or to follow Jesus Christ and follow

the word of God.

And I know they're going to face challenges in that way.

They may not always make the right choice exactly the same as

me, but it is exciting to see that growth as it comes.

In August, Avakin shared a conversation he had with his brother

in law, Toville, the witch doctor.

Remember the cyclone?

He's the weatherman.

So tovel, it was an unseasonable period of rain, a lot

of rain in August and everyone was getting sick of it.

And they might have been throwing Tovel's name around a bit

upset.

So he went and harassed Avakin.

Deflection is always the best defense.

He went and harassed Avakin and said, look, you're studying the

Bible, you're learning about God, so why don't you tell God to

stop it raining?

And as Avakin was telling me this story, I started thinking, how

would I answer him?

Or I'd probably be like, well, I can pray, but I'll pray according

to the will of God.

You know, something comfortable like that.

But I was absolutely rebuked by what Avakin said to his brother

in law.

He said, I told Toval that's the work of Satan.

He tempted Jesus to throw himself down from the temple to prove

that God was protecting him.

And he said, I'm not going to do that.

I'm not going to put God to the test.

Jesus told Satan, you don't put God to the test.

He said, I'm not going to do that.

The weather will be what it's going to be.

That really helped me to gain some clarity.

Avakin understood what Toval was doing.

He wasn't trying to prove the power of God, he was trying to undermine

God's power.

And Avakin says, you know what, I'm not even going to go there.

It is not even worth it.

They are facing challenges as well.

Vekoy, she has very bad cataract.

If you've heard, maybe in the last newsletter, although I think

we accidentally attached the wrong newsletter to the last one,

so don't quote me on that.

I think we put one from last year.

But anyway, Vikoy, his wife, she has really bad cataract to the

point now where she can't work as a kindergarten teacher in the

community.

And it's really worrying her a lot.

Toval, the witch doctor, her brother, he has a solution.

He told Avakin, you know, your wife's cataracts is because somebody's

put a curse on her.

You need to get a red pig, go and kill it in the middle of your

village and it'll raise that curse and her eyesight will come

back.

But Avakin and Vekoy, they've considered it.

Avakin even went and started looking for a red pig.

And God used this old guy who doesn't even believe in Jesus, doesn't

believe in the Bible to stop him.

He said, look, you're looking around for a red pig.

He said, that's not the answer.

He said, tovel and those guys, they don't know what they're doing.

They're messing in things they have no understanding about.

And Avakin told me, he said, I know he wasn't talking about the

Bible, but God used what he was saying to bring the Bible back

to my mind and to make me realize I need to trust God.

We don't need to trust these guys.

This is the system of the world.

So it's exciting to see that growth.

The month we left, October, the day we flew out of the island

that we're on, we met with Avakin and Vakoy, and we gave them

some money to try and get her to the capital to get the cataracts

taken care of.

We have not heard from them since, so I'm not sure if that happened,

but we would like you to be in prayer for them as well as they face

this challenge and as they continue to grow through it.

I have so much more to share, but for the sake of time, I will

bring it to a halt there.

But we want to let you know what God is doing there and how he

is working.

We are so grateful to be your hands and feet in Vanuatu, to be

a part of what God is doing, an extension of the work that this

church is doing for the gospel.

So we thank you so much for that.

I'd like to close in a word of prayer.