You might be thinking, what expectations do I need to have if I were to sign up for Gen12ii? Below is a testimony of how God has been sovereign and has not worked in ways that Man expected Him to, but in His own ways to glorify Himself. Grace Wee shares from her experience…
Many times, I believe that when we are tasked for a church event or mission trip, we would cultivate a spirit of excellence, hoping and praying very hard that faith targets would be met, students would turn up for the activity and many would come to receive Christ. That is not wrong, but what I’m trying to say is that this is our cheery picture and God wants to show us His cheery picture that only through His view, we can comprehend the whole picture.
Greatest Lesson Learnt:
Isaiah 55:9 – “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and your thoughts higher than my thoughts.“I went to North-East (NE) Thailand with a group of 10 in the last Gen12ii. In previous years, they had sent 2 groups of 10 each, so ours was considered a small group. I went with the expectation that something BIG would happen in the trip, that God would use a small team like ours to do HUGE things. But things didn’t turn out the way I expected.
We organized evangelistic events through a picnic, a Singapore-themed party and a camp. Our faith targets were not met. This taught me a GREAT lesson: Many times we expect our own agendas to be fulfilled but we forget God’s agenda. His ways are so much higher than ours. Looking back, even though we did not fulfill what we targeted, we made many long-lasting friendships that would eventually be won for Christ!
I believe that God didn’t want us to have a touch-and-go friendship with the Thai students, but to build on the friendship, get to know their personal needs first before introducing Jesus to them. That was HIS agenda.
So here is my encouragement to those of you who are still considering signing up Gen12ii: Expect God to surprise you in ways you cannot imagine; all you can do is to marvel awesomeness!
