God's Work in Asia-Pacific
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Ben Kreps:
Welcome to the Mark Prater podcast, where our aim is to connect our global family of Sovereign Grace churches with our Executive Director. Those guys who read or watch the podcast know from last week's podcast, or the one that dropped this week, that you were headed to the Philippines for an Asia-Pacific Sovereign Grace Pastors Conference. Clearly, you're there now in your hotel room and you've been posting some, I think, on Twitter, some really wonderful little snippets of things that are happening at the conference. It looks wonderful. How's it going?
Mark Prater:
It's going great. By the way, for the listeners or readers of this podcast, Ben and I are recording this on a 12 hour time difference. So it's 9:45 PM Manila time on Wednesday evening, and 9:45 Wednesday morning, Ben's time. And I was just saying to Ben, it's been a good day here, so you're gonna have a good day. Just to give him a heads up and encourage him in that way.
Ben Kreps:
Yeah. A voice from the future,
Mark Prater:
<laugh>. Right. Voice from the future. The first ever Sovereign Grace Churches Asia-Pacific Pastors and Wives conference is just going very, very well. It's just been incredible to be with pastors and wives from five different nations in the Asia-Pacific part of the world. Let me mention where they're from: Australia, from Pakistan, from India, from South Korea, and of course, the Philippines. Just singing with these brothers and sisters is just a joy. It's like our pastors conference back in the States every year. They're just passionate and eager and joyful. They love singing to Jesus, and there's just a lot of laughter and joy in the room that I think is, you know, the fruit of the gospel at work in our lives.
We've laughed a lot. We've cared for one other, prayed for one another, and I just wanna commend Jeffrey Jo, the Senior Pastor of Cross of Christ Salvation Gospel Ministries in Manila, where I had the joy of preaching on Sunday. He's also our leader here in the Philippines. He's just done a great job of planning and leading and executing this conference. And he's just a gift to our family of churches.
There are also guests here at the conference. In fact, I just left a guest reception that had, I think, four or five couples, pastors, that represent churches interested in being adopted into Sovereign Grace. And just getting to know them and hearing their stories has been wonderful, as well.
So, the preaching has been good. the singing, the worship has been good. The fellowship with one another has been outstanding, and God is just really blessing this conference. And it's really good for an American to be here and to watch, because this is very meaningful for our Asia brothers and sisters. They love coming to our Pastors Conference in Orlando and will continue to come when they can, but for them to have a pastors and wives conference in their context in Asia is just so encouraging to them. Songhwan Kang, Senior Pastor of the Sovereign Grace Church in Seoul, South Korea said, I never thought I would see this day come. And yet, here it is. He was just so excited about the conference. So overall, it's going very well, Ben.
Ben Kreps:
That's wonderful. It is deeply encouraging to see the videos that you've been sharing and also what you've just shared right now, to just see brothers and sisters on the other side of the globe. Different languages, different cultures, but the same gospel and the same fruit of an effect of the gospel; seeing what's happening at that conference. You also have a couple of stories that you wanted to share with us as well.
Mark Prater:
I do. I've got a lot of stories, but I'm going to limit it to two. The first story is from a brother in Pakistan. I'm not using his name for security reasons, to protect him, but I listened to his story, had breakfast with him and actually shot a little video with him so he could tell a little bit of a story. This man is faithfully preaching the gospel, and he's being persecuted for it, in Pakistani. It's illegal to preach the gospel. And, he will at times, face persecution because of that. In fact, it wasn't too long ago that there were Muslims that came and just took guns and shot up his house and shot out all the windows in his house. His mom is living with them. She was afraid. Their kids were afraid. And his response is, we're not going to be affected by that; we're going to continue to preach the gospel. He is just a faithful man, and his faith and trust in God in difficult circumstances is only humbling. It's very inspiring and it stirred my faith.
The other thing is that they've been able to get Bibles into people's hands, recent converts. And the Bibles they get aren't necessarily in Pakistani language. So they get audio bibles, and he was telling me that the people are listening to these audio bibles, and some of the older folks in particular are memorizing their Bible. And he said he didn't believe them. So he would just throw out a chapter and verse from a particular book, and they would read the verse or repeat the verse to him out of memory. And he was asking them, why were they memorizing so much scripture? And they said, we believe there'll be a day when even people will come and take away our audio bibles. So we want the word of God in our hearts so that we'll never forget it, and it will continue to transform our lives.
So that was, that was just a humbling story. The other story comes from J.P., who leads a Calvary Gospel Church in Andre Pradesh, India. And he's just got a wonderful story of God's work in his village where he's been laboring for the gospel for a number of years. First of all, he can't have his own building because he's in a Hindu community. So he's got a house, and he basically built on top of his house, up on his roof, an area where the church meets. So that's where they meet. People go to his house, they go upstairs, and they meet there on Sundays. But what really happened, is that the Lord used the pandemic to open doors to Hindu's hearts for the gospel. So many folks might remember we were sending financial support to J.P. He was buying bags of rice and vegetables and food, and he was taking it to everyone, including Hindus. And the people were saying, you're just caring for us; we don't experience that. And, so they had opportunities to share the gospel with them. And as a result, since the pandemic, his church grew from 25 to 30 people, and now they're getting a hundred people on a Sunday. Isn't it crazy? The Lord has used a difficult situation, the pandemic in a Hindu community, to really bring people to Christ. And his church has probably tripled in size as a result.
So many stories like that. I could tell you so many more that celebrate the grace of God at work in pastors' lives and in churches' lives, in this area of the world, the Asia part of the world, and God's on the move, and he's doing wonderful things in advancing the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Ben Kreps:
Those are some excellent updates. It is humbling to be connected in relationship to men of godly courage, perseverance in the face of significant challenges, and to hear about God's work in their faithfulness. So, thanks for the update, Mark. We'll be praying for our growing partnership with churches in that region of the world. Thank you all for reading or watching. We'll see you here, Lord willing, next week. Bye for now.