God is at Work
311 is a special date not just for Japan, but Asia and even for the whole world. The big earthquake, tsunami and the nuclear crisis all happened in a very short time. They are not just a big disaster for Japan people, but for Asia and for the whole world. We sent out letters to our member bodies appealing for help. There was a lot of response from many countries. We are happy to see the good response, which shows that we are in one big family. An APBF team has just paid a visit to Japan to meet the leaders of Japan Baptist Convention and Japan Baptist Union. We do believe that God is at work in Japan in the midst of all the tragedy.
Asia Pacific Baptist Youth Fellowship had held a Youth Leaders Consultation on March 15-18, 2011 at Pattaya, Thailand. We were so happy that we had around 90 young leaders from 29 conventions of 15 countries. I was one of the speakers. I was happy to see so many Baptist youth leaders gathered together to discuss the development of youth ministry in Asia Pacific area. The success of APBYF is the future of APBF.
Rev. Bonny Resu, Rev. Vesekhoyi Tetseo (President of APBYF) and I visited Vietnam on May 4-7. We were the speakers for the First Church Leaders Conference of Vietnam Baptist Convention. Around 200 leaders attended the meeting. Rev. Tetseo was doing a great job in training the youth among the leaders. I was quite impressed when I learnt the history of the VBC. There was only a few number of Baptist churches in Vietnam around ten years ago when they started the Convention. But now they have over 200 Baptist churches. God is really at work in Vietnam.
I attended the Annual Conference held at the Visayas and Mindanao of Southern Baptist Churches in Philippines on May 12-14. I was the key speaker of the conference with the theme of GROWING DEEP... SOARING HIGH! (A Kingdom of God Agenda). There were 600 people that attended the conference. We stayed in a Baptist camp. We all gathered in a temperature of about 33 degree Celsius. Yet, our joy was not ruined by the hot and humid environment.
Despite many unpredictable natural disasters, economical and political turmoil all around the world including our Asia Pacific region, I strongly believe that God is at work according to his schedule without delay.
|
