Chris and Jia Ling's Update.
July 2012
Greetings family and friends!
It’s been a long time since I (Chris) updated you all
and I'm keen to tell you what has been happening.
From now on Jia Ling and I will write about our adventures together, we hope you enjoy!
CHRIS:
I’ve just completed the
CELTA course at the British Council. It's one of the better certifications for those wanting to teach English overseas. It’s a grueling, but highly rewarding course and indeed one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in relation to career or study. I would often work 60 plus hours a week and not even to do particularly well, just merely to pass. I was amongst people with 14 years of teaching experience, lawyers, PHD’s, a few people with masters degrees, and literally everyone found it, at best highly demanding.
So praise God, I am much better equipped to teach now and I'm told I'm in a good position in terms of getting a job. I’ve not actually got the results back yet, however I passed 13 of 15 assessments, so I'm quite hopeful that I will pass.
The bells are ringn' in Britn
A little testimony of what happened during CELTA: On the first day, whilst looking for the classroom I saw a girl with an unusual contraption/ cast on her foot and she could barely walk. I wanted to stop but couldn’t because I needed to find my school. However, to my amazement, I discovered she was in my class. So on the 2nd week, I was able to pray for her foot and the Lord healed her! I saw her two days later and she was cast-free and was walking properly, Praise God! Through this miracle the Lord created a little wave of interest throughout my class of 12 people.
There was one Middle Eastern woman who showed particular interest in the things of God and would have me pray for her regularly. She was like a spiritual sponge for the presence of God and would keep telling me, "There is power in your hands." At the end of CELTA just before she left home, Jia Ling and I met up with her and her father, and by request we ministered to them before they went back to their nation.
We met them, had tea, and they told us heartbreaking stories about their country and its terrible leadership. From this place we shared with them about our ‘country’, the Kingdom of Heaven, and its amazing leader Jesus. On the journey to their house I asked the Lord for words of knowledge and felt Him tell me, 'Back ache and left leg.' So I asked my friends' father if he had problems with his back and left leg, sure enough he had a reoccurring problem with pain in the back that extends to his left leg whilst his right leg is fine. So we shared with them about the Kingdom of Heaven and Holy Spirit backed us with His power. We are blessed to plant a seed in their lovely hearts.
Here are some other links of healings/testimonies of healings I've filmed recently.
This is not the greatest, but it is the most dramatic healing I've had whilst praying for someone. Hearing bones pop back into place is NEXT LEVEL, MORE LORD!!;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ELRgznju80
This is footage I filmed of a 77 year old Chinese missionary growing out another senior lady's leg, this too is NEXT LEVEL!!! MORE!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrNnlz8c71w&feature=relmfu
JIA LING: For the last 8 months since I’ve been released from serving in
Mosaic Community Studio, our church’s community centre, I’ve been supported by the church leadership to set up my freelance business doing videography. Its called Owlishfilms.
I love filmmaking, and for the past 5 years, God has led me to really do kingdom-centric videos, vision casting of what God is doing through the Church.
The dream that God has put in my heart is to capture stories that are reverse culture, to show people what the Kingdom is like. Jesus often says “the kingdom is like…” because you can’t give straight answers to the vastness and the goodness of the Kingdom, and Jesus uses parallels, stories and visuals to elaborate what the kingdom is like.
A simple example is when I was asked to make a video to call God’s people to participate in praying for the world and Malaysia during
Global Day of Prayer 2012, instead of the usual footage of stadium prayer meetings, international faces and announcer-type voice over, I filmed characters who represent what we need, as a church to be repenting and intercede for, showing us what corporate prayer is about – for healing of the land and restoration, and there is a lot of brokenness and injustice around where the church is more than able to do something. You can watch the video
here. ABOUT MALAYSIA
For friends who may not be familiar, Malaysia is a third world nation, the land is blessed and the people are beautiful. We are made of 50% Malay, 25% Chinese, 11% Indigenous, 7% Indian and 7% other nationalities. 50 years into our formation as Malaysia, we face quite a bit of socio-political issues, with corruption in many areas of society. Not one group, majority or minority is unaffected from the dysfunction of ungodly leaders and I cannot really explain easily any one of the issues because they are complex, intertwining religion, race, politics and such. This year the Malaysian church will be
praying and fasting into our Jubilee year, and we are hoping for a greater Kingdom invasion in Malaysia.
ANTIOCH NETWORK COMMUNITY
ANC is our home church, where Jia Ling came to know the Lord and where Chris came and met with his YWAM DTS team. We serve in the leadership team, which focuses primarily on discipleship of people in the body, that we may produce more disciples who make disciples. At this stage we are growing in building the Body of Christ up, working in unity with leaders, ministering to students and youth.
ANC is a house church movement, so eventually disciples move out and plant new churches in their communities, and this means we are learning about being apostolic and missional, community penetration into various cultures, (Petaling Jaya is a melting pot of cultures, aside from the locals, we have Africans, Middle Easterners, Mainland Chinese, Central Asians, etc.)
DISCIPLESHIP
JIA LING: The past few years God has really taught me what apostolic mission is, I started out being a youth leader, serving happily in whatever ways I could. After many youth events, short term missions trips, I came face to face with this ultimatum – how do we actually reach the nations with the gospel? And even if we do, how do we teach people to love and obey God? Methods and programs that are not people-centric are not effective, and since every person is different, how can we do this?
I personally am convicted that before I think of any branch of ‘ministry’ centering around our spiritual gifts, I need to pursue a lifestyle of discipleship, my own and for others, stay faithful to the whole process, and then only the platform for deeper things can occur and the unreached can be reached.
For now I’m discipling two young ladies age 16 and 19. And I no longer feel ‘constipated’, knowing much but giving little – I’m channeling what I learn everyday to them, and I see their progress greater and deeper than my own, as if God is telling me, ‘See, this is how much I can do if you can give devote yourself to walking consistently with one or two’. In this relationship we are mutually accountable, so as a leader I am constantly challenged to be humble and not act like I’m without weaknesses, and stay faithful to the girls.
CHRIS: From the student ministry, I’ve started discipling two 17 year old buys from the high school Christian fellowship. We spend a lot of time together, eating, praying, studying the Word and doing evangelism. Discipling is a new thing for me, I didn't put too much thought into it before coming to ANC. However since being here Jia Ling convinced me it was important, so I began to look for people to mentor. The Lord let me walk with these 2 boys and watching their growth accelerate in the Lord has been amazing.
OUR LIVES TOGETHER
As you know we got engaged mid last year and we were hoping to get married this year. Chris came to Malaysia so that we could be in a relationship nurturing environment with people that know us both well and we could receive good counsel.
We have the affirmation and conviction that we are good as a couple, however we have found that we need more time before we actually get married. So at this stage, rather than prolong the engagement, we have chosen to put it off for the time being. Within an engagement, there is a lot of pressure to have the wedding sooner rather than later, and given our first year in the same place together, we feel we need more time to lay our marriage foundation.
So we’re really blessed to be in this community where we’re not only being equipped and serving, we’re being groomed to build relationships that are lasting and true.
We are thankful that God has brought us through the past few months of unsettledness and uncertainty, for now we know that everything we’re led to do here is a stage of preparation.
We’re excited but not anxious to where we will be next, and that’s what we would love for you to support us in – we invite you, pray for us if you understand what we are going through: adjusting our careers and passions to seek the kingdom first, and learning to serve and provide for each other as a couple.
Thank you!
