Happy Easter!!!! My prayer is that you have had a fabulous Resurrection Sunday. I can not believe that I've reached under the 1 month mark. Wow! Where did the time go? I'm excited to announce that ALL my support has been raised, I've been vaccinated for my trip, and I've meet most of my teammates through Skype. All praise and honer goes to my Lord Jesus Christ for providing a way for me to go, and making this process run so smoothly. I seriously could not have asked for a better experience in preparing for my trip. He put a desire in my heart, told me to go, and his hand has guided me every step of the way.
I keep having to tell myself that this is actually happening. It has felt mostly like a dream, and still kinda does. I suppose reality won't set in until I actually board the plane on the 20th of May. Last weekend I had the opportunity to be commissioned for service along with many other college age students. It was such an amazing experience to stand alongside many of my brothers and sisters in Christ as we were commissioned to "Go".
Go. That's the command Jesus tells us in the New Testament. The word "Go" is spoken more than 150 times in the Gospel of Matthew alone. In Matthew 24:14 it says, "And the Good News about the Kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, so that all nations will hear it; and then the end will come." Many people call this The Great Conclusion. There's the The Great Commandment (Matthew 22: 36-40), The Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20), and The Great Conclusion, which is the verse I'm taking about here in Matthew 24:14. In order for the end to come the Gospel must go to all nations. Now, the word nations in this verse does not mean geographical nations.
The Greek phrase for “all nations” is “panta ta ethne” which refers to all of the ethnicities or people groups of the world. Jesus was very clear in stating that His gospel would be preached to all nations/ ethne/ people groups before He would return, but the fact of the matter is that His gospel still hasn't reached 43% of the world. There's still work to be done! The place where I'm serving this summer has the most unreached people groups in all the world. There are 2,234 people groups in the specific country I'm serving in this summer, and 2,013 are unreached with the gospel.
Jesus says in Matthew 9:37-38, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” The harvest is ready for the picking, and I get to play a part in that picking. Wow, what an honer! I GET to GO, praise God I Get to GO! Please continue to pray for me and my teammates. Also pray for the people we will encounter, most of which have no clue that there is a Savior named Jesus Christ who died for them, and that he arose three days later to defeat death. I look forward to the day in Revelation 7:9-10, which states, "After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands; and they cry out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” What a beautiful picture that is, and to know that I'm included in on that picture. My prayer is that many of the people that I come in-contact with in South Asia are included in on that picture as well.
In His love,
Heather
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