Monday, May 12, 2008

Day 4: Barquisimeto

Wishing a very belated Happy Mother's Day to all our moms back home.


We had a really good Cantonese breakfast at our morning hangout: Hing Fai restaurant. We had extremely good Cantonese style buns, chee cheong fun, different kinds of yummy porridge. I have a feeling that we will visit this restaurant at least 2 more times before we leave Barquisimeto this Friday! After that we headed to get our morning fix: the famous Venezuela coffee. Who says that missions trip is all hard work? :)


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We headed back to church to do our morning devotion. Today, Leo led us. It was about how Isaiah responded "Here I am. Send me" to God's calling of him. It was a good discussion. After that, we split into 3 groups to do home and shop visitations, people identified by Brother Leung, Mei and 5th uncle. The first group is led by Dr Wan, comprising of Toby and Leo. The 2nd group consists of Alison, You-Kin, Edith. The other group was led by Pastor Stanley, Vicente, Daniel and myself.


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5th uncle (also a leader in the church) drove us to visit Mr Sun. He owns a shop in a well-to-do neighborhood here in Barquisimeto. It was about a 20 minute drive away from the church. 5th uncle told us that they visited him a few times, each time he pushed his wife in front to talk to him since she is a believer. Since his wife (Ming Kit) is in the US visiting their children in Houston and will be back only tonight, it gives us a good opportunity to talk to him directly. He is a rather nice man and Pastor Stanley had a good talk with him. His shop is so busy and he works the register constantly while Pastor Stanley and 5th uncle chatted with him and encouraged him to attend church and learn more about the love of God in between customers paying. The plan is to visit him one more time when his wife returns so that we can have a less busy time chatting with him and we want to present him some relevant tracts and Christian magazines. Pastor Stanley did a great job talking with Mr Sun.


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At a push-cart style vendor outside Mr Sun's shop, Vicente and I bought some lovely mangoes and guava (pink flesh as we found out later) to savor the local tropical fruits. Now you are getting envious that you didn't come with us, right? :) With some time on our hands while heading back to lunch (you guess it right. Restaurant Hing Fai. yummy!), we stopped to chat with the Mr Ng in his shop 2 shops away from our lunch rendevouz. He is a very affiable man, willing to talk to us when asked about whether he attends church. He mentioned that he doesn't but stumbles on some references on the bible from the tracts he read before and doesn't know where to find the answers to some of the questions he has. We sense that he doesn't have a bible to cross reference the verses in the tracts. We gave him a VCD on yan-yee-chee-sing (not chee-cheong-fun. Don't know Chinese, so please pardon) we took along from the unused ACC table-tennis tournament welcome packets. He was grateful and promised to view it with his wife. My prayer is that God will use this to change his life. We also intend to drop by to present him a bible in the next day or so.


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On the topic of the yan-yee-chee-sing VCDs we brought along, Alison and Edith gave one to 亞海 (these characters I cut and paste from earlier blog) on their visitation. We will hear more from the other teams' vistations in our morning devotion tomorrow. Remember 亞海, the young man who was left paralyzed by a gunshot to his spine? The VCD has a life-story of a very successful man who became a paraplegic and how God changed his life. I believe many of you have watched this already. We hope that this VCD will tell him that God can empower him with His love and strength as he struggles with unsurmountable difficulties and challenges ahead of him. I pray that he can continue to find hope in our loving God. Who would imagine that by bringing these VCDs that we could bless the right person here in Barquisimeto? We prayed before the trip many times as a team that God will prepare the hearts of the people here and use the team to do His will to reach out to the people here. What happened in 亞海's case clearly demonstrated God's sovreignty for all to behold. He answered our prayers and prepared the way well in advance of us coming. What a mighty God we serve!


Oh, by the way, we had a sumptous lunch at Restaurant Hing Fai. No, you can't check its menu by googling it, sorry. You have to come here :) I also stick to my earlier comment that we will visit this restaurant 2 more times before we leave.


Didn't have time to post blog on other activities following our lunch. We will try our best to do so tomorrow.
-Kenny

3 comments:

grandpa said...

Thank you for posting the photos. It is nice to see the smiling faces and with clean clothes. :-)
Wow! God is doing amazing work with you guys.

Praying for you.

Virginia

LSW said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
LSW said...

The videos Kenny refered to are from 恩雨之聲. (www.sobem.org)

Our God is indeed great!

-Alice