Mission Trip Reflections

Reflections on Surabaya Mission Trip 

9-19 June 2018

Key highlights:

9th - youth worship & programme

10th - Worship service @ Ekklesia Church

11th - Campus evangelism @ Petra University

12th - Campus evangelism @ Petra University 

15th - Orphanage programme

16th - Campus ministry follow-up session 

17th - Worship service @ Ekklesia Church, hearing Yapada’s testimony

18th - Equipping session for Christians studying in Petra

Reflections:

When you return from a trip and tell yourself that you have to write it down, it means that the journey really meant something to you. This was exactly how I felt about my trip to Surabaya. And to think that it almost did not happen! A month before takeoff, we heard news of terrorists attacking three Surabayan churches. Two weeks later, the parents of two group members refused to allow their sons to continue with the trip. On our first day at campus, we found out that campus ministry time would be limited to only two instead of four days because of the Hari Raya school holidays. 

On hindsight, I think God was using these setbacks to teach each team member (including those who did not go) very specific, personal lessons about priorities, faith, trusting in Him, and the nature of evangelistic work. Accompanying these setbacks were also many opportunities, and the lessons that came along with them. I have tried to summarise those which I felt were most pertinent to me:

1. The gospel as a relationship with God

What is the gospel? If I was asked this question half a year ago, I would have given you a list of facts about creation, the fall, sin, as well as Jesus’ birth, death and resurrection. But the training I went through for this Mission trip taught me something that I had habitually overlooked - the gospel was primarily about a relationship with God. It was, in essence, about a perfect God-with-mankind relationship gone wrong, and God’s great, loving desire to reconcile us to Himself. This presentation of the gospel made the Good News much more personal and relevant to the people we shared it with. It also brought into clearer focus the loving, personal nature of God that a moralistic or factual presentation of Christianity could not sufficiently convey. 

It may seem obvious to some that the gospel is about God’s love. However, this way of presenting the gospel was revelatory to me because my exposure to the Good News was somewhat twice removed, through Bible stories and the Dos and Don’ts of Christianity. In other words, my early experiences with the faith was with the religion, but not with the personal, relational God that is behind it all. 

So I am glad to have learnt this way of presenting the gospel, and grateful for the various tools that I can use to initiate such soulful conversations (e.g. Soularium, the Four wristband, the Knowing God’s Plan booklet). The experience has also made me wonder about how the children amongst us are getting to know God - are they only learning about what He has done and what He would like us to do / not do? Or are they also learning about who He is, and experiencing Him at a personal, relational level? Are they only learning Bible stories, or are they also seeing who God is through these stories? The emphasis of the two approaches are slightly different, but significantly so. 

2. Amazing stories and the providence of God

During the trip, I had the privilege to hear amazing stories about how God provided for His servants and delivered them from their enemies. Having grown up in comfortable Singapore, the psalmist’s cry to God to deliver him from his enemies always felt fairly abstract to me. My entire generation grew up in a time of peace and prosperity, and so I hardly knew what it meant for real enemies to be chasing me and hunting me down. 

But it is so different in the Mission field. We heard first hand about brushes with gang rape and possibly death at the hands of drunken men, religious persecution sanctioned by a court of law, and even cold-blooded torture (whipping, cigarette burning) to illicit a renunciation of one’s faith. Yet, in the toughest of times, God delivered and they prevailed. One of His imprisoned servants was tortured, but never fell sick at all during his 2 years in prison. Another managed to flee in time before the men could inflict any hurt on her. Yet another was penniless when his child was born, but God moved others to provide. 

After hearing these stories, I could finally understand the psalmist’s cry for deliverance. I could also better appreciate his cry of rejoicing, when God delivered him. It is the cry of many generations of missionaries, past and present. And even for those who were martyred, because He has delivered their (our) souls from (eternal) death. 

What a faithful and providential God we have!

3. Witnessing the transformation of others

It was a great privilege to personally witness transformation in the younger ones. G was the youngest in our team, and the most afraid of evangelising to strangers. I could emphathise, as I was equally afraid at her age and am still sometimes as afraid today. The night before our first day of campus, she was so burdened she cried. Nonetheless, she was determined to try. 

Who would have known - by the end of the first day, she became more relaxed and less nervous; and by the second day, she could share part of the gospel and spontaneously jumped in when we shared as a group. Two weeks after the trip, she shared the Good News with her school mates by herself. 

Who knows what could happen next?

It was such a joy to be alongside G while she walked her journey of faith, and to witness her personal breakthroughs. It is indeed fulfilling to see the younger ones grow in their walk with God. 

4. My own growth journey 

G’s journey also made me reflect on my own journey. No one in church has known me since my teenage years except my husband, so he can vouch that I would totally run far away if you had asked me to evangelise to anyone back then. I was so self-conscious, reserved, and timid. But God, in His grace, has brought me a long way. He has taught and enabled me to be less awkward, to initiate and continue conversations, to be bolder in talking about deeper matters, doing ministry, and in sharing the gospel. I have changed much, and it has been for the better. I trust that God will continue this work in me and bring it to completion; and my prayer is that I will not hinder Him in any way.

5. The (Indonesian) songs of the faithful

The worship services we attended were all in a language we did not understand, but we still found ourselves singing each Bahasa praise song with emotion and conviction. There was just something very soulful about Indonesian praise songs which tugs at your heart. It is hard to describe, but I am guessing that it has got to do with the tunefulness of the melody, the variety of the harmony, and the great talent of the Indonesian singers and musicians (they are far more musical than your average Singaporean!). 

One thing I found especially edifying during the worship service was the response time that the worship leader gave in between each repeat of the chorus for the congregation to reflect on what they are singing and thereafter respond resoundingly with the repeat of the song’s chorus. During this response time (which was always accompanied by the band), the worship leader could launch into a prayer, elaborate on what was just sung, do some vocal improvisations along with the music, or simply just stand in awe of God. The subsequent repeat of the chorus would then be played in a different mood, depending on what the worship leader did beforehand. 

I felt that the response time really benefitted the congregation because it gave them the space to reflect on what they have sung and to let the lyrics sink into their hearts. It also gave them moments in which they could just be present before the living God and let Him speak to them through the Spirit. Because of this, the worship was particularly edifying even though only a few songs were sung.

I hope that our worship leaders could consider adopting this practice.

6. Lessons from the fatherless 

When our host said that he would bring us to an orphanage that really needed help, he was not kidding. We took a one hour drive out from Surabaya city to the neighbouring town, and tucked away in a quiet neighbourhood, opposite a rich man’s bungalow, was the orphanage. It housed 140 children, but it was only the size of one of those two-storey colonial shophouses you see back in Singapore. There was a girls’ and a boys’ dorm, and each was the size of some of our own bedrooms but had to fit 20-25 girls / boys. The boys’ dorm had two holes in the wall for windows - there wasn’t even any window panes to shut the windows when it rained. They all lived under a zinc roof, which made the place unbearably stuffy during a hot day. The building had its fair share of cracked and chipped walls, and many pieces of furniture were in various states of disrepair. 

But the people living there made all the difference. I was particularly touched by the older girls, who had used the little that they had to transform their little dorm into a cozy room that had a homely feeling to it. The matron, Grace, loved God and the children deeply, as her top prayer request had revealed (she asked us to pray primarily for the spiritual transformation of the children, and for God to provide funds for their education). The teenagers (both the girls and boys) participated so enthusiastically with the young ones in the action songs that we taught them, even though it may have been a little kiddy to some Singaporean teenagers. With the little English they knew, they made friends with us. And when we left, everyone formed a long line and took turns to shake our hands. 

The children exemplified resilience, joy in adversity, contentment, and what being a community is all about. And some of these things were reflected in the orphanage’s history too - we heard from Grace that the church which supported the orphanage was closed by the court, the orphanage had lost its regular donors three times because it had to move three times, its first move out was triggered by the neighbourhood which did not want a Christian orphanage in their midst, and even now it did not have many donors. Yet Grace and her team continue to dedicate their lives to the children and constantly pray for God to do a good work in their hearts. 

This orphanage really needs help. Hence I hope that our ongoing discussions on how to help them will bear fruit soon.