AsiaStories

In a Southeast Asian orphanage, a 20-year-old woman stands up. Her muscles are soft from disuse, and her feet wobble on the tile as she steps. She throws her head back and opens her mouth in a silent squeal of joy.

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Jessica Newberry, Pleasantview Baptist Church, Derby, Kan., grasps the woman under one arm.

“You can do it, (Rohana),” she says. Rohana Azhar* grins again. She takes another step.

Jessica, 19, tightens her hold. She wishes she could call home and describe Rohana’s wobbles to her mother. But she can’t.

For the past several days, Jessica and other high school and college students from her church have dispersed throughout a city in Southeast Asia to work on community service projects with the International World Changers program. They joined volunteers from Travis Avenue Baptist Church, Fort Worth, Texas, and a few other churches to work at orphanages, host children’s programs and paint murals in a local church.

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Jessica has spent most of her time at the orphanage playing with Rohana, a Southeast Asian woman with an infant’s mind and a severely under-developed body. The other IWC students find glimpses of God in the smiles of these orphans, but for Jessica, this trip has been the satisfying end to months of crying out to Him. As she helps her handicapped friend walk, her heart flows with happiness, which the Lord uses to heal a pain that began in Kansas.

Faith and tragedy

Four months before Jessica flew to Southeast Asia, her mother died.

Jessica and her mother, Janol or “Jan,” were the only Christians in her family. Three years before, when the girl accepted Christ, her mother rediscovered her faith. While Jessica’s father and brother failed to understand their fascination with God, the common Christian ground she found with Jan deepened their relationship.

“Maybe because we were so close, and she saw that (Christ) was going to become a big part of my life, she wanted to be able to be involved in it, too,” Jessica says.

After years of growing spiritually alongside her mother, the teenager felt God calling her to board a plane for the first time in her life and fly to Southeast Asia. She wanted to travel with IWC and work with underprivileged children. At first, Jan thought the trip dangerous, but after attending one parents’ meeting, she understood the blessing it could be to Jessica. She became her daughter’s biggest supporter. Jan assembled contributions for gift baskets to be auctioned at a fundraiser . She took notes and asked questions at subsequent meetings. She remarked that she felt so excited for Jessica, she wished she could go, as well.

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Then, one Sunday in March 2011, Jan went to bed after church saying she wasn’t feeling well. Jessica said goodbye and drove to her dorm at Wichita State University. That was the last time she spoke to her mother.

That night, Jan died of heart arrhythmia. Jessica could barely handle the news.

“I was literally screaming at the top of my lungs because I was so upset,” she says. “I’ve never been that upset about anything in my whole life … it’s like I couldn’t believe that it was happening. It was like an out-of-body experience.”

She grew angry at God, demanding to know why He took her mother with no warning. The Lord never quite answered her question, but He brought her comfort in ways she did not expect — mainly support from fellow Christians and change in her father, Steve.

Change of heart

While Jessica’s family reeled from shock and grief, Pleasantview Baptist Church started baking. They brought food to the family and helped her father with funeral arrangements. Most had never even met him. Steve was touched, and in return, he attended services.

“That was just amazing to me that, as a result of this, the people at my church were so loving and so giving in our time of need that he wanted to be able to — I guess in a sense — pay them back, but also, he still goes (to church) now,” she says.

In addition, Steve took over for Jan in IWC parent meetings. He asked fewer questions but took notes, and Jessica saw this as an act of love.

Still marveling at the change in her father, Jessica now enjoys the trip her mother so zealously supported. She walks down streets full of women in black burkas. She tastes the sweetness and the spice in Asian food. She tickles Rohana and helps her stretch. She sees and feels an abundance of new experiences — experiences she would normally store up in her memory for release in conversations with her mother at home.

But Jessica feels that Jan already knows the color of the burkas, the taste of roti bom, an Asian flatbread, and the rough feel of Rohana’s hands. She feels that Jan is watching.

This feeling, however, hasn’t kept the girl from sinking into grief. In between working in the orphanage and soaking in cultural wonders, Jessica has taken time apart from the group to cry for her mother and to pray.

That’s when God meets her.

“I was talking to God, and I think, He was just telling me how proud she is of me and how proud she would have been if I could tell her about this trip, too,” she says.

Comfort in the Father

After grieving, Jessica wrestles her emotions under control. While she still can only guess why the Lord took her mother so early, she looks at her life and sees evidence of His love for her in the midst of such pain. Her father and brother still attend church. Her Christian family helped pay for her trip to Asia. Rohana smiles at her and gives her hugs. She knows God offers comfort through these blessings, and she uses the thought of His grace and love as a source of strength. As she recounts her mothers’ story, she never sheds a tear.

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“A lot of people think I am a really strong person, but I know that it’s God who is strong for me and I think that my mom has added strength to that, as well,” she says.

With emotional support drawn from the Father, Jessica will return to the United States in a few days. She will leave this country, with its Islamic rules and calls to prayer, and she will leave Rohana, the young woman whose very steps have become a blessing to her. But Jessica vows to come back. She has seen God in Southeast Asia, and she wants to see more.

And while she can no longer tell her mother about her adventures, Jessica knows that the Lord will continue to bless her.

His comfort will never cease.

A teenage girl gazed at the little boy in her lap. He had legs as thin as sticks, and he had not yet learned to communicate. He was 10 years old.

“Cup,” she said. “Can you say cup?”

Haley Wathen, from First Baptist Church of Jacksonville (Fla.), applauded. Before she and other International World Changers arrived at Ibrahim’s orphanage in Southeast Asia, he had never spoken to the staff. His tiny body seemed like nothing more than flesh over bone and no one knew where he came from or why he didn’t speak. Someone simply dropped off him and his older brother one day. Both boys have lived with the orphanage’s disabled children ever since.

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The two melted Wathen’s heart.

“They didn’t even have toys,” she says. “They had nothing to do. There wasn’t anyone loving on them. There wasn’t anyone hugging them. My heart was broken for them.”

For several days, the teenager and other high school and college students played with the orphans and repainted their home. The few workers who ran the facility rarely had time to interact with the children, much less give proper attention to those with special needs. Simply by holding Ibrahim, Wathen gave him more physical affection than he had experienced in a long time. To her, this was the only method of showing him God’s love.

After a few days of interaction, Ibrahim surprised the staff and the American students by repeating words. He sat in Wathen’s lap with a children’s book while she pointed to and pronounced objects on the pages. The little boy repeated “car” and “book” and “bye.” When he tired of talking, he simply sat on her lap, unaware of the miracle he had performed by speaking.

Ibrahim was happy to be held.

Sometimes, people don’t need tracts or literature to share the Gospel. Sometimes, God designs their bodies as living, breathing ministry tools.

During a mission trip to Southeast Asia with International World Changers, Aaron Powell, Bradfordville First Baptist Church, Tallahassee, Fla., walked into a mall bathroom and a Saudi Arabian man tapped him on the shoulder.

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The stranger wanted to know what had happened to Powell’s arm. The young man looked down at his half-formed hand. He had been born with a congenital defect and had fielded similar questions as long as he could remember.

Nothing had happened, Powell said. That was the way God had made him, and he felt peace about that.

For the past couple of years, the American felt God’s calling into the mission field and his hand had become one of his greatest witnessing tools. It opened up conversation and allowed Powell to talk to strangers about God’s glory and mercy — which he sees clearly even though the Father saw fit to give him a birth defect. In Southeast Asia, however, God expanded his ability to share.

At the age of 20, Powell still felt awkward around children. As he played soccer during a children’s day camp in Asia, kids stared and giggled. Eventually, they gathered the courage to ask what happened. The young man would have normally hid his hand in his pocket, protecting it from their gaze and curiosity, but as he stood in front of them, he realized God needed him to step out of his comfort zone. The Father had used his hand to attract their attention, just like He used it to catch the eye of the Saudi Arabian man. Why should Powell hide it?

The student showed his hand to the children and told them God had been made him just the way He wanted him. Powell wasn’t ashamed of what God had made.

In the middle of a Southeast Asian market, a Saudi Arabian man stopped. With his granddaughter trailing behind him, he walked to a gate sandwiched between two stalls and listened to music coming from behind the metal bars.

A group of American teenagers stood in a courtyard and sang worship songs to God. Faruq Jamil* asked three of the foreigners why they had gathered, a question the singers hoped someone would pose.

The courtyard worshipers traveled to Southeast Asia with the International World Changers program. All high school and college students, they came from churches in Texas, Kansas and Florida to work in orphanages, paint murals in Baptist centers and hold day camps for children. That night, after their designated worship time, they spontaneously decided to sing praises outside their housing facility. For three students, that decision resulted in one of the most memorable encounters on the trip. That night, they gave away an Arabic Bible.

For more than an hour, Jamil talked with Nathan Jantz, First Baptist Church Belle Plaine (Kan.); Kyle Opskar, Pleasantview Baptist Church, Derby, Kan.; and Leah Reeves, Travis Avenue Baptist Church, Fort Worth, Texas, about the differences between Islamic and Christian beliefs. He showed surprise that Christians could pray to God anytime and anywhere without needing to visit a mosque or a church. He became so interested, he asked for a Bible in his mother tongue.

Only two weeks before, missionaries had come through the city with a supply of Arabic Scripture. Opskar found a copy for Jamil.

After receiving his Bible, Jamil promised to read through Scripture as soon as he could. The students have no way of knowing whether he did, but they trust that God will call Jamil to Himself, and they continue to pray for him.

The students had done their job. They had flown to Asia. They had sung praises to God. They had given away a Bible. They knew God would do the rest.