March 31st
Prayer Mission – Lijiang, Yunnan 11-15 March 2008
On 11th March 2008, the “4 Junks” took its first Prayer Missions trip to Lijiang, a city in China’s Yunnan Province. The “4 Junks” were Pastors Yew Kwong and Geok Eng, Sis Doris and Karen and it was a vision given to Karen while the four of them were praying together back in 1989. It represents the four of them sailing together for Prayer Missions to places as assigned by the Lord. This trip is a prelude of the fulfillment of the vision – 20 years in making!
Prior to the trip, we picked up in prayer that we would be going up “the mountain” to receive instructions from God, just as Moses received the blueprint to build the tabernacle when he was on the mountain. You can read about this in Exodus chapter 24 onwards.
75% of the total 7 sessions of prayer we had, pertained to praying out the new assignments that God has for the church. It appears that He is leading us into new things, to which we do not have as yet a complete clue on how to go about doing it. Hence we are treading very carefully and prayerfully on those things which were shown us on “the mountain” and are careful not to deviate from the same.
Besides that, we also prayed for the people in Yunnan. In one particular prayer session, both Doris and Karen saw a girl wearing her traditional costume. The next day, whilst we were out, we got to know a girl from the Naxi ethnic group. More than two dozen ethnic groups live in Yunnan and the Naxi tribe is one of them. The primitive, local and dominating religion of the Naxi people is the Dongba religion. We had the opportunity to share the gospel with this girl and led her to receive salvation. She enthusiastically asked us afterwards if she could tell her friends about her salvation experience. Praise be to God!
We also prayed for the missionaries and those local pastors and teachers who are truly called of God to minister effectively in this place. We prayed that more of such be raised, rightly trained, be equipped and sent to wherever the Lord wants them to be. And for those who are genuinely called to pioneer churches, we prayed that they be relevant to their own provinces.
The purpose of our trip to Lijiang is seen in this: We believe that our prayers, as directed by the Holy Spirit called forth people to realize and step into their callings, hence fulfilling their destinies. In this way, God can do what He wants to do in China, a major part of the earth. With this comes the equipping through the Word of Faith message and the Spirit of Prayer.
We returned to Singapore on 15th March, totally mindful of the new things and assignments that God is leading us into, albeit we are not rushing into it……….