Testimonials

A few months back we featured two testimonies of two Star Youth Ministries member. Here’s another one. Please read and be challenged to share the gospel.

CHRISTIAN GUNITA

When I was a young Christian I always asked myself, “How can I win souls for Jesus Christ?” and “Am I an effective Christian?”. I admitted that I don’t know how to start telling the gospel to other people. I always think of what other people will say. I’m afraid that other people will laugh at me. Those questions and problems were answered when I became a member of Star Youth Ministries and learned the principle of “Way of the Master”. By the grace of God, He used me to be an instrument to tell the gospel to my friends, fellow students and strangers. Because of this ministry and by His grace, I can now talk to people through one on one and even to a large group of people. I’ve done those things for God’s glory. Praise God!

I would like to share one of my unforgettable experiences in sharing the gospel. Last July 2007, as a part of our requirements in one of our major subjects, we organized an orientation seminar in the college I am attending. We had more than 80 I.T. freshmen participants. I asked my professor if I can use 5 minutes after the seminar to talk about Christ to our participants and she gave me the “go” signal. The devil tried some things to discourage me to not continue with my plan to share the gospel to my fellow students. But God reminded me of the message of a video clip we use in our WOTM seminars entitled “LETTER FROM HELL”. I learned that it is better to tell the truth than to hide it. I didn’t mind what my classmates and schoolmates would say. All I wanted to do is to share the gospel because I know it is His Will that I do so. After I shared it, some of the freshmen students said that through my short talk they understood that they are sinners who so badly need Jesus Christ to save them from sure punishment. Some of them teased me by calling me “Brother Christian” but I just didn’t mind them. Praise God for this wonderful experience. To God be all the glory!

As young disciples of Jesus, we must be willing to follow His example. It’s never easy to sacrifice your plans, career, time or friends to serve Christ. But when we do it for the praise and glory of God, we’ll quickly discover that the thrill of winning now in man’s eyes isn’t worth it compared with the glory of winning later the approval of God when our lives here on earth has ends.

Here’s the challenge to all of us --- Will we be willing to set aside our desires/plans for the sake of following Jesus Christ?

Victory in Doing God’s Will: The Gospel Buzz 2007 Experience

There’s nothing more fulfilling in this life than experiencing the kind of victory that comes with following God’s Will. That’s exactly what we experienced during our recently concluded Gospel Buzz 2007 (Oct. 24-26). The “Buzz”, as you all know, is a trip we have yearly where we (a bunch of young Christians whose passion is to share the gospel to the lost) go to a far away Philippine province to share the gospel. On our way to our destination, our bus would make stopovers along the way where there are crowds gathered like in parks and marketplaces. This year, we went to the province of Batangas.

For every victory there has to always be a battle that takes place. The battle that we went through before Gospel Buzz 2007 became a success was really a hard and tiring one and it all started months before the actual trip. But before Satan became aggressively offensive in his moves to thwart a successful mission trip, the early preparations for this evangelism program seem to suggest something like “a walk in the park” experience.

First, we really wanted that all of the participants be riding in one bus so that we could fellowship as a whole group. The previous year, when I inquired about how much the rent will be for a small bus, I became speechless whenever bus operators gave me the figure. We just couldn’t afford it that’s why we ended up renting two vans for our transportation. But because one of the participants for this year (Lester Cabais) is a tourism student in college who has connections with tour operators, he was able to negotiate a fee that we could afford. We were able to even save a few thousand pesos compared to if we rented two vans again for three days. The bus was so comfortable that we were able to rest our tired bodies in between stops. Secondly, the place that we will be staying in Calaca, Batangas was given to us free of charge. The father of one of the Star Youth Ministries members is working for the former governor of the province. The family of the governor owns a beach front property that they originally intended to transform into a resort but plans never pushed through. The property had nipa cottages that we could use as our bedrooms during the 3-day stay. The cottages were small and had hard beds, not really the type that would give you rest after a long and hard day under the sun. The room that I stayed in even had a small rat running around. We just reminded ourselves that we were not there for vacation. We were there to share the life-saving gospel to unsaved people. It was free and that is to our advantage. Things were going smoothly for us until challenges started coming in.

I believe that not all of the hurdles that started lining up came from the devil. Three weeks after the conclusion of Gospel Buzz 2007, I can now pinpoint which came from the devil and which came from God. Before, I thought that the financial problem we encountered was caused by the devil. Now I realize that God must have allowed things related to the financial needs of the trip to happen so that He could test us on how much we are really committed to push through with the program. I started very early in encouraging Christians to give their support to this trip. We promoted the Gospel Buzz 2007 with either me speaking about the trip in gatherings or through our website. I believe it was the month of June when we placed a promotional page on our website about the trip. In the page, we placed an email that Christians can use to arrange for their support to this program. Almost everyday from the day that promotional page was set-up I would open that email account to see if there was anyone who is planning to give a financial support to this trip. Almost every time I opened it I get disappointed. No one was really responding. One day, I was surprised to see a message in that account. I was so excited to read it. But when I started reading the email, I readily recognized that it was spam mail. It was supposed to be from a sickly and elderly lady from the Ivory Coast who was offering to give the $3,500,000 that her late husband had deposited in a certain bank to the ministry here in the Philippines. I’ve received several of these emails in the past that’s why I never really took this one seriously. I believe I ended up answering the email with a gospel presentation. I never received any reply from that person after that.

We were really praying hard that God would provide for this evangelism trip. Almost everyday, we would mention it in our daily prayer time in our ministry headquarters. I spent hours praying on my knees every evening, pleading to God that He would look at the needs of the Gospel Buzz but nothing was happening. The devil used this situation to discourage and bring me down several times. Then God made me realize one thing. I know that God wants to provide for the trip and I believe that He was talking to several Christians to give to this program. But the question is, “Are these Christians ready to heed God’s call to them?” That’s when I said, “If these Christians are hardening their hearts to God’s call, well, then on our part, we won’t.” I decided to push through with the trip with or without support coming in for this evangelism program. I decided to use the money we had set aside for programs we have lined-up for November and December. We’ll just trust that God would provide for our future events. I believe that we’ve made God happy with our decision. There were a few who likewise gave to this program and I strongly believe that they made God so happy as well. And so, we had this first challenge won.

The second challenge came a week before the trip. Understand this. Joining the trip were young and tireless people. There’s actually nothing that could stop this young people with anything that they would want to do… except sickness. One of the girls joining us, Andrea Amor (AA for short), started feeling weak exactly one week before we left. Because things weren’t getting any better with AA’s condition, her sister decided to bring her to the hospital. AA’s flu won’t stop and she begun to show rashes in her whole body. The doctors later diagnosed her as having dengue, an illness caused by mosquito bites. This illness has caused so many deaths in our country in the last 4 to 5 years. AA was really upset with her condition because she really wanted to join our trip. When I learned that she had dengue, I sent her a message telling her that maybe God wants her to be our intercessor during the trip that’s why she should not burden herself anymore with the thought that she won’t be able to join us. AA did not know that that was so hard for me to accept because I was really counting on her to be the leader of the other girls joining us.

When everybody thought that AA’s condition was the biggest blow that the devil could give to our plan to share the gospel to a far away province, the night before our trip, Lester who was even with me during that afternoon, experienced excruciating pain in his stomach and head. It was so painful that his mom was getting ready to bring her to the hospital. When I heard about what’s happening with Lester, I recognized right away that this was Satan’s last ditch effort to discourage us and to lessen the people joining us or even stop the trip. I didn’t want to tell Lester that what’s happening to him was of the devil’s doing and that to decide not to join us anymore will make the devil victorious. I wanted him to realize this himself. I then sent a text message to all of the participants to pray for Lester and to rebuke the devourer from all his cunning attempts to stop our trip. At that one moment, although we were in our own homes, we were together in prayer. That night, God reminded me of His promises. I remembered that “Greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world…,” and the promise at the end of the Great Commission, “…and lo, I am with you always even to the end of the world.” And then God made me realize that the devil only waged an all-out war a week before the trip, not realizing that the battle had been won already 2000 years back when Jesus conquered death and brought salvation to each and every person who will truly repent of his sins and put his total trust on Jesus. I vowed that at the end of the 3-day trip, the devil will be left red-faced because of the shame of his cruel defeat which God will accomplish for us.

The next morning, the day of the trip, guess who I saw? Lester. He told me that he realized what I wanted him to realize that’s why he fought against her mom’s plan to bring him to the hospital because he knew that had he been confined that night in some medical facility, the doctors would have not allowed him to join us. Lester was not about to miss this trip because he actually gave up a chance to be in the powdery shores of Boracay Island just to be with us in this trip to share the gospel. But that morning, all of the pain he experienced was all gone as if nothing happened. While we were also talking about the spiritual struggle we all went through the night before, we were so surprised to learn that the verses and realizations that God gave me He also gave at the very same time to the other SYM members. We were speechless in amazement when that was brought to our attention.

And by the way, AA was also able to join us. Her commitment to come was honored by God. She was confined to a hospital Wednesday and was released Sunday evening. The day before the trip (Tuesday), she really lobbied to her family that she be allowed to join the trip. Her persistence paid off. Her parents told her that if her doctor that day would give her permission then they won’t stop her from joining the trip. Miraculously, her doctor gave her the “thumbs up” sign. And just like Lester, in the three days we were together preaching the gospel, AA was moving as if she never had a life and death situation days before.

There were other challenges that we gracefully went through successfully with God’s intervention. The unending morning rain of the first day would have hindered significantly our goal to witness to as many people as we can. But no, that was not the case. We anticipated that this could happen weeks before the trip. And so, I instructed everyone that it is a “must” that everyone brings his/her own umbrella for the trip. Weeks after the trip, I still enjoy seeing pictures of us witnessing one-to-one and even preaching in the open-air with umbrellas sheltering us from the rain.

Then there was the problem of the very small road to the place we stayed at. It was so small that people in the community had to go inside their homes so that our bus could pass. With that problem, it would be impossible for us to push through with our plan for the second day to have our bus bring us to several towns to preach the gospel as it would be a big hassle to the people of the community to do what they did when we arrived every time our bus goes out of the place. But God is powerful to turn any problem into a great opportunity. Instead of us going from town to town, God showed us that the community where we were had so many people thirsting for the life-saving gospel. And so, the next day, we saturated the whole barrio with the gospel. AA and the girls gathered the children of the community and did a crusade to them. While they were doing that, the guys were roaming around doing one-to-one witnessing to who ever they could start a conversation with and I was preaching open-air to the poor squatters of the place. We ended by distributing tracts to people, knocking at doors and entering compounds to share the gospel. We were surprised that even though the time was a time that people should be out somewhere working, most of the people where in their homes. Every where we looked there were people. Probably, most of them earn their living from their homes. At the end of the day, there’s a big chance that about 90% of the people of that community either heard the gospel preached to them or got a copy of the gospel message through a tract.

The evening of the second day, even though we still had one more day of sharing the gospel, we were all in tears as we’ve realized why the devil was working double time to hinder that trip. He knew that it will be a very successful mission trip with God’s help that’s why he really wanted to stop it. A lot of the participants testified that that was the first time they’ve really experienced a spiritual battle. It was scary but it was so satisfying after you’ve experienced how God can bring you out of it victoriously. All we really needed to do to end up victorious was to make the commitment to continue on no matter what the circumstance may be, including going to battle against the devil head on. We were humbled with the thought that God had used us to fulfill something great. We’re just a bunch of “nobodies” who were just willing to do His Will. And as what a pastor friend told me while we were there, there’s a great celebration that took place in heaven for the victory God has allowed us to achieve there. We can’t wait any longer for Gospel Buzz 2008! To God be the glory!

Check out the Gospel Buzz 2007 pictures here:

• Gospel Buzz 1
• Gospel Buzz 2
• Gospel Buzz 3
• Gospel Buzz 4
• Gospel Buzz 5
• Gospel Buzz 6
• Gospel Buzz 7
• Delegates