B4T STORY: HURRY-FREE B4T

This is a guest post by a B4Ter in E Europe.

When we moved to a new town in 1995 to start a factory, we met a little girl named Sara. We lived on her street, and she was 11 years old—the middle child of 9 children.

Sara’s family was in poverty during the country’s civil war. Unbeknownst to us at the time, she would sit at the gate of their home and pray to God for someone to come and give them bread. Soon, her mother came to work in our factory, and they received a sack of flour each month!

Sara and her sister learned that I did a weekly Sunday school elsewhere. They begged to have something like that too. After the civil war, they didn’t learn much in school, so I asked her parents for their permission and started a kids club. We sang songs like “If you love Jesus, clap your hands”, “Who created the world – God!” I told them Bible stories, we did some crafts and played games. The kids loved it! To this day, Sara still remembers the songs.

Two years after we moved there, we moved to a different city to do B4T. Sara grew up, and we kept in touch with her through the years. In 2001, her father died when she was 16, and we helped pay for her school. A few years later, she got married and had two sons in 2008 and 2010. Some years later, her husband was arrested and put in jail, and now it is up to Sara to support her family.

We helped Sara get a job as a nurse in a B4T eye clinic where she developed deeper relationships with believers. A young American woman discipled her for two years, and Sara grew in her faith. When that woman went back home, I visited Sara several times and connected her with a house church of friends. Sara is now an active member there.

It is so encouraging to see her young faith and her devotion to Jesus grow. She raises her sons with trust in Jesus. One night, she told me that when we moved onto their street in 1995, she had felt a “presence of God” come to their house. And two years later, when we left, that presence was gone.

During the years we lived there, we thought nobody was open to Jesus, and we had prayed that God would let people feel the difference when we moved out. It turned out that there was one 13-year old who did!

This past summer, God touched Sara’s older son during a summer camp, and he wanted to be baptized. Sara and her younger son also decided to get baptized in August. What a joy! Praise God!

But the whole story has taken 28 years. Remember, God is not in a hurry! It is our job to be faithful in B4T and in discipleship, and it is God’s job to bring people to Himself—in HIS timing.

OPEN USA supports workers in the 10/40 Window, who are doing Business for Transformation. This author’s identifying information has been withheld due to security reasons. To learn more about OPEN USA or to get involved in B4T, visit Find Yourself in B4T

To learn more about B4T, read Business for Transformation by Patrick Lai.