This week’s blog post is from Sam, one of our worker’s serving in South East Asia.

My wife & I just arrived back on the field with our new 3 month old which means cries, sleepless nights and all things baby are added to our days. But it got me thinking about the work here and the similarities between having kids and seeing new believers. One of the toughest parts of this kind of work is the length of time it takes to see fruit.

All of us working overseas have tasted & seen the work of the Spirit in our own life, and the lives of others. Whether it’s been with a youth group, a local house study or reaching out to the lost in our city, we’ve seen God move in a lost person and want to be involved in what God is doing in far off lands.

But after coming to these far off lands we can experience the reality that the distance between a lost soul & a child of God can be years and years away. Proficiency in a new language, jumping through hoops of visa applications, learning a second language, and developing deep relationships with people that would allow us to share the Good News can be a journey longer than we first anticipated. In light of the urgency of the task and the endurance it takes to get there, in our hearts we can plead, like Rachel, “Give me children or I’ll die!” We want so bad to see these dying come to be children of God but at times it can seem like nothing is happening.

And yet He is at work and always has been. To my eyes it can look like a woman in her first trimester. Nothing on the surface is really changing, yet on the inside the incredible beginnings of life is unfolding. Likewise, all around us, a drama marked from eternity is unfolding in the souls of our friends and neighbors, in the souls of the lost we hope to see reached, and we would do well to “not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.” (Galatians 6:9)

The future hope of seeing these lost ones come into the family of God, is well worth the present times of waiting and endurance.