Open Doors

October 17th, 2023

 Wow, this last week has been so restful and so crazy at the same time. After coming back from a week of ministry in Florida which opened doors for relationships within the community of Harlem Heights, and the boys coming back from ministry in Kentucky with Samaritans Purse, X Squad was reunited for a week of debrief before being sent out into the nations for the next 7 months.
 We had the opportunity to meet the wonderful coaches who will help keep our teams accountable and challenge us deeper in our faith while we are overseas. It was such a blessing to have one on one’s with my coaches and to start to build those life-long relationships with them. It was difficult to hear the words from the Lord they had received for me, and so inspiring at the same time to hear how intimately they walk with their Savior.
 It was a week of sessions with our coaches, dance parties, a fancy dinner with our whole squad, and the opportunity to be activated after a simply beautiful night of worship to go into all the world and proclaim the wonderful name of Jesus to all people.
 Debrief was very crucial to me, because it gave me the opportunity to reflect on the importance of our ministry in Florida, the great advantage to catch up on some much needed rest, and a beautiful time to spend with friends before our teams were divided over Cambodia.
 The fateful day came on October 14th, 2023. The day we packed up all our belongings in our backpacks and headed to the airport, and also my first flight ever. I never dreamed that my first flight would be from Atlanta to Istanbul, but it’s all in the Lord’s timing! It went wonderful and I’m in love with flying, but with having a last name that starts with the next to last letter in the alphabet, also means I’ve struggled with 18 years of being last in everything. In this case it meant I was the only one in our squad not sitting next to someone on our squad. No complaints here, but it did make for an interesting flight. I had the opportunity to sit next to a lady in her late 50s, who was a believer and I was able to have a lovely conversation about what it means to walk in faith.
 Now, the flight from Istanbul to Bangkok is a different story. I prayed in the Istanbul Airport that His will would be done on the next flight, and that if it was His will, that I would be able to sit next to someone on our squad, but if not, that He would prepare my heart for what was to come. He decided to prepare my heart for the door He would open for me, and once again, my name landed me a seat next to a lady I had never met. Stepping onto the flight I thought, Lord, you are giving me an opportunity to share your name, please give me wisdom and discernment about what to say. Well, the Lord knows I love to meet new people, and I was excited to sit by someone I had never met before. What came next would remain in my mind for a long time. I got to my seat and a lady, (who’s name will remain unspoken) with a bright smile was sitting in her window seat with a box on her lap which contained a most American meal of a hamburger and fries. I sat down in my aisle seat, we introduced ourselves, and she immediately made it known to me that she would not be able to finish all her food and I would be more than welcome to help her out- which I had no problem in doing so, and as we sat there eating her fries, one of the deepest conversations I have ever had in my life began to unfold.
 We began to have a conversation that went on for over an hour, and came to know each other. She was a doctor from Malaysia, heading to Bangkok for a medical mission. For the past 15 years as a doctor, she had dedicated her life to serving others and traveling to different medical missions all over the world. Right off the bat, I asked her if she was a Christian. She said no. I said do you know who God is? To which she gave a long reply.
She said, I believe God is omnipresent, and omniscient but I believe we have free will to choose whether or not to worship Him. She believed that God is an option that is not essential to life and really had a well-thought out convincing argument for it. And with that, God opened another door for me to share why I believed differently and really affirm why God is ABSOLUTELY essential to life.
 I was raised in a Christian household, went to church, typical story of a Christian kid. I made the decision to accept Jesus into my heart at the age of 7, but it wasn’t until after I was baptized at the age of 13 that I really began to have a deep relationship with the Lord and the Holy Spirit transformed my heart even deeper. See, I believe that the creator of the earth, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (and yours too if you so choose), is all-knowing and always present with us. I believe that He loved us so much He sent His one and only Son to die for us, and in wanting only the purest, truest love from us, did indeed give us the option to worship Him or not. But where we differed was the fact that I believe He is absolutely essential as oxygen to our lives, because without Him we are dead.
 Our conversation ended on a good note, and although neither of us changed each other’s beliefs, that was not the point. I’m called to share the Gospel, not force it upon somebody. I’m so thankful we had a deep conversation, and our conversation continued in sporadic moments throughout the flight. It was an open door for me to be able to view the world through someone else’s eyes and the challenges of sharing the Gospel across unique cultures and to people who look at life radically different than I do and to really think about why I believe what I believe, and maybe, just maybe, it got her to thinking about why she believes what she believes. I believe that the Holy Spirit opened the door for that conversation to happen, and if He chooses to work further in her life from that, He absolutely will.
 And now, I’ll leave you with this. Will you choose to be a dead man walking or will you choose to have eternal life and hope? Because although there are two options, there is only right answer. Will you choose to walk through the open door into fellowship with the Lord? Because it is a decision you will never regret.
                       Blessings in Christ,
                                   Grace Yoder