Gems from the Ends of the Earth

Julia Love

Description

In nearly three decades of missionary work, Julia has bumped into some truly amazing and inspiring Christians, literally from the ends of the earth. Their breathtaking lives and testimonies have always captured heaven’s attention, and now they can take you on an amazing ride of faith and endurance.
These aren’t your typical muscle-flexing, red-tight-wearing spiritual superstars. Neither have these victory winners ever walked a red carpet or spent an evening being wined and dined by the political elite. These heroes, in some of the least privileged nations of the world, are made of a less ostentatious, more humble metal––one that shines more brightly than gold in the eyes of their Maker.
Paolo, Selida, Losha, Tome, and Vengai are just a few of the awesome heroes from these inspiring stories. They are some of the precious gems, that Julia has unearthed when she gave up her all to follow the Lord into strange and difficult lands. The life journeys of the heroes in this book also help make our God even more famous today, by highlighting His unending power, mercy, faithfulness, and love.

Sujets

• Christian Living
• Inspirational
• Philosophie et théologie
• Missionary
• Religion

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris AU
• Date de parution: 22 mars 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798369490457
• Langue: English

Extrait

GEMS FROM THE ENDS OF THE EARTH
 
 
 
 
 
 
Julia Love
 
Copyright © 2023 by Julia Love.
Library of Congress Control Number:
2023904689
ISBN:
Hardcover
979-8-3694-9047-1

Softcover
979-8-3694-9046-4

eBook
979-8-3694-9045-7

 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The Message: The Bible in Contemporary English, copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.
 
Scripture quotations marked NKJV are from the New King James Version of the Bible. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc., publishers. Used by permission.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 03/17/2023
 
 
 
Xlibris
AU TFN: 1 800 844 927 (Toll Free inside Australia)
AU Local: [phone] ([phone] from outside Australia)
www.Xlibris.com.au
848289
 
From her seventeen years of experience on the mission field with us, Julia gives us a patchwork of remarkable testimonies from unlikely, valiant Christians, living in the wilds of Bolivia, Mozambique, and Ukraine. Great stories!
—P ASTOR GRANT HOBBS
DIRECTOR OF ASSEMBLIES OF GOD
WORLD MISSIONS, AUSTRALIA
 
Julia Love is one of my heroes. Over the last two decades, I have observed her work in Bolivia, Mozambique, and the Ukraine with both interest and awe. Her faith, courage, determination, and unswerving passion for the kingdom of God are an inspiration. Physically, she is light of build; spiritually, she is a giant. These stories will inspire you to believe—to quote Julia—that no matter where you live, nothing is impossible with God.
— DR. BARRY CHANT
FOUNDER, TABOR COLLEGE AUSTRALIA
SENIOR PASTOR,
WESLEY INTERNATIONAL CONGREGATIONAL
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
 
 
 
 
 
 
To Ishbel, Rosie, Isabelle, and Felicity, my coworkers and friends who were also prepared to leave the comforts of cushy Western living to discover some of His great gems at the ends of the earth.
 
 
 
 
Author’s note: Names have been changed to protect identities.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1What Is Bolivia Like?
Chapter 2Walter’s Story
Chapter 3Anita’s Story
Chapter 4Selida’s Story
Chapter 5Paolo’s Story
Chapter 6What Is Mozambique Like?
Chapter 7Manuel’s Story
Chapter 8Pastor Bonga
Chapter 9Sande’s Story
Chapter 10Tomé’s Story
Chapter 11Vengai’s Story
Chapter 12What Is Ukraine Like?
Chapter 13Zoya’s Story
Chapter 14Pasha’s Story
Chapter 15Lidia’s Story
Chapter 16Sergei and Clara’s Story
Chapter 17Yulia’s Story
Chapter 18Losha’s Story
Conclusion
Notes
INTRODUCTION
T HESE DAYS, PEOPLE assume that if you are a missionary, one of the side benefits is all the international travel spots you get to see. This is not always true although you do spend a lot of time inside many different airports. The apostle Paul did a lot of his writing confined in prisons, and I have done much of mine in airport lounges!
However, with now thirty years of missionary experience, I have also had the privilege to meet and work with some of the greatest living heroes on the planet today. These Christians have fantastic stories, and their life journeys are a tremendous testimony to the faithfulness and greatness of our Lord. The people I refer to are not the famous pastors of hundreds of thousands or the well-known televangelists. But they are certainly great stars, shining in their own right, and living fascinating and often difficult lives at the ‘ends of the earth.’
As my life is the common thread for the stories in this book, perhaps I need to first introduce myself a little. I am an Australian baby boomer who first worked as a high school teacher for more than a decade before spreading my wings to foreign shores. These shores were not your usual tourist destinations, though. The Lord sent me to work in Bolivia, Mozambique, and Ukraine.
So why did I suddenly up and leave a great job, family, church, flat, friends, and a shiny red car in comfortable, secure Australia? Simply because He called me. From that point onward, He had another agenda for my life. And what a wonderful ride it has been!
I knew for a while that God had placed a call on my life. He spoke specifically to me through Isaiah 42:6 . But in those heady days of Bible college, it took me a while to realize that being called to the nations might mean being a missionary.
Finally, I asked the Lord directly, “Where do you want me to go?” I, however, wasn’t prepared for His response. Immediately the word Bolivia resonated in my heart—a word I had never heard mentioned anywhere before! To tell the truth, I was utterly horrified. I kind of remembered seeing it on a map of South America and immediately imagined naked cannibals running around with spears.
It all seemed quite unrealistic and impossible at the time. But as I began to take steps forward, one by one God opened the doors to a wonderful land where I would spend most of the next ten years of my life. To my relief, upon my arrival in Bolivia, there were no naked cannibals but plenty of strange smells, sights, and smiling Spanish speakers. A strange but wonderful new world full of great adventures began to open up to me.
I spent more than six years in two of the altiplano cities, perched high up in the rarefied air of the Andes. This was followed by three years in the steamy Amazon basin lowlands. No naked cannibals there either, as today everybody just wears jeans and a T-shirt like half the world. By His direction, I had ended up in the poorest country in South America, in the poorest province and the poorest big town—Riberalta.
But there in the midst of Riberalta’s poverty, we witnessed one of the greatest sovereign outpourings of the Holy Spirit in the twentieth century. Every night in the meetings, for almost two months, there were incredible visions, prophecies, signs, and wonders. Most often this was through the children and teenagers. It all occurred in a church where no one had known the Lord for more than two years or had read any Christian books except the Bible.
I then moved from Bolivia to live in Mozambique, Africa, for several years. Ravaged by a recent civil war, floods, malaria, and AIDS, the people were desperate but had become very open to the Gospel. Most knew that there was only a small chance they would live beyond the age of forty. Thus, finding out the reasons for their existence and getting to know their Maker became high priorities for many.
Sometimes the spiritual hunger was overwhelming. Once when we were handing out free Bibles in a flood refugee camp, there weren’t enough for all the eager, grasping hands. The people started a physical fight with punches to get the Bibles. This was all because I had just told them that it was God’s Word, containing Jesus’ message of salvation. (Yes, we did explain salvation too!)
Living out the Christian life and making disciples was a more difficult challenge as many Mozambican converts were largely illiterate and reluctant to totally abandon their traditional associations with witchcraft and the local witch doctor. So, in that land, one of the greatest needs was for basic biblical teaching and leadership training.
Both in city and rural centers, where pastors and workers would gather for regional seminars, the scene was similar. It often first meant long hours on the back of a truck to get there. The slightly fatted chicken was killed and then eaten as an appetizer, followed by very sweaty energetic praise and worship and a feast on the Word of God. In a land where there was no Christian bookshop in my day and sparse Christian literature available, any printed material in Portuguese or even simple tracts were received like gold.
After Mozambique and the Amazon, it seemed that my worried family and my mission nudged the Lord into sending me to a new place bereft of tropical diseases—Ukraine. By this time, despite vaccines, I had weathered a few local illnesses. Mind you, I also had some challenging times back in Australia when my mother had a stroke at the same time that I was on a waiting list to have major surgery.
Such is life. But the wonder of it is that the Lord Himself walks with us through all the dark, difficult moments. Nothing is wasted. He, of course, usually uses such experiences to help someone else in such a time of testing further down the track or to sandpaper our characters a little more.
Cross-cultural living is very effective sandpaper at times. The Lord obviously saw that I needed a lot more polishing than most, so He sent me to another new culture with another language. When faced with learning the Russian language, after I signed up for a three-year term in Ukraine, I began to think that perhaps I had bitten off more than I could chew. If learning Russian wasn’t enough of a challenge, my mission’s target was to help reach an “unreached” nominally Muslim people group.
There