Deportation Was Only the Beginning
IFES is God's Story; we're just eye-witnesses!by Becky Stephen
InterVarsity/USA and Inter-Varsity Canada are two member movements of a much larger body of student ministries around the world—the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. It is a great privilege for North Americans to belong to such a global fellowship as IFES, as illustrated by the following story …
“Our brightest blazes are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks!” Samuel Johnson
In February 2001, after two and a half years of ministry and in spite of the prayers of many for this team to remain, Link staff in a Central Asian country were suddenly deported. They had only a few days to pack a couple of bags, say their goodbyes, and leave the country—leaving behind new believers and many seekers on campus, university jobs, their personal belongings—and a national teammate. Even in the chaos, they witnessed the work of God: three students whom they’d been witnessing to decided to follow Jesus during those last few days!
Instead of returning to the States as one might expect, they decided to relocate to the neighboring country to work with a Finnish staffworker who welcomed his new teamamtes with open arms. These Link staff were hoping to re-enter their first country later on that same year. But God had other plans.
Though grieved and facing the other struggles typically associated with deportation, they loved their new city. These displaced staff began to build new relationships and to make a home for themselves. God provided a teaching job for “A” in his field of study, a job with a local humanitarian law firm for “B”, and “P” was assigned the position of Team Leader. Eventually, both “B” and “P” (husband and wife) were invited to be Country Coordinators for IFES, responsible for developing student work throughout that country.
Within a few months God had gathered a large, multi-national staff and volunteer team in that city. The team included Link staff as well as veteran staff from Finland, Pakistan, Korea, and England, who developed a strategy for reaching all the universities in the city. As they did the hard work of working cross-culturally with each other and among students, God worked, too.
During one Wednesday night meeting (“God’s Night”), after a short talk and a movie, the team set up prayer stations around the meeting hall. People could come and receive prayer for anything that concerned them. And students did come, though some had a hard time gathering up their courage. (One student was observed to get up, reconsider, sit down, get up, sit down again, etc., for about an hour. At last he went to a prayer team to give his life to Jesus!) At least seven people committed their lives to the Lord on that night.
At one of the evangelistic camps that summer, many students found life in Jesus! On the last day of the camp, the Bible teacher asked (rhetorically), "So, what have we been learning about this week?" "God loves you!" exclaimed one student who had just given his life to the Lord. That was the kind of excitement these students felt as they heard – and received – the good news of Jesus.
God met the entire staff team in a deep, powerful way during a staff conference the following year. God gave them gifts for prayer and called them into a strategic intercessory role in student work in the region.
This staff team also began to see a new vision from God for this most politically open of the Central Asian countries: they could envision it as a sending base for His people throughout the region. And they committed themselves to equip the local believers to move beyond this country, to reach out to their neighbors in ways that highly visible Westerners couldn’t. By that summer, there were three young Central Asian women considering staffwork. (These three became official staff interns the following year.)
The prayers and work of this team and of their staff colleagues in other Central Asian countries culminated in the first IFES Central Asian Student Conference, hosted by that team. 150 new Christian university students from the 4 major Central Asian countries and 12 other countries gathered to worship the Lord, hear the Word, to pray and to capture a vision for God’s work in universities across the region.
Staff and students heard firsthand reports about the work of God in and among them on campus throughout Central Asia.
These students had never met other believers from their own countries. Most of them didn't know that there was a Christian work in their country outside of their own city. At this conference, they heard one another’s stories, and saw a bigger picture of what God was doing in Central Asia. Many young students were initiating spiritual activities on their campuses or in their cities without the help of any staff. Two young women from one of the most closed countries in the region found 25 other Christian students on their campus and were gathering them together each week to pray. When they met the many staff present at this conference, they asked for resources to help the students learn to study the Scripture and to follow Jesus in their families and cultural contexts.
God spoke to students through the Scriptures as staff trained them in Bible study.
Bob Grahmann (American Link staff who founded and directed the IFES Eurasian Institute for Staff Development and Training) was there to lead staff and students in a daily 2-hour inductive Bible study. This was the first time most of the students had ever studied the Bible. Everyone loved learning to study the Scriptures for themselves (very counter cultural!). One young student told Bob that she had only been a Christian for three weeks and she had tried to study the Bible and didn't know what to do. Now, she said, she had a great method for getting into the Word, and she is going to go home and teach all her friends.
God demonstrated His power and presence in answer to prayer.
Forty students from one country entered the country of the conference without any problems, in spite of 20 of them not having proper paperwork and nearly all of them carrying “illegal” Christian material! No one had their bags searched, though everyone else around them at the border was searched. And only one of them was questioned – though that didn’t amount to anything.
At the conference, during times of prayer ministry, staff saw students healed or visibly gifted for ministry. Many students and staff had supernatural experiences of God that they’d never had before: God giving them specific things to say to others or giving them gifts to serve beyond their human ability.
God even answered prayers to cool off the intolerable heat so that students would be able to focus on God and the conference. (The breeze left and the heat returned the day after the conference ended!)
God birthed new student movements and called students to staffwork in their own countries.
During the conference, four indigenous student movements were born as the students rallied one another to form national movements in each country with a vision to reach out with the Gospel. One student had never heard of IFES and had come to this conference apart from any invitation from staff. By the end of the conference he asked about how to become a staffworker in his city.
Now, a few years later, there are many national staffworkers in Central Asia. These Link staff and most of their multi-national staff partners are no longer in Central Asia. But they left a vision for student ministry, an internship curriculum and an understanding of staff development and Scripture study, a legacy of prayer, and indigenous student movements. There are now thousands of students in Central Asia who are following Jesus and calling others in their own languages and cultures on campuses to follow Him, too.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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