A reflection from Keri Smucker and Arlin Horst from a recent staff trip to Southern Asia. Four members of the HOH team, Keri and Arlin among them, spent several days in Sri Lanka, visiting local believers and connecting with pastors, young and old, who are passionately being trained to teach and share God’s Word with others. Hear from Arlin and Keri on their experiences in this beautiful country.
As a part of meeting with our contacts in Southern Asia, we had the opportunity to travel with them to Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is an island in Southern Asia that has many unreached people and much of the population lives in remote villages.
Heralds of Hope has partners in Southern Asia that work with people in Sri Lanka to train pastors and distribute Bibles. Our team had the privilege of seeing a glimpse of their work. We were able to attend a graduation for church planting training and give Bibles to these newly trained church planters. It was inspiring to see these church planters’ passion for their people and how they desired to make a difference in the lives of other Sinhalese.
One of the most impactful experiences was visiting a village where several of the church planters lived. We traveled up through the beautiful mountains of Sri Lanka in a bus, a route that was supposed to take 1 ½ hours turning into 3. We finally arrived at the village and were ushered into a house church. One of our contacts led the gathering in worship songs, and then Arlin shared a teaching from God’s Word.
This village had newly been introduced to the gospel, and the villagers had only accepted Christ within the last year. After Arlin was done sharing, some of these believers shared, asking questions and giving prayer requests. I was humbled with the realization of how much I can learn from these new believers. Not just in this village, but on our whole trip, people treated us with such honor, and I wish we could have conveyed to them the same honor for the gift they were giving to us.
They had a passion for learning about God that I easily lose in my day-to-day life. They showed us aspects of who God is that we could not have seen if we had not met these people. These villagers know the desolation of a life spent in Hinduism without Jesus as their Savior and what it was like to live bargaining with gods that do not exist and cannot fulfill them. They understand the hope found in God that I will never experience in the same way.
Yet I have something in my everyday life that they do not have easy access to: God’s Word. As I was sitting there, I pondered how a concept that I had heard many times could be something they could be hearing for the first time. Many times, I don’t treasure God’s Word. I forget what privilege and honor it is to be able to read and hear the Word from the Creator of the Universe and have access to countless teachings on the Bible. For many people who have lived in a false religion all their lives, they do not have a concept of the hope found in Jesus. They can only learn from hearing from other believers and from God’s Word. There are countless other villages living without the hope of Jesus. How can you and I be a part of showing them the transforming hope of Jesus?
Content Distribution Coordinator
Keep reading for Arlin Horst’s reflection, and to see more photos!
In the Great Commission, Jesus tells us, “Go ye therefore and teach all nations.” We’ve heard it often, and many times I don’t pause long enough to let those words sink in. I know the Gospel is for everyone, and I sincerely want people everywhere to experience the hope and life that come from knowing Jesus. However, I don’t often get to see it happening and be present when the Gospel is being taught to “all nations.”
It was humbling and exhilarating to sit with believers who were experiencing the light of the Gospel for the first time. This was a small group of new believers in Sri Lanka. Their religion was Hinduism. This was all they knew; they had served those gods their whole lives. Now they are experiencing the light and life that come through Jesus.
The central highlands of Sri Lanka are known for their tea farms. Tea farms require lots of human labor. There are faithful brothers in Sri Lanka who are taking the Gospel to these hard-working people. Now people from every generation are turning from Hinduism to Jesus. It was incredible to be with them and see the Gospel being taught in this part of the “all nations.” Pray for the brothers who are discipling and teaching these new believers, that they may “observe all things” of what Jesus taught.
We must also remember that “all nations” includes my neighbors and our culture. While it was a blessing to be in Sri Lanka and see first-hand what God is doing there, we must also be faithful here. Our culture needs the light of Jesus, and we need to share the Gospel right here at home faithfully.
Director of Programs
