Staying Put

After 3 days of immense struggle in my mind and soul, in prayers and waiting on the Lord I have decided to stay put in Sabah for another year. News from Singapore put me off track for a couple of days but I quickly realized that it is not the time for me to consider serving there. There is much work to do here. My students and colleagues have become a family and you don't leave your beloved in a whim or on human impulses. I have decided to throw the dice in the land below the wind, the lands of mountains and rivers. Today I will be crossing several major rivers in the south-west of Sabah heading to my destination. For the last 3 hours of the journey it is on muddy timber tracks but two days without rain must have hardened the ground a fair bit. It has been raining in Sabah for the past week but I cried to the Lord that from yesterday there should be no rain until I return late Sunday night. There is much to do.
The intensity of the community did not diminish as we go on our separate ways during holidays and 33 3rd year students are on the field in ministry. We stay in touch with our whatsapp group and like a father cares for his children I keep track of my students and observe their going out and coming in. One student I frankly told him to consider his calling to be pastor after I gave him a passage and hinted on how he should preach in his place of ministry but yet he could not relate to his context and the needs of his congregation. I never had problems with that by the grace of God. The Bible comes alive to me and when I seek his face, the word of the Lord on most occasions comes to me clearly and what and how I speak is as if already determined by a higher power. I don't know how long I have the stamina for long trips like one I am about to undertake in an hour's time. But I will keep pressing on as long as my strength allows and will soon leave it to a younger generation. But before I depart there is much to do, to teach God's word to God's people, to train and to equip his servants, his workers for the harvest fields of the Lord.