Mission team builds relationships, shares faith in East Asia

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Donnie Brown is familiar with the scripture verse “Paul planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase,” found in First Corinthians 3. But as a member of the recent Special Impact Team mission trip to East Asia with Wayland Baptist University, he has a new appreciation for the verse.

“God says he has called us all for a purpose, and we really were sowing seeds there and trusting God to bring the increase,” said Brown, director of Baptist Student Ministries at WBU, who took three students to East Asia in July through Go Now Missions, an arm of the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

May graduates Jalissa King of Portales, N.M. and Matt McCabe of Lubbock and WBU sophomore Chris Igo – a math and engineering major from Whiteface who now lives in Clovis, N.M. – joined Brown on the two-week trip, building relationships with nationals in simple, personal ways in order to open channels to share the gospel.

Brown said the group took language classes each morning in order to learn enough to communicate with nationals, then spent afternoons visiting with people in parks, stores and other venues near in the city. The goal was to set up more intimate times to visit over the evening meal, giving the Americans a chance to share their faith more personally and answer any questions. Working under the guidance of some Christians there, the group would pass on the names of persons showing interest in the gospel message to the nationals for follow-up.

During their afternoon visit times, the group handed out gospel tracts and VCDs containing the “Jesus” film, concentrating on a radius near the homes of national Christians so natural follow-up opportunities would occur. Even before they returned home, the Wayland group was seeing it happen. 

“Two of us went into a shop to buy a sword, and we shared a tract with the store owner,” Brown said. “Then a few days later, one of the local Christians went into the same store to buy a sword and was able to share her faith more in-depth because he had read the tract already.”

Brown said their language teacher was another who expressed interest during their time abroad.