Welcome to my website. I use it to post my writings and creative projects but for now it will also host these reflections as I close out my Steven In Missions newsletter. This is an unlisted page. Please do not share it with anyone. Thanks for reading.

STEVEN IN MISSIONS
REFLECTIONS (PART ONE): BEGINNINGS

September 2014 — When I first arrived at the YWAM base in Amsterdam it was about lunch time. The staff who were showing me around the place asked if I was hungry. I was jet-lagged, excited and in a daze of confusion. Hungry? Sure, why not. They handed me a loaf of bread and that made me laugh. With no taqueria in sight, I spread a healthy amount of peanut butter onto a slice of bread and settled into what would be my home for the next three months. At least, I only thought it would be three months.

I found myself in a community of people who had rhythms of worship and prayer, sang loudly for each other’s birthday and shared the life of Jesus with the city. They planned meetings with each other, studied the Bible, cleaned the buildings they lived in, ate even more bread. I was immersed into those rhythms at an incredibly high speed. I bought a bicycle. It’s what the locals said to do. I explored Amsterdam with the knowledge of an unprepared tourist. The city leaned under its own weight and history, rested at skewed angles, as if it were asking me, “And what of your foundations?”

We went out at night to the drug dealers in the Red Light District. “Prodigals,” my leaders called them, not drug dealers. We went out at night to the prodigals. I learned their names, heard their stories amongst the brothels. One of them, we’ll call him Joseph, said he didn’t want to be selling drugs but he needed to provide money for his family. He opened up about his hopes and dreams for the future, and we reached the point where he was going to let me pray for him when his boss came around the corner. “Get out of here,” the boss told me. “Jesus loves you, man,” I replied back, full of zeal. “There’s no room for Jesus here. This is the devil’s playground,” he said, spreading back his wide shoulders. “I don’t see it like that,” I said, trying to spread my shoulders as well. “Get out of here before I beat you up.” Prodigals can be quickly agitated sometimes, especially while doing illegal activity. We kept going back week after week. I never saw Joseph again. I never got beat up.

Before I could properly say achtentachtig grachten we flew to Southeast Asia for outreach. We moved about as fast as lightning. In Thailand I cried because of how spicy the food was. We prayed for a deaf man and his hearing came back to him. He was stunned, we were screaming, his sister was in disbelief. I tried to explain God to Buddhist monks while they practiced their English on me. I missed my family, witnessed child prostitution, saw miracles and doubted the goodness of God. We went to safe houses, orphanages, places of safety in the midst of chaos. I saw lives being restored, I heard stories of redemption. My faith was tested. My faith was strengthened. My faith was found lacking.

Next was Myanmar. Entering into that country was like time traveling into the past. There were donkeys pulling carts and there were leprosy hospitals. The present was pressing in, regardless: Nokia phones and car dealerships, monks using ATMs, skyscrapers rising up one after the other. “We have a window of opportunity in this country to share the gospel but it will close in a few years,” our missionary hosts told us earnestly. That word proved to be true with the military coup of 2021. But we made it in during that relatively peaceful period, and that’s how I met Nanda, my Buddhist monk friend.

“Hello?” he spoke out in English. We were in a rural town in the south of the country. Jessi, one of my teammates, and I were on a prayer walk, literally following the wind, and we ended up in an empty monastery. We wandered around the property, fascinated by the green and gold structures between the leafy trees. We were just about to leave when we ran into him. “You speak English?” I asked in amazement. “Yes, yes. Come in for tea,” he replied with a thick accent. “My name Tun Than Win.” We couldn’t pronounce that so he said we could call him Nanda. He loaded up two small cups of tea with enough sugar to bake a cake and graciously hosted us for about an hour. I caught a wild fever that night and cried out to God in pain. I recovered two days later. Through a connection later established by Erica, one of my leaders, we went back to his monastery and performed skits and songs for the kids from the village. We spoke a simple message of Jesus’ love through our wonderful translators and I sang Amazing Grace in front of a giant Buddha. I wonder what the kids thought of us, these foreigners singing strange songs in their temple. Whatever they thought, Nanda liked it and invited us back to teach English to the children in his community. I didn’t know how that would be possible, but I was thankful for this new friendship.

Upon returning to Texas in February, I cried in my local grocery store in the middle of the cereal aisle. I didn’t know how to merge the two worlds I knew existed: the one I had just experienced (with bread, monks and miracles) and the familiar one I was returning to (with trucks and big churches and honey nut cheerios). My original plan was to attend seminary after my DTS, but for whatever reason I couldn’t picture myself doing that anymore. That’s when Erica gave me a call. “I got a team together,” she said. “Want to go back to Myanmar and live in Nanda’s village?” Within a few weeks I was back on a plane headed for Southeast Asia to. I didn’t quite know what was going on other than I felt I had an invitation to follow Jesus into unknown territory. I was flying somewhere over the Pacific when I realized it was Easter. I turned to the man sitting next to me and shared the gospel. He was pretty stubborn. I guess I can be stubborn too. I landed in Yangon and traveled south with my team to go find our friend, to go share the gospel with him. My faith was tested. My faith was strengthened. My faith was found lacking. I leaned under the weight of my experiences, rested at skewed angles.

Near Amsterdam’s Red Light District at night.

To be continued.