Local Mission Trip to Barquisimeto
After waiting for two days to finally buy a ticket home to Venezuela, my mom and I rested for about two days and then we headed towards the city of Barquisimeto.
It usually takes around 4 hours in bus, but we decided to fly out. The flight seemed to be around 5 seconds. Literally, it took off and landed so quickly!
The purpose of this short trip was to join a team of missionaries from Hong Kong. Two very bold pastors (Pastor Ng and Pastor Yu) came to Venezuela for around 20 days to serve the Chinese churches and the Chinese community in three different cities: Caracas, Puerto La Cruz, and Barquisimeto.
Many church members and leaders have moved to different countries, due to the economical and political situation here in Venezuela. Throughout these past 4 years, we’ve seen many, many families deciding to either move back to China or to countries nearby, such as Panama, Chile or Peru. It’s been a bittersweet time for all the Chinese churches, but we trust that God has big plans, even when the each church has been facing many struggles.
Our brothers and sisters welcomed us with very warm hearts, we were very excited to spend a couple days with them. Every member works really hard during the day, at local businesses at the center of the town, so it was truly a blessing to spend time with them each night. During the day, we went to visit the Chinese community, those who hadn’t heard about Jesus or possibly had a friend who had visited the Chinese church before. I was able to share the gospel with a woman called Lisa at one of the shops. She was around my age, and she already had a 2 year old child. WOW!
The heart of the following days was to encourage, lift up the church and share testimonies of God’s faithfulness. When the whole nation is facing shortages of electricity, water, food, many economic difficulties, it’s easy to give up. It’s easy to think that God has forgotten His children. It’s easy to think that it’s to hard to continue reaching out to people for Jesus. The truth is, He’s at work! He doesn’t give up!
