12 June 2011
Dear Friends,
I hope you are being refreshed by God’s presence this summer and that you are tasting the goodness of being open to his leading. As I have one semester of undergrad left to go, I’ve been more urgently weighing my burden for cross-cultural missions. My plans for graduate studies in linguistics, and beyond, are now all colored by this priority. Next month I have the privilege of participating in a vision trip in a partnership between my New York City church and an international literacy organization called Goducate. I am very grateful for this opportunity to further explore God’s calling in my life and especially to witness a faithful example of contextualized missions and language/literacy development for the Kingdom. I look forward, also, to being challenged with the reality that a globally appropriate lifestyle is much simpler than the one I live. And even now am beginning to alter my patterns so that I really can pick up and go wherever the Lord may deploy me; so far this path has been all joy.
From July 5-28 I will visiting one or more of the Goducate missions in Southeast Asia, with a team of three from my church. We're excited that Goducate’s work is a testimony of God on the move from all nations to all nations. We will begin at in Sabah the coworker we support supervises 5 of 14 centers in that region, which in tandem reach almost 1000 children with health and literacy education. She trains up local mothers to be kampong center teachers and to also lead their own bible studies. In their capacity-building model, Goducate is thus making inroads into an otherwise unreached, predominantly Muslim population of stateless, displaced Filipinos. I will be photodocumenting and journaling what we encounter as I shadow and assist her, and will keep posted by email if you are willing to receive my prayer updates.
Prayer is essential to moving anything, from my heart and its reservations, to the unjust systems that we seek to advance Emmanuel’s peace into. Please let me know by email if I can count on you in this area. If you would like to fund me toward the $2200 needed to cover transportation, training, visa, preventative medicine, and lodging, please give only the amount that you are cheerfully willing to up to $100. Please let me know the expected amount of your tax-deductible contribution, which can be sent to Emmanuel Presbyterian Church, 475 Riverside Dr, Suite 1942, New York, NY 10115 with “Summer Missions – Esther” in the memo line.
I just spent a lifegiving week in training with Wycliffe (whom I'd like to join long-term). For the rest of this month some ways I’ll be preparing for the short-term missions trip include praying, reading through the entire New Testament and other training materials including When Helping Hurts, practicing evangelism and intentionality in my relationships here (especially in my family), sweating for 90 minutes daily in a 105 °F room, engaging cross-culturally with a Burmese refugee community, donating/selling a lot of belongings partly to simplify in order to go and partly to fund missions... If you have any questions about any part of this process please do not hesitate to contact me!
Grateful for your continued support and friendship.
Stay blessed,
Esther Liu
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