On Monday morning, there was an orientation at Gold Hill Baptist Church, where the representative of Amnos church school ministers. Only our church participated in this Arise evangelism in the UK, but other churches from the US and Korea also gathered in one place. In the early morning, I loaded the food prepared by Deacon Soojin Kwon into my car and headed to the church with Soojin and Chan Young.

Last year, the Arise team could not come from abroad due to the ongoing aftermath of the pandemic, so our church formed an evangelism team, and the church hosted us to arrange this evangelism event. It was a time we evangelised for the church, but it was also a time for us to learn a lot about how a church serves villagers with the love of Christ.

After listening to the lectures crucial for evangelism in the morning and afternoon, we headed off to the Hosting Church in the afternoon. The church that invited us was Flowers Rivers church, located in Dagenham, East London. Nigerian Pastor Samson has been doing the weekly bible study for ten years and eventually established the church four years ago as he started Sunday service. Although it is a relatively new church, the passion for the gospel that the members, including the pastor, showed was incredible.

There was an early morning prayer every day, bible study on Tuesday, leadership meeting on Wednesday, Food Bank service for local residents on Thursday, and Care Home visit service on Saturday once a month. I could feel that the members loved each other like family, and they all fasted and prayed for breakfast and lunch during the Arise period. They were incredibly dedicated to this ministry.

Every morning and afternoon, we evangelised door to door and participated in the church’s ministry in the evening. The number of houses we knocked on in a day went from 400 to as many as 540. Although many of the houses were empty, we were also given many opportunities to be let in to have good conversations and share the gospel. Unfortunately, Friday was my last day of ministry, but thinking that it was the last day, I was left with a lot of regrets, so I prayed desperately to God that morning. I was so grateful to meet so many people to have good conversations and share the gospel, but I also prayed that may there be people who accept Jesus today.

Surprisingly, two people accepted Jesus during the ministry that morning. Before leaving for the afternoon ministry, I shared my heart with all the teams and encouraged them that we should all have expectations for people to ‘accept Jesus’; when we set off, there was again another British teenage boy who accepted Jesus in the afternoon. As we gladly returned to the church, the sisters of the Hosting Church welcomed me at the entrance and told me that ‘as we went out with expectations you told us about earlier, a Muslim accepted Jesus’. In response, as I told them that another person I evangelised in the afternoon also accepted Jesus, they held hands and bounced with joy.

In the Four Gospels, there were people who voluntarily came to Jesus with faith, but there were also people like the woman from Sychar or the man possessed by the legion of demons whom Jesus personally approached because they could not come themselves. I was so grateful that I was able to meet so many of those people this time. “Thank you for praying with us.”