Beautiful Sunday - Baptism, Food, Friend

Last Sunday, we had a baptism for a girl in our home church. Her name is Janice. She has been a believer for a year. We are so happy to gather to hear her testimony even some students still have finals.

We couldn't find tub at first and then we prayed that God will provide since it is important. A student's host mom found out her friend has a hot tub, so here we are in a beautiful backyard, with sunshine and breeze. 

The picture above describes our attention toward Janice's testimony. 

I am deeply touched by her story. She described how nice her host family is and how much unconditional love she received. She and I had some connections too. Her host family arranged her and her boyfriend to meet the college group in Xenos. And Jon, the son of my home church leader, invited them to the home church. At that time, they just started the international home church and waited for a sign from God to continue the home group. And her boyfriend invited his friend. This friend invited me. I am truly blessed to see God's amazing work. I identified with her story and knew for certain that IFI is doing an amazing work to bring people to Christ. Lots of people are part of work. 

Imagine a student didn't receive any service from IFI, but her/his friend did and then spread it. How wonderful is that connection! Praise the Lord for His mighty hands!

Enjoy some pictures:

2014 IFI Fellowship Dinner/Fundraiser

Last Friday, IFI had its annual fellowship dinner/fundraiser. We had 92 tables of 10 and approximately 900 people attended. It's so wonderful to have people with the same heart and passion to gather together and share experiences and praise God.

 

Before the dinner, Amity and I went to the union to help setting up. We put the flowers in the center of the tables, the programs on each of the chairs and hung flags of different countries around the ball room. It was so excited to think that several hours later this place would be filled with friendly and loving believers, good conversations, sincere prayers and laughter of joy.

 During the dinner, we had good food, listened to cheerful music and watched the presentation of IFI's ministry. I can feel that people's heart being touched, especially when Pyung On's video was played. (you can watch them on http://ifipartners.org/afterdinner.php#movie )

After the dinner, I joined the rest of the accounting team to process people's donations. I was deeply amazed by how generous people can be. Large or small, their contribution will be utilized fully to serve international students and be committed to the great mission!

Trip and some Thoughts

Lexie - 3/10/2014

After a busy and cold winter, my friends and I decided to relax ourselves and head for a soothing road trip. We were really excited and had multiple plans and ideas for our upcoming trip. In the end, we all decided to take a few days road trip from Columbus to Washington, DC for two days. After that, we changed our course to Baltimore for a day, and then we headed to Philadelphia for another day. Finally we headed to Pittsburgh as our last destination and returned to Columbus on the next day.

I still remember how exciting we were on the road heading to DC until someone found out that we were almost running out of gas. We were in the middle of no where on the highway with the “low fuel” light blinking. Upon checking the GPS and our phones for the nearest petrol station, it was miles away. And without knowing how long our remaining fuel might last, we were terrified. With no choice, we drove to the nearest petrol station we could find crossing our fingers and praying to our Lord to provide fuel for us. To our dismay, it was a family operated small petrol station and most importantly it was closed.

Our hearts sank as we turned off our car engine to save fuel in the wintery cold night. Stuck in our car, the only thing most of us could do was to pray. The other nearest station was around 15 miles away and we had no idea whether our fuel could even last that long. Battling between the thoughts of gambling we had enough fuel or to call 911, one of our friends suggested we should ask the neighbors for advice.

As a last resort, our driver head to one of the neighbors and knocked on their doors desperately. The man that answered the door was surprisingly friendly and told you we will have at least two gallons of fuel and the nearest petrol station is within our reach.Finally, we made it to the nearest operating gas station with little fuel. It reminds me of one story from the Bible, which was Jesus feeding five thousands people with only five loaves of bread and two fish. God will always provide and protect us in all circumstances.

Overall, the journey was relaxing and inspiring with great experiences of how mighty our God is. We were astonished on how beautiful the world that was created by our God is with all these great scenery and views. We really had fun during this road trip relaxing, conversing many topics about god and listening to worship songs. It definitely strengthens the relationship between our friends and with our God.

Alleviating Poverty Through Entrepreneurship Summit 2014

This post is from Lexie, one of our 2013/14 interns.

On March 22nd, as one of the IFI interns, I was glad to have the opportunity to attend 2014 Alleviating Poverty Through Entrepreneurship Summit Conference at The Wexner Center for the Arts.

I don’t have much experience attending seminars like this, but the 2014 APTE Summit definitely left me a deep impression. There are several innovative leaders, who established or helped to established their organization gave speech targeting different situations of poverty and  how that triggered them to do something about it.

During the break, what Phil mentioned to us was rational and made me think more deeply about the conference, the speakers and ourselves. It was the verses from Genesis that Phil mentioned which tells us that God created the whole world and human beings according to His image. God has already put something valuable and unique in each one of us, and even sometimes we doubt and deny ourselves, we are special in God’s eyes and we are able to do something by using the characteristics and gifts that God put in us. Such as those speakers, they couldn’t have known everything when they started their business/organization. On the contrary, there were obstacles and difficulties, however, they just took the step forward simply by their faith in what they were doing, to help alleviating poverty in the world. I am appreciated that we are the children of God, and in Him we have no fear.