More Baptisms!

Robbie 

The first one is Robbie, he is Taiwanese and came to Aroma several years ago through Coffee Talk, our English outreach program on Friday nights.  Robbie loved the community at Aroma and so started coming during the week to hangout with Aromans during the cafe opening hours.  Aroma church is also a cafe that is open on weekdays from Tuesday to Saturday.  Over time many various people shared the gospel with Robbie as he would come and hangout at the cafe.  Robbie also loves playing guitar so some of us would take time to jam with him at church.  After a while he also started to attend church on Sundays, small group, and also the prayer and worship nights that we have on Thursday nights.  It was at one of these worship nights where Robbie had a spiritual encounter with God, he felt God’s presence so strongly, and this caused him to make the strong decision to fully commit to following Jesus and to truly know Jesus. Robbie’s testimony is a great example of how the Aroma English outreach helped bring someone into our lives, then the community helped him to feel a sense of belonging, and also gave us many opportunities to share the gospel with him, but also allowed him to experience God for himself as well.  If you want to see Robbie’s testimony at the baptism you can click on this YouTube link, his testimony starts at 1hr 32mins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtGuncoIQm4&t=2320s 

Robbie’s sister also started working at the cafe, and also has had encounters with God during the church service. She hasn’t yet fully made a decision to follow Jesus, but she is often in church and small group.  Please pray that God would reveal himself more fully to her, and that she would make a strong decision to follow Jesus as well.

I first met Mat when we were running the language exchange and bilingual service at our previous church before it closed down.  Mat is from New Zealand, and he joined our language exchange to practice his Chinese, and then stayed to attend our bilingual service that we had straight after the exchange.  He kept coming a few more times, at these services we always gave people a chance to choose to follow Jesus, during one of the altar calls, Mat raised his hand and responded to wanting to follow Jesus.  I was able to pray with him and he continued to attend our service until he had to move back to New Zealand.  I wasn’t able to do discipleship with Mat at that time as I was working full time back then and simply didn’t have the time. 

Mat’s journey with God actually began many many years ago when he was 15 he was invited to a protestant church’s youth camp.  Coming from a non-religious family, this is where he first heard about Jesus.  From there he would sporadically attend the Catholic church.   After Mat left Taiwan the first time to go back to New Zealand we kept in touch, and when he moved back to Taiwan this year he notified me, and I invited him to Aroma church.  Since I started working at church I finally had the time to do some 1-1 discipleship with Mat and share the basics of the gospel with him, and help him to understand the faith better. He had also gone through some difficult struggles with some family members but through this he had experienced God’s grace, protection, and presence in a strong and powerful way.  This spiritual encounter with God combined with discipleship helped Mat to see that he wanted to make Jesus the LORD of his life and follow him the rest of his days.  It was a blessing to be able to baptise Mat in front of his wife and brother and sister in law and their kids (who also happened to be a pastor and had been praying for him for many years - never underestimate the power of prayer). 

I am continuing to disciple Mat and helping him to grow in his faith.  Please pray that his wife would be able to get Sundays off from work so that she can join him in coming to church together.  Also pray that God will inspire and show Mat where he would like him to start serving in the church community.  

If you want to watch Mat’s testimony you can see it here:

Please also pray for another of my small group members, a Filipino named Mel, she has tried to get baptised twice now, but the first time she got sick, and the second time there was a typhoon.  We will baptise her on September 6th, please pray that nothing will stop her from getting baptised this time. 

Thanks for all your prayers and support. 

Ben, Annie, Sophie, and Lucia 

Website: https://franzmissions.com/