Sister Freaks

by Rebecca St. James

  One night, as Yelena walked home with five other women, a group of six drunk Russian men armed with knives stopped the group and demanded money. Three of the girls ran, and Yelena started to follow them. But the Holy Spirit stopped her, and she realized that two of her friends—international missionaries who did not speak Russian—were still trapped by the men. Knowing that the girls were in much more danger if they did not understand their assailants, Yelena returned to the situation and acted as a translator. After giving up their money, the girls eventually fled together. The men chased them all the way to the place where they were living, but all six missionaries escaped unharmed.

  Yelena is now entering her fourth year as a pioneer missionary in a country rediscovering Christianity, and she continues to seek the Lord’s guidance for what He wants her to do. Her family situation is still not perfect—Yelena’s father has not yet made a profession of faith in Christ, and he still drinks and is sometimes violent—but Yelena sees the difference her prayers have made.

  Her work with YWAM continues to blossom, and Yelena has seen many new Christians in Russia grow in their faith because of her efforts. Her parents are the primary financial supporters of her ministry, and Yelena’s mother is now a passionate Christian and a strong prayer warrior. With their help and the support of a growing Russian Christian population, Yelena will continue to be obedient to her call to spread the gospel all over the world, while letting God meet her every need.

  Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.

  (1 Peter 3:18)

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  virginia

  Hearing the Voice of God

  For Virginia, the hardest moments came when she believed she couldn’t hear the voice of God.

  During her first overseas missions trip—two weeks in Brazil with a church group her parents led—fourteen-year-old Virginia discovered a passion for ministry. “It was the first time I saw broken people weep in their need for Christ or [with their] arms lifted in worship,” she remembers. “I saw the poor and made friends who speak a language I do not know. Nothing could have prepared me for the lives I saw there, and something changed inside me, flaming my desire to do the ministry of Jesus.”

  But Virginia faced a special challenge in serving God on the mission field. She was born deaf and has lived her entire life in silence. Her speech is often unintelligible to those who do not know her. Therefore, from the moment she felt the call to missions, she doubted it. How could God use her to preach His message of salvation?

  Satan attacked Virginia with her physical weaknesses, filling her with feelings of loneliness and helplessness. “I felt as if I was rejected by life,” Virginia explains. “I was in tears, battling strong lies and thoughts tormenting me from the evil one. I believed that I needed ears to hear the voice of God.”

  Virginia spent two long, difficult years struggling with her disability, feeling worthless. She resented the hardships of being deaf; like most girls, she wanted to fit in with her friends and classmates. Even more, she wanted to be a missionary, and she couldn’t see how that was possible.

  Finally, one night as she lay in bed feeling torn apart and broken, she saw a vision of the Lord. She fell to her knees as Jesus stood before her, and an amazing thing happened: she heard Him speak. “Virginia,” He said, “I am willing to be yours.”

  Her depression lifted instantly. She could hear Jesus! She might not be able to use her physical ears to hear the sounds of the world around her, but her spirit could still hear. God spoke directly to Virginia’s heart, intimately connecting her to Himself.

  A few months after her encounter with God, Virginia left for her second summer missions trip, this time to Mexico with her youth group. Again her heart was drawn to the people she met, those who suffered so much and were so eager to experience the love of Christ. On that trip Virginia began to understand God’s calling for her life. In an evening church service, the pastor announced that instead of preaching, he wanted to give each member of the congregation time to spend alone with God. Virginia went outside and sat in the soft summer grass. She waited, and in time she felt God again speaking to her spirit. “Virginia, you are My chosen servant. I call you. I will go before you. Come with Me to the corners of the earth.”

  It was unmistakable. God wanted her, Virginia, to be a missionary, to travel the globe for the rest of her life to share the good news and saving message of Jesus Christ.

  Yet again, Virginia wrestled with her calling. She doubted her abilities and asked herself over and over, Am I willing to go into a world where I cannot hear the languages? To be a light in the darkness, a sheep among wolves? Do I believe that the Holy Spirit will overcome my deafness, my speech . . . to let me preach?

  She found her answer in the Bible. In Matthew 10:19-20, Jesus told His disciples, “Do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.”

  Comforted by Jesus’ promise, Virginia accepted God’s call. After high school, she enrolled in Adventure In Missions’ First Year Missionary Program. She moved to the bleak inner city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she ministered to her neighbors in a crime-filled, drug-infested area. Although she could not listen for signs of the often-present danger, Virginia spent hours on street corners. Although the people she served could not understand what she said, Virginia connected powerfully with everyone she met. Heroin addicts and homeless people found unconditional love in Virginia’s eyes and hands. They found comfort as Virginia prayed for them.

  From Philadelphia, Virginia continued to travel the globe to spread the good news of Jesus Christ. After short-term projects in Panama and West Virginia, she felt God call her to a new mission. When she was only twenty-two, Virginia began to lead groups of Christian high school students to England, Ireland, and the Dominican Republic. The teenagers in her charge did not understand sign language, yet God worked in their relationships, and while sometimes Virginia struggled to understand what was being said, she mentored, taught, and cared for the girls in ways that changed their lives and hers.

  Wherever she went, Virginia’s passion for Christ touched not only the people she served, but also her fellow missionaries. One friend explains, “Her presence has never ceased to change lives. As others see her stepping out in faith and living her faith regardless of her deafness, they are encouraged and challenged to step out as well.”

  During her year of service in Philadelphia, Virginia had met a fellow missionary with a passion for the poor and the unreached. They fell in love and were married shortly after.

  God began to show the couple new ways to reach out to people who did not know the gospel. During a two-week trip to China, Virginia and her new husband met students who had to study the Bible in secret because the government prohibits practicing Christianity. Virginia’s heart, always so in tune with God, felt His call to China to minister to the persecuted church there. Once again, she took a leap of faith and followed. After months of prayer, Virginia and her husband left for China.

  Today, they are missionaries in a country that does not allow missionaries, sharing the gospel despite the physical risks.

  Virginia continues to see her deafness as something that God uses to change lives, including hers, rather than something that separates her from God or the people around her. She clings to the words of the apostle Paul in Acts 20:24: “I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace.”

  Virginia can hear the one voice that matters, and she is following it.

  Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.

  (2 Timothy 4:2)

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  li pasang

  Even If Not

  The living Buddha—who lived a mo
untain journey away—gave Li Pasang her name when she was an infant. She grew up under the shadow of his mountains in a community known for its hopelessness. So when, as a young woman, Pasang found a hard lump near her breast—the breast that nursed her firstborn son—she resigned herself to death.

  Still, she approached a foreign doctor for his advice. The smile on her thin, pale face showed she dared to hope that the lump she found was nothing. When she entered the clinic, her one-year-old baby clung to her back in a makeshift sling. She delivered the baby to her mother and took her place in line—a line so long it wound around the mayor’s office.

  When she finally saw the doctor, she said matter-of-factly, “I have something the matter with my chest.”

  The doctor reached for some medicine, but she stopped him. “No, it’s not pain, it’s a lump—just under my skin. Here.”

  A translator relayed the doctor’s words: “She has a mass—hard and immovable.” The doctor poked and prodded to make a more complete examination. The hopelessness that infused Pasang’s village fixed its hold around her neck like a tightening noose. Yet the nice doctor assured her that hope was not lost. If she could get the mass removed at the hospital, things might turn out well. He encouraged her to come with him to the city, where she could be treated and possibly cured.

  While Pasang’s husband and small son waited in her village, she began the long and difficult journey. It was not easy. For Pasang’s entire life, her sole means of transportation had been her feet. She’d never been in an automobile before, and its motion made her violently ill. Gripping her stomach, she fought to keep her food down, eventually losing the battle. The winding, tortuous roads mocked her. She felt her lump as vomit stung her tonsils. No hope.

  Through perilous roads and towns decimated by the SARS epidemic, Pasang held her stomach. She didn’t pray. She didn’t know she could. The doctor with the pale, worried face gave her some medicine. He said it would help her stomach, but it didn’t. On and on they drove, up hills, through villages foreign to her. Li Pasang had never before ventured beyond her village, beyond the eyes of the living Buddha.

  A student traveling with them became ill from the Yak butter tea they’d had for breakfast. After seeing both women’s pained faces, the doctor pulled over to let them rest. When they began their nauseating journey again, a police car flanked them. The officer shouted, “You must be out of this region at this moment! We are closing the road.” SARS had reached yet another territory.

  The three travelers stopped in a high mountain village near a clear lake. They approached the village’s center. It was eerily calm. Only one lone lady walked the vacant street. “You’d better leave now, or you will be stuck here,” she said. “No one can leave after tomorrow.” Another town closed by SARS.

  Pasang watched the mountains, her stomach eventually settling after a second round of medicine. In another village nearly closed by SARS, they stayed in the house of a kind stranger, woke up early, and continued their journey, hoping to reach the hospital before the roads closed. Along the journey the only people they saw were nurses and doctors in scrubs and face masks. Had they left one day later, they’d have been trapped many miles away from the hospital.

  The trio arrived in the city at nightfall. When the doctor showed Pasang to her hospital room, he explained that she needn’t be afraid of the leprous-looking patients. “They have the scars of leprosy, but they are healed. Do not be afraid.”

  She was afraid—not of the scarred people but of the battery of tests she had to endure. Her first full day in the hospital, her first encounter with such a building, confirmed cancer. Pasang sobbed as she absorbed the weight of the word. The doctor scheduled an operation and arranged for her sister to keep her company in the long days ahead; family members provided the only nursing care.

  Before her surgery, the doctor shared Jesus with Pasang. He told her about His life, His death, and His resurrection. He said that Jesus loved Pasang.

  “What you are saying sounds like the words of the living Buddha,” she responded. Yet the living Buddha gripped her village in fear, warning that if a villager inadvertently killed a bug while plowing he might end up a lesser being.

  The doctor continued to share Jesus with Pasang as well as discuss her condition. “People in the countryside believe cancer is incurable, don’t they?”

  She nodded.

  “It’s not incurable. There are still things we can do. The treatments are difficult, but you are young and strong, and you have a baby boy. You should try. Don’t give up. I will help you all I can.”

  A few days later, the doctor told Pasang about a God who came to help the helpless. She stared at the wall, the words lacking impact. The doctor continued, sharing how Jesus suffered. Eventually, a smile crept to Pasang’s dry lips. “Doctor,” she said, “may we believe in Jesus? Are we allowed?”

  “Of course you may. But will you? Do you love Him? Do you believe?”

  Pasang did not reply. She smiled again and looked at her sister.

  The next day her lump was removed, and she commenced chemotherapy. The doctor then had to leave Pasang because of his commitments back home. During the chemotherapy sessions, though, the doctor’s words about Jesus made their way to Pasang’s heart. Like a bud slowly blooming, she believed. And then her sister believed. Elusive hope came to them both through the gentle hands of Jesus.

  During a brief chemotherapy respite, they returned to her village—a place untouched by Christianity—and shared Jesus with the villagers. Thirty families gave their hearts to Him, angering local officials, who deemed their gatherings cultic. The new Christians, including Pasang’s husband, were blamed for the village’s misfortunes. Former friends ridiculed Pasang publicly for daring to betray the living Buddha. The community that once embraced Pasang now shunned her. When the Chinese New Year came, Pasang and the other Christian families refused to participate in ritual sacrifices, furthering their isolation and persecution.

  Still, today Pasang smiles. A new Christian, she thanks God for the cancer as she endures chemotherapy. “I am glad Jesus loved me enough to allow the tumor so that I could hear about Him through a doctor.”

  Thirty families who lived under the shadow of the living Buddha’s mountain are thankful too.

  But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

  (1 Peter 2:9)

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  sara

  Learning to Surrender

  Spring break of her freshman year, Sara sat alone in her dorm room. Life had become unbearable, and she pleaded with God to let her die. As she prayed for God to take her, a song came over the radio. Between sobs Sara heard, “He climbed the highest hill to save you.” The words pierced the young woman, and she begged God for something she’d never before asked: “Teach me how to surrender my life to You.”

  Surrender came hard. After years of rebelling, Sara doubted that God was even willing to provide for her, whether it was relationally, spiritually, financially, or emotionally. But she has since learned her heavenly Father delights in His children and He answers prayer—even if it’s shrouded in skepticism.

  The summer following Sara’s freshman year in college should have been her best ever. A cruise line in Alaska hired her as a stewardess. She found a house with fifteen other young seasonal workers, met a great Christian guy—David—started dating, got pregnant, and then got dumped.

  Sara was devastated. She was hundreds of miles from home, and David didn’t want anything to do with her. Sara quickly realized that God had allowed her to be stripped of everything—except His provision.

  Out of a house of fifteen, He gave Sara eight believing friends to cover her in prayer, grace, and love. Not only did God lavish her with companionship, He gave her a best friend named Joy. She loved Sara through late-night panic attacks, anger, grief, and continued doubt. Joy placed her trust and life in t
he hands of the Father, and Sara slowly learned to do the same.

  When summer ended, Sara headed back to Seattle. By God’s grace she didn’t have to go home alone. Five of her summer roommates also happened to live in Seattle. They continued to meet with Sara to study the Bible and pray for her. They stood by her while she wrestled with the most difficult decision of her life: whether to keep her baby or give it up for adoption.

  A mom was the only thing Sara had ever wanted to be. But secretly, she thought God wanted to punish her. And what would be more painful than making her give up her first child? Even though Sara believed God would make her pay for all her poor choices, she still decided to trust Him. After all, she hadn’t done so well without Him! Sara wanted to do His will, no matter what.

  She began preparing herself for “His” answer by reading up on adoption. The first book she read was about a young Christian girl who was raped and became pregnant. It seemed only logical, Sara thought, that she would give up the baby. Yet she didn’t, even though the baby was conceived in shame. For the first time Sara realized that God had already paid her penalty. He didn’t want or need to punish her. All He wanted was to show her His mercy and grace.

  Yet even with all the grace and mercy in the world, Sara wasn’t sure she could afford a child. She started attending meetings at the adoption agency. At one of the meetings, a young girl spoke about giving up her own baby. She struggled with the same question, “Can I provide for a child?” She finally concluded, “I wasn’t going to be able to buy my kid Nike shoes. And I wanted my baby to have parents who could.”

  As Sara listened to her story, Matthew 6 popped in her head: “Do not worry about your life, what you will . . . wear. Will [God] not . . . clothe you?” (vv. 25, 30). Sara walked out of the meeting not willing to give her baby up for adoption because of shoes. That day, Sara decided to keep her daughter; Grace would be her name.