Several years ago, my wife LaVonne and i traveled with a team of university students to a country in the Middle East. God had granted us an opportunity to “sow seeds of the gospel” in a place where there were no known churches and very few followers of Jesus. Ironically enough, we were going to one of the places where the gospel was first proclaimed by the Apostle Paul and others two thousand years ago, but, in recent days, the lies of false religion had taken hold and now very few knew the truth.

The “seeds” we were sowing were four-fold. First, we would conversationally share our testimonies and the good news of the gospel whenever we had opportunity with those who could speak some English, since only a few of our team members knew the indigenous language. The second and third seeds were, respectively, videos and CDs in the native language that told the story of Jesus and the truth of the gospel. The fourth seed was a written booklet explaining the gospel in the indigenous language. In enlisting our help, our partner informed us that he had not previously done what he was asking us to do among this group of people. He had no idea how the people would react or respond to us. Since, at the time, we also had never done this before in this particular context, it would be a new experience for all of us – our team, our partner, and the people we would meet.