Hello, my name is Elaine, and I came from Indonesia, I would like to share my thought after I live couple years in United States… This morning I wake up and feel so fresh. Saturday is the time for relax and my plan today is building the new website. I woke up, and I sat in front of computer. I felt uneasy, felt hard to do website. It’s weird! Then I prayed that God covers me from evil who trying to make me lazy this morning.

Finally I decided to sit down and grab “Voice of Martyrs” magazine. I opened the magazine page by page, and turn to the first page, and read the stories from other countries, including my own country: Indonesia. I kept reading until I read the testimony from Colombia. The pastor has been threatened and shot couple times. Miraculously, the bullets didn’t spill from that gun. The pastor already surrender to God at that time.. My eyes almost in tears..

Suddenly, I’m thinking.. How hard they struggling and facing the fear of being kill because the truth. Some people think it’s just a story, but since I was live in Indonesia for whole my life and I moved into United States I know what they feel to live around the people who don’t like us as Christians. I know what’s different between here and other countries for freedom of worshiping God. Churches outside United States especially where the Christian are persecuted is furious. Lot of churches not use cross inside / outside the building for camouflage, they look like house or small building without banner, moreover they have underground church that they fellowship in the basement.. Churches exploded, caught in fire, shooting guns, people crying and screaming, threats, persecution, kidnap, and other things that I can’t tell.

One thing I could learn from living in United States, it’s more free and safe to go to churches, to have fellowship, to spread Words around the neighbor, and have church in the public place. When I meet people who kind of lazy to go to church just because they feel they don’t need it or they feel they don’t care as long they believe in Jesus, those things make me sad. Do they know how many people suffering and yearning to worship God as free like us? How many souls crying out to declare their faith? thousands! or maybe millions of people right now. They are real people, they are not just a story, they are our family in Christ.

Have you thankful to God that you have opportunity to worship Him as many as we want? Have you thankful to God that you don’t need to read your bible in your basement with a small candle for the light and put the bible under your blanket / the locker so people can’t find it? Have you thankful to God that you have a freedom to go everywhere you want without being afraid to get shot or stab from your back? Let we thankful everyday that God put us live in the country that allow us to have fellowship together with other Christian, everywhere whenever we want.

In Christ Alone..

Elaine