Thailand- there and back!

Dear Friends,

OK! So you are wondering where we have been? Well we have been to Thailand and back! Took us around 17 flying hours to get there...on three different planes and just an hour or two less overall, on three differnt flights, to return home last night- Monday the 12th of October!

And what did we do while in Thailand? Bottom line, we worked hard and in the process met some great people in the Kingdom of our Lord!

• We had 10 and a half days of intense lecture, training, writing, praying, singing, conferring and dreaming...about HOW to accomplish the various VISIONS we each had for our section of Kingdom work! This was what the JONATHAN TRAINING was all about.
• We met folk from some pretty unusual places- sections of Turkey, the Tibetan Plateau which is located in China, from the mountain areas of the Golden Triangle- the central spot for growing much of the world's opium, from the high plains of Nepal to the crowded cities of central China.
• All of the folk we met had a common objective: they were, and are, committed to telling the story of Jesus to people who live in some pretty difficult areas! Almost all of the people in these areas have NEVER heard the Gospel story.
• So the stories we heard and situations that were described by our new missionary friends are not your usual stories of the advance of Christianity as important as that is. Rather these stories reflected the difficulties of the Vision: loneliness; frustration; fear; inability to sleep at night; isolation; weariness and perplexity to name a few of the "difficulties."
• But in the "difficulties" there was this "grace of the Lord" that was so present on all.
• "But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body." (II Corinthians 4:7-10)
• We were so blessed by students and instructors alike. All were not only able to discuss the "theories of reaching the unreached, " all were to some degree or another seriously and heavily involved in reaching these who have never heard of Jesus!" In my book that is and was pretty amazing.
• In fact Judy created a line that will become one of our "lines!" "Linking the REACHED with the LEAST REACHED until ALL ARE REACHED!" That sums up our personal story of what we are attempting to do in this global outreach of STADIA INTERNATIONAL-JONATHAN PROJECT!

There will be other stories that will come out of the two weeks we spent in Thailand, which you will hear from time to time. One of the most dramatic though was of a "Living Buddha" who read his way right out of his Buddhism and into faith and trust in Jesus Christ. Actually the person who led him to Jesus Christ was a Chinese woman who kept a little shop he would frequent from time to time. Because this 28 year old was identified as a "Living Buddha" his "Saul/Paul" transformation to Jesus Christ has led to death threats and persecution, even as was the case with Saul whom we read about in Acts 9. When this story was told at the Training there was not a dry eye in the room in Thailand and in fact the entire group ended up in prayer and the laying on of hands for the three missionaries who are working so faithfully in this very difficult field. Two of the three have an intimate working relationship with this 28 year old. His story will be told but right now it is in only one language! God is at work in BIG ways in the difficult areas of the world where people have never heard, and those in power do not want them to hear!!!

Well as you can imagine, we are thrilled to be involved in something this wild, this crazy this BIG! You can be involved also through prayer, through financial support, through encouragement. You too can be part of this global move of God!

In the meantime we send our love and prayers,

Graydon and Judy Jessup

714.488.7922

gjessup@stadia.cc

graydonandjudy.blogspot.com

Next travels: In Alaska: October 15 - November 9

National Missionary Convention, Peoria, Illinois, November 19-22