MEETING GEORGE AGAIN

IN JULY, we went for Campus Mission 2007 in Busan, Korea. What a wonderful conference it was.
There were 16,000 of us from more than 123 countries.
I (YK) spoke at one of the workshops to more than 1,000 women, and had many opportunities to counsel students one on one.

I enjoyed myself thoroughly.

But the highlight of CM 2007, for me, was meeting George Verwer again.

Between 1976-1978, I served on board the MV Logos (OM ministry), which brought educational and Christian books to Africa and India.

George, then the director of OM, came to the ship regularly to speak to us.
Once he announced in a public meeting, "If anyone read/listened to 100 books/taped messages within the year, come to me and ask for any book or collection of books in our exhibition and I’ll give it to you."

That--the reward--got me really excited (I was all of 21 years old).

Before the year was up, I had completed 100 books and tapes. Stott, Packer, Tozer, Elliott, you name it, I covered them all.
I even selected my ‘reward’: a multi-volume Bible Encyclopedia (yes I was young AND greedy).

One fine day, we were told George was coming to the ship to speak to us.

The night before he arrived, I stood before a mirror for two hours practicing my claim-the-reward speech.

But halfway through my rehearsal, the Lord spoke to me, "What reward are you claiming?" He asked.
"Haven’t you been blessed already?"

As usual, God was right.
That one year of getting into the lives of those men and women had blessed me richly. My life, habits, convictions, my understanding of God, they were not the same anymore.

No, I didn’t claim my reward that day. I didn’t even tell George I did it (so shy lah).
But after CM 2007, some 30 years later, I finally wrote to him (and that’s because Julienne, who’s endlessly delighted with my story, pushed me to do it).
Yes, and I finally told him his fruit has remained.

Praise God for choosing others to bear fruit in our life.

Praise Him for choosing us to, in turn, bear fruit in other people’s life.