ESTHER KIM

When I first heard about STSM, I very quickly determined that I would be going. Although I feel that, in the grand scheme of things, God called me to go, my main reasons for signing up were selfish. I saw STSM mostly as a means to have a spiritual revival rather than an opportunity to serve God, which led to me to place India high on my country preference due to its rumoured difficulty. God would most definitely challenge me, but not in the ways I was expecting. 

Going into South India, I was expecting to be challenged to die to my flesh, to fight everyday to keep a joyful heart while serving thousands of kids in VBS or not complain while travelling on 29 hour bus rides. However, everyday of ministry, God filled my heart with overflowing joy. I had never felt so happy and purpose-filled doing anything else in my life. I poured everything into dancing, singing, and loving on the kids, even to the point of losing my voice, but I had never felt so energized and full in my entire life. Even travelling was not as bad as I was expecting. I would sleep for most of the time, then have a fun time talking to my teammates, and time would fly on the trains and buses we rode.

While God completely subverted my expectations by making what I believed was going to be the most difficult part of the trip the most enjoyable, he also used the part of the trip that I was least expecting to challenge me the most. Although the trains and buses were not physically challenging, the down time gave me an unexpectedly large amount of time to just think. At this point, Satan had already placed a small seed of doubt in my heart by exposing me to the beliefs of a devout muslim child we had served through ministry. Never in my life had I been exposed to more than surface level information about other religions, and for some reason, this child’s beliefs sank into my heart. Even when I read the Bible, a small voice in the back of my head reminded me of my doubt. 

This doubt only amplified once we reached the holy city of Hinduism, Varanasi. In this city, so many people were wholeheartedly dedicated to something that I believed was so ridiculously false, and I started to think, ‘What if I’m the same as them?’ My doubt was no longer a voice in the back of my head, it was now at the forefront, a thought that never left. Even as I went back to Genesis and the Gospels to quiet my doubts, it all seemed like lies. In the beginning, I had seen the latter half of our trip to South India as more of a vacation, little did I know that was when God would test me the most. 

Coming back home, I threw myself immediately into a deeper study of other religions and Christian apologetics, and many of my doubts were able to be silenced. However, I quickly realized that although I could come to believe in God logically, the only thing that could build a firm faith is encountering God, seeing how he works. Only after coming back did I remember how God had worked so beautifully in me through our ministry in South India. One thing I couldn’t deny was the overwhelming joy I felt doing God’s work. Through this challenge God also taught me how little of the Bible and him I really knew. How little of God’s character did I understand that a little bit of knowledge of another religion began to make me question God himself? 

I know that this challenge was God telling me to go back to the basics, to come to know him more personally. So, I bought a study Bible and set a goal to pray to him more intentionally. This test has instilled in me a greater desire than ever to study the Bible and to cultivate a deep relationship with him unlike the surface level one I’d had before. I want to rebuild the foundations of my faith stronger than ever to be able to defend it to anyone or from any doubt that is placed in my heart. 

All this to say that God truly works in unexpected ways, and I believe this testimony of my time in India will become a cornerstone in my faith and a constant reminder of how God is real and active.