Sunday, 25 October 2015

Jesus Promised "My burden is light" Matthew 11:28-30

Mdm Christine Newton was widowed when her husband died two years ago in 2013 and left her with a son and daughter-in-law. She was then a Catholic and was much troubled with lack of concern and lost of friendship with many previous friends. She was confused and did not have inner peace. She also developed some medical heart problems and was worried. Sister Sylvia Elijah uses to frequent her restaurant and by divine arrangement managed to share and passed her a Gideon English Testament which Mdm Christine used to refer and read when anxiety and uncertainty set into her life.
Recently in September 2015, Sister Sylvia Elijah visited Mdm Christine restaurant and was told that she had went through baptism to confirm her faith. Hallelujah! She thanked Sister Sylvia for giving her the Gideon New Testament where she found help from the Bible verses and is able to be reborn again as she is now worshipping in a local Evangelistic Protestant Church.
Not only she is saved but her whole family accepted the Lord too as their personal Saviour and Lord. Praise The Lord for the new salvation! She now find peace and joy and has decided to surrender herself to the Lord in whatever situation as she does not feel burden now. All Glory be unto God alone!

Prepared by Sylvia Elijah, Country Auxiliary Coordinator

Oct 2015

God's Word Speaks For Itself (Isaiah 55:11)

In the early 1980s, I was a very quiet and disturbed girl without much family love as I was staying with my relatives who were Taoists. They were very guarded over my beliefs and would complain about my reading of any Christian materials which I obtained from school. Those materials were English Christian materials which help to improve my poor command of English. Life then was like not worth living! Many times I was stressed out and had attempted suicides three times: trying to jump off at 17th Floor Rifle Range flats, Penang; knocked myself against a moving bus; and jump off a bridge into the open sea.
In 1985, I was admitted into the hospital for stomach ulcers. An unknown person in the hospital just passed me a Chinese Gideon Testament (painted red at the sides), probably he would not read it or did not want it. However, as I read it, I found comfort and peace. One day, I heard a voice saying to me, “you dare to die but dare not live?” The verse as Paul said it in Philippians 1:21, “To live is Christ, to die is gain” reminded me that if I need to live, I live for Christ.
In 1993, I was ordained as a Reverend in the Lutheran Church and is now ministering in three different locations, namely, Kuala Kangsar, Lenggong and aborigines ministry in Pengkalan Ulu (Kroh). I thank God for blessing me with a New Testament that let me into encountering Jesus Christ as my personal Saviour, without anyone telling me about it but just through reading His word in the New Testament. His Holy Spirit really works in my heart all these years to sustain and encourage me to move on for the Lord as long as I am alive. I was looking for the Gideons to thank them for doing what they are doing when one day Bro Elijah Patmalingam just step into my church to share about the Gideon ministry in Malaysia and worldwide. I prayed I was of help in setting up a new Kuala Kangsar Camp for the furthering of His work in this area. All glory be to God, the Almighty.

Rev Loh Kan Hooi 

Friday, 29 May 2015

Reading In Faith Brings Salvation

In 1984, my brother-in-law gave me a small blue Gideon English Bible to read even though I was not very good in reading English. However, my mother encouraged me to do so as I had found the true God and the Bible was His love letters to us. I believed her and I used to carry it with me to school. During break hours in school, I would try to read it even though it was difficult for me to understand it. I had the faith that Jesus would help me to read and understand it.
As I was reading the Gospel books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the Lord spoke to me clearly through His Word in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”. My heart began to cry within because that was the first time someone said it that He loved me and died on the Cross for me even though I was a sinner. I began to cry and in tears I accepted the Lord Jesus as my Saviour.
My life changed because that very moment I felt the Holy Spirit came into my heart and I was overjoyed.
Without the Gideon Bible given to me, I would not have been saved and today I am a pastor serving the Master Jesus Christ,  Lover of my soul. He saved me and so will I serve Him forever and ever. Thank you Gideons International for your powerful ministry to reach out to everyone who needs His Word. May God bless your wonderful ministry.

Rev Reuben Kanagalingam
Global Faith Movement Ministry

April 2015

Wednesday, 27 May 2015

HOTELS BIBLES TOUCHED A PILOT’S HEART CHANGING A WHOLE FAMILY

The years 1977 to 1980 saw me and my newly married beloved wife, Rani, living and working in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah and Kuching, Sarawak, two eastern States in the tropical island of Borneo in Malaysia, located in South East Asia. It was my job then as a pilot in those years to help people to get into the interior parts of Sabah and Sarawak wherever small planes could access. The alternative was to walk for days through jungle paths, connecting villages and by boats on mighty jungle rivers connecting major towns.

In 1978, I had a very busy schedule of flights in Borneo, during which time I had to stay overnights in tiny towns and villages, due to schedules or grounded by bad weather. The places where I stayed were small country-inns euphemistically called ‘Hotels,’ named grandly with names like ‘The Palace Hotel, ‘The Garden Hotel’, etc. In reality these were not much more than old brick shop houses converted to places to stay for weary travelers.

One night in the little oil town of Miri, in Sarawak, I was in the ‘Garden Hotel’ and as was my habit before bed to read something. Next to my bed, lying dust covered on a wooden shelf was a dark red book. I picked it up, it was the Bible. I had never read a Bible before, so merely out of curiosity; I started to read from page 1, ‘In the beginning…..’I read until I fell asleep, left the hotel the next morning and went my way. Often, I returned to the same hotel time after time and so were other small places where I stayed in and found Bibles there too. I had opportunity and cause to continue reading the Bible from where I had left at my last stay. “Something” in the Book held me riveted and spellbound and I began to think.


My religious background was based on idolatry and animism, bound by powerful superstitions and belief systems. I was shocked to hear the Bible describing idolatry as an “An Abomination to God”. Those were very strong words indeed, which tore at my very core, in my heart I rebelled at these revelations. The Word of God even pleaded with Man, ‘Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord’ in an effort to draw Himself to the Man He had created……….

(Isa 1:18). Then the Redeemer of God was revealed in the Gospels and New Testament and the reading of the Bible in its entirety was the continuity of thought from beginning to the end. It was like a Novel on Life itself. So I went on reading the Bible for about eighteen months at different times and places but always in these same resting places in the Ulu (the backcountry). However, it never occurred to me to take the Bible home.
Our life then was pretty ordinary and predictable, and we were enjoying our newly married life. My wife Rani, is my childhood sweetheart and I readily admit that I love her very much indeed. She was expecting our first child in 1980 and soon it was time for her to bring forth the child. The place was a new private Hospital in Kota Kinabalu, so new that she, I and the night nurses were the only people in the Hospital that night! The time was 0200 hrs or what we in the business call ‘O- Dark –Thirty’, when one is usually dragged out to work!’. Beholding my beloved wife in painful labour prior to the delivery, I began to ponder on many things: Who is
Man and why this great suffering and sorrow in childbearing……Our future life as a family, etc, etc. Right at the start of my reading, a revelation in the Book of Genesis had struck me on the origins of the sufferings of Man. I recalled Genesis 3:16 reveals that the “pain of Childbirth through which Man will be re-created in the flesh”. Those Words came alive to me on that night of nights. So I paced the corridors, looked out at a beautiful night sky from the balcony of the hospital and began a silent conversation with God. “Dear Lord, here I am at the threshold of a great event in my life and how will this change my life, is this all true that the Bible has been saying? That all men have sinned and that the plan for man’s redemption was through the revealed Christ? Are you real? Will you really respond to me? What about my ‘abomination’ of idolatry. Is that forgivable?

Next morning a beautiful little baby girl was born and when I saw her coming out, with one eye looking directly at me, I felt a great melting of indescribable Joy and something else, as the
Bible describes…. “night passes into day, with nary a word said”; so it was that God revealed Himself to me that morning, in an instant, without a word, answering all my questions in one moment of overpowering feeling of love and joy in beholding the coming of this child, our Child.

When Rani was settled in the ward, I went home declaring to God in my heart,

Lord, let it be that henceforth, that I and my children, and my children’s children, shall never again bow down before mute idols but……

“AS FOR ME AND MY HOUSEHOLD, WE WILL CHOOSE TO SERVE THE LORD”.
(Josh 24.15)

In the days that followed, in the following days I revealed my thoughts to Rani, who was taken aback at my strange behaviour. I had never told her about reading the Bible previously or my thoughts. God was gracious, The Lord himself spoke to Rani, one night, three weeks later in an audible voice, saying “LISTEN TO WHAT YOUR HUSBAND SAYS AND FOLLOW ME”, which voice she immediately obeyed. She later described to me how amidst all those troubling and doubtful moments, a voice of peace and authority comforted her with these words from The Gospel of John 14.:27 : ‘My Peace I leave unto you, not as the world giveth, but I give unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid’…..immortal words uttered by the Lord Himself, when He walked this Earth. Those words prompted in Rani a great Faith which she revealed to me and agreed that we should serve the Lord together. We went across to a nearby church and met with the young Pastor and told him our story and requested Baptism. The Pastor was visibly amazed at our story and invited us to join his church. Rani and I were baptized, while our little one, whom we named Rohini Rachel, was dedicated to the Lord for his purposes.

Two years later, the Lord added a single arrow to my quiver and we had a son, Isaac Soorian. Both our children are believers and baptized in the Name of the Lord.

Shortly after the above, I was posted back to Kuala Lumpur, the Airline’s main base of operations and our hometown. We joined a local church, where our spiritual training began in earnest. I began sharing joyfully my testimony with all. We hosted home meetings, testimonies and attended many prayer rallies and heavily engaged in Evangelical work, sometimes with our little ones in tow.

In 1983, I was invited by the “Gideons” to share my testimony of salvation in a meeting in which I joined as a member. My beloved wife also joined the Gideons as an Auxiliary or wife of a Gideon and together we have engaged in this Ministry for past thirty years, distributing the Word of God for the benefit of the unsaved.

One day I was back in Kuching, the same state where I had first read the Bible, now returned as a member of the Gideon Ministry, sharing my testimony at their Pastor’s Banquet and encouraging them. My attention was drawn to an elderly man sitting quietly at the back….weeping. At the end of the meeting, I went back to meet him and he said his name was Eric Thien. Eric said He’d been a Gideon for thirty years. I asked him why he was weeping.

This is what he said:

“For thirty years, I had been faithfully placing the Word of God the length and breath of Sarawak, in the very towns you visited. I asked God today, wracked by self doubts, if all my work had been in vain. I came to this meeting today, expecting it to be the same, and I asked God to show me one person who had received Him because of this work before I die and here you are today, in answer to my doubts…….God has shown me my work has not been in vain…I am ready to die”.

One week later Eric, went home to the Lord!
For those who are still looking for The Saviour:

Harden not your heart, neither be doubtful, read for yourself what the Word of God has to say to YOU, as The Psalmist asks God in Ps 8:4 “What IS Man that that You are mindful of him” Over and over again the Bible reveals the great Love that God has for His penultimate creation and the Salvation that He has revealed in His in fallible Word. His Holy Spirit will speak to you and perhaps you too may discover the same truths that I have and be able to glorify the God who is as real as each passing day.

Capt K Sivaraman

President
Gideons Kuala Lumpur South Camp
Malaysia

April 2015

Tuesday, 28 April 2015

A POCKET-SIZE BIBLE: A FAMILY OF MISSIONARIES!

Romans 10:9 (NIV) If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 
Life was tough growing up in a family of eight children and as I was brought up in Taoism (worshipping of many gods), I lived in fear of gods that will punish if I do not follow certain rituals required! Life was a pain and there was not much to look forward to!
When I started my first year in high school, a kind classmate of mine gave me a pocket size Gideon Bible. I read it with great enthusiasm and was very attracted to the flawless character of Jesus Christ! Through attending chapel services in school and doing a basic bible correspondence course, I came to understand that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came into this world to die for all my wrong doings!
One day as I dutifully placed joss-sticks in the main altar of the gods, without uttering a single word, I said this in my heart, “I know my parents bought you (gods) from the shop down the street and if you can answer the questions that I have in my heart, then you will be my God!” No answers came from the gods that I prayed to daily. Answers to all the deep questions that I had in my heart were answered from the Bible. It was in that period of searching for the real God that I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Saviour & Lord!
God gives us as a family the privilege to serve Him in Australia. God has changed my life a lot since I became His child and He is still working in my life now as He is the Potter and I am the clay! (Isaiah 29:16) Life is worthwhile living for as we live it for Jesus Christ! No matter how difficult the circumstances might be, God is always with us and assuring us that a life lived with faith and trust in Him is all that He requires of us!
I give praise to God (who is holy) has graciously saved me (who are sinful) and had paid for the penalty of my sins when Jesus Christ died on the cross! Jesus Christ has the power to save all who comes to Him. So do not hesitate or procrastinate!
I wish to take this opportunity to thank Gideons International for their dedication and faithful ministry in the distribution of Bibles for which was instrumental in my acceptance of Jesus Christ in my teenage years.


Under His Mighty Wings,
Stephenie Chun
(married to Richard Chin & serving as missionaries in Australia since 2004 and has a son, Nathanael Chin studying his final year in Sydney Mission & Bible College)

Dated: April 2015
(Punish/Pain/Pocket/Personal/Potter/Praise/Paid/Penalty/Power/Procrastinate)



Thursday, 19 February 2015

A PRISONER REUNION WITH A GIDEON WHO SHARES

A testimony from Peter Teh Teik Ben (Peter in blue T-shirt Contactable: 016-4368664 or find him at KAWAN, Penang),
I was a drug addict who was sentenced for 12 years in Penang prison after being caught possessing and using drugs. One day the prison warden came to me, saying, “Hey Teh, your Saviour is here, better go to see him”. I had no idea what he meant so I went to meet this man who later gave me my first bible. In his sharing with us in the prison, he said to me that what I did in the past was wrong and if I continued to do so, there would be no future. He also told me Jesus could cleanse away all my past wrongs and I could start a completely new life with hope! The words he said deeply shook my thought. I was wakened up. I began to read from cover to cover what was written in the little book given to me. I knew what I did in my past was wrong.  I repented of my sins and sought forgiveness from God. While still in prison, I accepted Christ to be my personal Saviour.
After being released ten years ago, I was free from drug and was working in a local Christian charity organization. I was very grateful for that man, who had given me the Gideon Bible and showed me the way to God. I had tried to look for that Gideon brother, to thank him in person for what he had done. Unfortunately I could never find him.

On 31 Jan 2015, when I woke up and was preparing to go for the morning worship at the shelter home, KAWAN, I felt uneasiness and my pulse beating unusually faster. I had no idea why. But as soon as I got into the worship at the shelter home, I knew the reason. The Gideon brother that I had been looking for had finally appeared at the place of worship and he was leading the praise and worship with a familiar tune. I thanked God for answering my prayer, giving me a chance to say “Thank you brother!” to this long lost brother in Christ. I knew that without this Gideon brother coming to the prison to give me the bible, I would have missed the chance to know God. We both rejoice to meet each other again. Praise the Lord!

There Is Always The Way, The Truth and The Life!


This Chinese sister named Miss Leong was introduced to me by a Chinese friend of mine. She was a very strong worshiper in Buddhism. I had fellowship with her several times, sharing the Gospel of our LORD Christ Jesus. We often communicate through phone and she used to share her problems to me. I used to pray and comfort her with the word of GOD but there was no response from her many times.
About a year later she called and asked me to meet up with her. We sat down to talk and she shared all her problems in tears that for years she was praying to  “Buddha” but there was no answer to her problems. She also told me that there was no way to turn to and she didn’t know what to do. At that particular moment, she recalled what I had shared to her earlier and that is about JESUS in the Bible.
I just listen to her conversation and then she was quiet for some time. Then I took out a Gideon Chinese testament from my hand bag and asked her to read:- John 3:16; John 1:12; Matthew 11:28, and even some other verses from the scriptures.
After listening to me and reading the verses in the scripture, she told me that she felt much PEACE in her heart. I explained to her what the word of GOD means in her life, GOD healed her spiritual blindness. She wanted to accept our LORD Jesus Christ as her personal Saviour.

Later I showed her the last page in the Chinese Testament and she read all and also she said the sinner’s prayer and she confessed. Finally this sister took a pen and wrote her name on this last page and she accepted Jesus Christ as Personal Saviour. Her new reborn birthday. Halleluyah! Now she is attending a Chinese speaking church in her place in Ipoh . All GLORY to GOD.

Prepared by:Malaysia Auxiliary Coordinator
Sis.Sylvia( Mrs.ElijahPatmalingam)