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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Paul Yoo

Janie Yoo

Offering Our Firstfruits

This morning, we're going to be sharing with you a simple mission, a good old mission spotlight.

I think there was a time in our Adventist church where mission spotlights were kind of a regular thing for the Sabbath school program, but that seemed to slowly have disappeared somehow.

We'll be sharing with you an aspect of medical missionary work that I guess through our lens, through our perspective, and through our experience And we hope that you can have a clearer picture as to what some of us experience out there.

So, before we begin, perhaps we can start with a word of prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, we come before you once again, and we thank you so much for this time that we can come together as fellow believers and to consider you and your work.

We pray for a blessing at this time that you'll talk to us.

For this we pray in the name of Jesus, Amen.

Not too long ago my wife and I were students here at Loma Linda University.

Just like some, if not many of you, we were seated in these seats in a different building, obviously.

But we were students here, and we were part of the the Avon Hope family.

And to this day, we look back at our time as students here, look back at what God has blessed us with, and our time at Avon Hope, and those were always, we always have fond memories of our time here.

I think that those were times where we grew, we were fed as Christians, and we are always grateful for that experience.

And we are, I would say, a missionary couple, or a team now, that is serving out in Lusaka, Zambia.

We are following in the footsteps of the great physician, doing what we can to, let's say, doing what we can to bring about healing and hope to this world full of suffering and pain.

And so we're simply just doing what we can to make a difference out there.

We are here on our annual leave, and obviously to deliver our first baby girl.

She was born a little less than 2 weeks ago.

And we're thankful for the gift of life, and we pray and hope that this new addition will only strengthen our Christian ministry, and that she may be a blessing and not a burden to us.

Don't get me wrong, because sometimes that does happen.

Kids come and people just stop doing things and they just stay home and they don't want to let the kids out for 3 months and you know what I mean.

So our hope is that you know it can truly be an addition, strengthen our ministry out there and here and wherever we go.

We're blessed to be back home, to be around friends and family, to be able to have this time that we can spend with our new baby girl and also to spend with family as well.

Being out there, sometimes it does get lonely, so it's a treat to always come back home.

Let me share with you, before Jamie and I met, we independently wanted to serve abroad as medical missionaries.

This shared goal was 1 of the big factors that really brought us together.

And that hope of 1 day serving together led us to actually accept the call to serve out in Zambia, Africa.

Let me give you a little background about Zambia So you can have an idea as to where this place is and what we're doing out there.

Zambia is in the southern part of the African continent.

It is landlocked by 8 different countries.

It's a peaceful, politically stable nation.

The people are very warm and friendly and nice.

As some of you may have heard, different African countries like to claim different titles.

Maybe Kenya would say we're the gateway to Africa.

Or another part would say we're the heart of Africa, where the Zambians tell us that they are the real Africa.

And we consider Zambia more like home for us.

If you've heard of Victoria Falls, it is 1 of the 7 natural wonders of the world.

I would say they share that distinction with its neighbors in Bawai.

So Victoria Falls is always a treat when people come out to visit.

And if any of you come visit, we'll be sure to take you there.

The other thing is, it's a country where David Livingston, I'm not sure if you all know David Livingston, but David Livingston was a famous medical missionary.

And he spent much of his missionary life out there, out in the country of Zambia.

There is an abundance of wildlife and untapped natural beauties that we often escape to when it gets stressful.

No, it's not really our pet, But it's nice.

And that's Jamie crossing the famous Zambezi River.

And that's a hyena, which you don't really find during the day.

But on our way to 1 of our mission sites, that road is far and long.

And if you are lucky enough and if you stay there long enough, you will come across some animals.

And it's always a treat, because this is out there.

Let me share with you our naive dream of serving in this capacity started prior to our studies here at Loma Linda.

We've held on to that dream for many years, that 1 day we could serve abroad.

But after 10 years of dreaming, it became a reality for us in 2011, August of 2011, when Janie finally finished up her training and her fellowship.

We were packing all the things that we thought we would need there.

We also had, This container was supposed to arrive 3 months later, but it took 8 months to get there.

So some of the stuff that we put in there, some food, it did get old.

But nonetheless, we're thankful that we had this opportunity to use a container.

So it makes our living there a little more easy to adjust to.

We also were able to pack 2 suitcases each, 1 suitcase for personal belongings, the other obviously was for medical dental equipment supplies and stuff like that.

On the plane, I remember clearly thinking, is this really happening?

It's something that we've always thought about and dreamed about.

But it was such a long time we've been dreaming about this.

I was thinking, is this really happening that we're really moving to Zambia, Africa, when we really had choices.

But we're thinking, this is what God had called us to.

This is what motivated us to into health care.

So when you're at the end of your training and you feel like you can do anything, then you start to have different thoughts about this naive idea of serving abroad 1 day, making a difference.

That This dream was nice as long as it was a dream, I felt.

But the reality of actually moving and leaving friends, family, conveniences, started to really sink in.

And I remember starting to have a little bit of what you call cold feet, which is to be expected sometimes.

You know, when you wait for such a long time, and when you're actually there, then you realize that this is still what you want to do.

Sometimes we feel like we've grown as individuals.

Therefore, this thing is just the dream and should be just the dream.

But fortunately, the Lord continued to speak to us.

Janie and I are both heads of our institutions.

It's a small institution for the dental side.

We are striving to meet a need that is not being met locally.

And that is mainly because there are a lack of providers, lack of access to care, and the infrastructure is really not there.

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Offering Our Firstfruits

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