One day last fall as Mark and I traveled on a bus from the
subway, Mark noticed a foreign family and a young man. Foreigners really stick
out here so Mark got to talking with the husband. “Where are you from?” always
opens conversational doors. It turned out that the family originated from Kazakhstan
but had lived in the US for a number of years. The family came to BJ for work,
but the husband’s teenage brother, Max, came here for university studies.
During the course of their conversation, Mark gave them one of our name cards
with phone numbers and email information.
Shortly thereafter, Max contacted us and began attending
BBC. By his own admission, when he first arrived in BJ, he was lonely and
depressed. We have gotten to know Max over the months and have seen him grow in
the Lord. He comes to our Guys’ Nights, sometimes hangs out with our friends,
and displays a hunger for the Word and Christian fellowship. It’s really neat to see God work in his life
– to give him hope and a future. In his testimony to BBC this past weekend, he
talked about how his life was dark before salvation in Christ, but God has
given him hope in Jesus. While Max likely was a believer before coming to BBC,
he had not been baptized so one of our men spent some time with him talking his
faith in Jesus and about the Christian life. Looking back over the months, we
see a difference in Max –in his faith, in his countenance, in his hope. So ----
at our 2nd annual BBC retreat this past weekend, Mark baptized Max
on a cold, rainy Mother’s Day in an inflatable swimming pool surrounded by a
cloud of rejoicing witnesses.
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