FROM DELHI TO THE TEXAS COAST

My name is Reuben Landge. I was born in a small city in India called Chandigarh, and was and brought up in Delhi. I was raised in a Christian home. I have a younger brother and we were raised amidst Christian values and in the church. Even though I knew the Bible stories and all that was taught in the Sunday school, I wasn’t really following Christ with all my heart. Not until I was a freshman in high school, did I finally understand what it means to be a Christian. I realized that I needed to repent from my sins, trust in Christ for the forgiveness of my sins and salvation. I surrendered my life to Christ when I was around 17 years old and I have never regretted it.

After I finished high school, I asked the Lord where He wanted me to be. Soon after, He opened the doors for me to come and study in Dallas. So as of right now, I am a sophomore at Criswell College, Dallas, TX.

Life in Dallas has been a continuous learning process for me. The Lord has been working on me showing me things about my life that I need to get rid of and other things that I need to incorporate in my life so as to get closer to Him and be more like Him everyday. This last summer, as I finished my spring term, I had a desire to use my summer productively for the Lord. One day, as I was coming back home from school, I prayed that I wanted to bring glory to God’s name by being used for Him in any way He wanted me to be used. Soon after I prayed, I got a call from Rodney, the missions pastor at my church, informing me that there were a couple of summer missionary positions open and asking me whether I was interested in any one of them. It was a prayer totally answered.

Near the end of May, I went to Freeport, TX as a summer missionary, sent by “Go Now Missions,” a wonderful mission organization that sends hundreds of students from Texas to all the parts of the world. The time that I spent in Freeport has helped me gain a whole new perspective on serving God and sharing my faith consistently. It has also helped me gain better insight into my relationship with Christ. There were a lot of things in me that God worked on this summer. He also helped me learn a lot from the partners that I served with. In other words, I am thankful and grateful that He chose me to serve Him.

Freeport is a very small city and not very high on the socio-economic scale. Having lived in Dallas for about a year, I was pleasantly surprised to know that cities like Freeport exist in the U.S.; I am glad that I got to experience the slow life of a small American city. Even though the city itself is small, there are a few big industrial units and oil refineries in Freeport that keep the city running. As a result, the city gets a lot of ships from all around the world that bring in chemicals, cargo and oil as raw material to be processed in these industrial units and refineries.

I served along with two other missionaries and a few volunteers in an organization called the Seaman's Center. Our job dealt directly with building relationships with sailors who arrived at the port every day. Our typical day would look somewhat like the following. We would get up in the morning, check for ships at the five different ports and then try to visit them all. Visiting a ship meant carrying literature, Gospels, and phone cards to each ship and giving them away with the exception of phone cards, which we sold. In doing so, we would interact with the sailors and make friends with them. Most of the sailors would also want to go ashore for shopping and/or just to get their feet on solid ground, for which we would gladly give them a ride. In doing so, we made friends with a lot of people from different countries and different cultures. The majority of the sailors I met were from the Philippines. The rest were from Croatia, Russia, India, Honduras, Greece, other European countries, and South American countries. I also discovered a ship from a country that I didn't even know existed -- Montenegro! Oftentimes, sailors would also choose to hang out at the Seaman's Center. The Seaman's Center is a big building with pool tables, ping-pong tables, Internet connection, TV, phones, snacks, and literature. It's here that we would play ping pong, pool or soccer with the sailors and share Christ with them.

This is a ministry where results are not immediately observable. But one has to be patient and faithful. At times we could feel discouragement taking over because of the lack of opportunities to share Christ. But God is faithful. He opened up conversations that led us to talk about Christ in ways we could not have imagined. Towards the end of my term, I met at least four different sailors who expressed their heartfelt thanks and gratitude to us for helping them out. This came at a time when we were really wondering whether what we do makes a difference or not. We got the answer; yes it does, if we do what we did in Jesus' name! Even if we could not share Christ with a lot of them because of lack of time or opportunities, we made sure to let them know that we are helping them in Jesus' name. And God reminded us that it's like planting a seed in their hearts or watering a previously planted seed.

During this time in Freeport, God also helped me get a lot bolder about sharing my faith. For example, during the middle of my term in Freeport, I met two guys from South Korea. We were driving them back from Wal-Mart and taking them to their ship. I really felt like God was asking me to talk about Christ with one of the guys who was sitting near me. While talking to him, I found out that he was a Christian. Even though we had a hard time communicating with each other, since he barely spoke English, he shared his struggles of being a Christian on the ship where nobody cared about faith and God. This gave us the opportunity to encourage him in his faith and pray for him in the van. It was a blessed time of short fellowship and I praise God for it. This incident also helped me realize that if I hadn't talked to that guy about Christ, I would have never known about his struggles and would have not had an opportunity to encourage him. After this, there were several incidents where we would find out that someone is a believer and we would get the privilege of praying with him and encouraging him.

Finally, all I would say is that I am thankful to the Lord for giving me the wonderful privilege of serving Him through mission work at Freeport.  All glory and praise be to God forever and ever!

::Reuben Landge

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