A Divine Encounter

Cecilia

On June 4th I had the amazing chance to meet a girl named Cecilia. She is a senior at Waseda and is originally from China. We were in the cafeteria and had wanted to eat upstairs, but there was no room, so we moved downstairs and found a table. Within a few minutes, Cecilia and a friend of hers sat down next to us, so we started to talk to them. Within the first few minutes, we found out the Cecilia is interested in going to USC for graduate school, and that she is coming out to visit in early August. How random is that?!? Actually, I don’t think that it is random at all… I believe that God wanted us to meet her and that He made us sit downstairs so that we could. ☺ When I told her that, she seemed to understand and agree, so…

Our conversation progressed to the gospel somehow, and I had the precious opportunity to share Christ with her. I shared so much… my faith, the basics of the gospel, my testimony, how God had been faithful through specific hard times in my life, and so much more. She responded so much to all of it, saying things like, “Maybe I should pray to God the next time I don’t know what decision to make” and “Maybe I should learn how to forgive.” She called the Bible beautiful and she asked me so many questions. It was an awesome conversation.

Throughout the week we emailed back and forth and she called our cell phone to make sure that we could see each other again. On our English Lunch on Friday, she came and brought along two friends to meet us. They were all so wonderful and I got to talk with all three of them the whole two hours of English Lunch. It was an awesome day because we found out that a boy Gen had shared with earlier in the week had decided to accept Christ, and he was so excited, so filled with the joy and peace of the Lord… it was awesome! The whole following week Cecilia and I emailed and planned to have lunch on Friday… I was very excited to see her again, and planned to give her a copy of the New Testament.

Friday was ridiculously hot, so as a favor to Cecilia, because she had gotten sunburned the week before, and as a way to make sure that I wasn’t distracted, we sat apart from the group, in the shade of this beautiful garden on Waseda’s campus. What an intense time! Cecilia had so many beautiful and challenging questions, and we talked for around 2 hours. She asked me why bad things happen to good people, she asked me what I thought about Christian’s and non-Christians dating, she asked a handful of questions about faith, and about praying in faith that God will answer. It was an amazing time, and I was exhausted afterwards, but I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.

I got an email from her later that weekend that said that when she had gotten bored with studying she had looked in the Bible. She used the concordance and found passages that applied to her life, and she also got an overwhelming sense of peace and direction about a situation that had been on her mind and causing her pain. It was an amazing email to get, and I was so excited to talk to her about it all.

This Friday we had lunch, and it was a very fun time, chatting and joking and being silly. We did not have any really deep conversation, but she let me pray for our meal and I prayed again at the end of our lunch for her because she was going to be taking her TOFEL examination today and she was a little worried about it.

She is so hungry for the Bread of Life! She believes in God and thinks that it is important to do so, and she thinks that the teachings of Jesus are beautiful and have proven to be applicable to her life. Please pray for her! I am meeting with her again for lunch tomorrow… She is such a beautiful, kind, considerate girl, and I really want her to be my sister…