Before we went on our trip to Tanzania in January, our representative from Compassion International told me I would need to download WhatsApp and learn to use it. She said it was the only way I could actually talk to the Compassion representative when we arrived in Tanzania.

I had never heard of WhatsApp but soon discovered I was in the minority! Many  people told me they already had the app for WhatsApp. It’s an easy way to contact people in foreign countries without any hassle or cost. Our Compassion representative in the U.S. gave me the name and phone number of the representative in Tanzania so that I could call her on What’s App. It worked well on our trip.

After we got home from Tanzania, near the beginning of February, I started missing our new friends and wished for a way to reconnect with them. Then I remembered that on our way to Tanzania, M, whom we had met on one of our flights, had given us his business card which contained his contact information. Then on our last day there, a hotel employee (completely unasked) gave me her name and phone number as well as the name and phone number of another employee with whom we’d formed a relationship.

I realized that if they were on WhatsApp, it would be a great way to get in touch with them. So on February 6, I entered their names and phone numbers on the app, discovered they were members, and sent them each messages thanking them for their kindness to us while we were in Tanzania.

Soon I got great responses from all of them, but especially from M. Neither Donn nor I had one of my business cards with us when we met him, so I had written my website, homespunfaith.com, on a piece of paper. He said he had found the website but hadn’t found a way to contact us, so he was hoping we’d contact him. He also said he was excited to read Sarah’s Legacy, the first book in my Christian, Historical Fiction series.

Since then I’ve been able to stay in communication with all three of them. B told me he is Catholic and W is Lutheran. M had said on the plane that he is Muslim but was reconsidering his religion because he knows there are other religions.

Since I didn’t know much about the Muslim religion, I asked for prayer in our Sunday School class. One woman in the front row stood up and told us she had gone to a seminar about communicating with Muslims. She said she bought a lot of booklets and had bought two of everything, and I could have one of each!  That afternoon she dropped them off at our house. I was so amazed at God’s provision. The booklets were written by Muslims who had converted to Christianity.

It’s been such a blessing to get better acquainted with these new friends. I’ve been able to have various meaningful conversations with all of them about their beliefs and mine. I asked M if he had read the Bible and he said he hadn’t, but he’d like to. I suggested he begin in the Gospel of John.

 A few weeks ago, I decided to ask M if he’d had an opportunity to get a copy of Sarah’s Legacy, and if he hadn’t, would it be okay if we sent him a copy. The day I intended to ask him, we got a paper copy of the Gospel of John from Bibles for the World, an organization we’d never heard of. The Gospel of John had a Forward by the President of the company who had been a member of a headhunter’s tribe. Through receiving copies of the Gospel of John, eventually the entire tribe converted to Christianity!

I was so excited and decided if M agreed to have us send a copy of Sarah’s Legacy, I would ask if we could send the copy of the Gospel of John we had received in the mail. He readily agreed to both, and once again, I knew God’s hand was at work in all of this.

Many years ago, our pastor preached a sermon on the different types of evangelism. He talked about friendship evangelism and said, “There are some of you who just want to make friends with people and love them to Jesus.” Up until then, I didn’t think I had a gift of evangelism, but Donn looked at me and said, “That’s you.”

I love people and love being in situations where I have opportunities for making friends and for having conversations where God often gives me opportunities for sharing my faith or asking them questions about their beliefs.

Recently I was telling a man at our church about the connection God gave us with M on the plane. I said, “This often happened when we were traveling back and forth to Japan! I always asked God to put me beside someone with whom I could have a meaningful conversation. On our last trip home from Japan, God put us with a Chinese young man who was headed for Penn State University. We stayed in touch with him, and eventually he called us his American Mom and Dad!”

Chris smiled and said, “You need to take more trips!” When my massage therapist asked me if I’d talked to M lately, I gave her an update. When I told her that this sort of thing had often happened on our trips to Japan, she responded, “Maybe that could be your next book! You could call it Suitcase Evangelism!”

We never suspected that when God called us to be missionaries in Japan, He also planned to use us as missionaries on our trips to and from Japan! Just as Jesus asked his  disciples to pick up the scraps from feeding the 5,000 so that nothing was wasted, God wants us to take advantage of every opportunity to share the Good News of Jesus.

Few of us will be Billy Grahams or have the gift of evangelism that he had, but we can ask God what gift of evangelism He has given us and take advantage of every opportunity He gives us to use it.

Heavenly Father, give us your love for those we meet and give us the sensitivity to your Spirit so that He can show us how to share the Good News of Jesus at every opportunity. Amen.