John Hildebrant, the newest member on the Asia Oceania Team, is investing his first year on the field in learning a key local language that will assist him in working with new contacts throughout South Asia.

After nearly two weeks spent in South Asia, I have a new personal motto: Climb the hill again.

When people ask me where I am, they usually google it and comment on how beautiful it is. And it is truly beautiful in the foothills of the Himalayas! However, they usually don’t realize how the whole town seems to be built on the side of a hill. Everything here is either up or down. Very little is lateral or sideways.

My room (where I’m currently living out of suitcases), for example, is 6,800 feet above sea level. My language school, where I take classes every day, is more than 7,300 feet above sea level! That means every day I climb more than 500 feet (or 150 meters).

I take a bath, but when I have to climb the hill again, I get all hot and sweaty. I feel fine and well rested, but when I have to climb the hill again, my heart starts to pound, and my breathing gets heavy once again.

Do I really want to climb that hill again? Not really. But I must.

Climb the hill again.

But you would think that, once I’m at the top, at the language school, I’d have a reprieve. However, you would be wrong.

That’s an aspirated consonant not an unaspirated one. Climb the hill again. That’s a cerebral (with the tongue on the roof of your mouth), not a dental (with the tongue behind your teeth). Climb the hill again. That’s a feminine noun, not a masculine noun. Climb the hill again. That’s a masculine noun ending in “a” followed by the postposition, changing “ah” to “ay”! Climb the hill again!

Don’t get me wrong. After less than two weeks, I’m pleased that I can understand and say as much as I can! (“Whose book is on that table?” etc.) I can even say a few silly sentences about a monkey stealing my food, which is a true story! But fluency is an elusive, seemingly far away thing. It means climbing the hill over and over and over again!

But is this all that my motto really means? Physically climbing up a hillside or mentally exercising the linguistic portion of my brain? Is there not a deeper spiritual meaning to this motto as well?!

Yes. At Christmas, we climbed the hill again on which Bethlehem stands – to see our incarnate Lord and Savior, the Christ-child. On Transfiguration Sunday, many of us climbed the hill of Transfiguration again – to see Jesus in all his glory – assuring us that his passion is purposeful, not that everything was merely spiraling out of control. And, most significantly, every Lenten season we climb the hill of Calvary again to see the awful price paid for all of our sins.

Climb the hill again.

This motto really applies to every Christian as we daily bring our sins to the foot of the cross. Climb the hill again! Then, the next day, we climb the hill again, and again, and again, and again! Each time, we are assured of his grace to us! Each time, we are declared to be forgiven children of the Most High!

So, what can I do? Nothing really. Nothing but climb the hill again. Yes, climb the steps to the language school. And climb the mental gymnastics of my mind trying to get my brain to think in another language. And most importantly climb the hill to Calvary again with my latest load of sins, dumping them there at the feet of my Savior.

Each and every day. . . .

“Climb the hill again.”

Written by Missionary John Hildebrant, missionary on the Asia-Oceania Team

Cindy Lendt recently accepted the call as the Women’s Ministry Facilitator for the Asia-Oceania Team. Cindy participated in a women’s workshop in a predominantly Hindu country in Asia coordinated through the World Missions Asia-Oceania Team. 

“Hi Cindy! Synod is looking for names of women who might be interested in teaching woman-to-woman evangelism . . . in East Asia . . .”

Kristi (L), Cindy Lendt (center), Alycia (R)

That text began my part in a team effort between the Asia-Oceania Team and WELS Women’s Ministry for three women to lead a friendship evangelism conference in Asia. It would be for 45 local women—the most that could fit in the hosting church. The lead national pastor wanted to equip them to share their faith with non-Christian women in their lives and also to inspire the other women in their congregations to do so. The plan was that three American Christian women would present at a three-day conference with translation from the lead national pastor, and I was invited to be one of the three.

I thought: I’m the worst evangelist I know. And I’ve never presented at an actual conference in my life.

But I figured, if this is a door that God is opening, then I want in, and he can certainly close it if he wants. He’s given me whatever skills I have, three years’ experience in Asia, and most essentially, himself.

I met Alycia and Kristi, the other two women on the team, in person for the first time at the airport. We’d been collaborating online for months putting the conference together and preparing the handout to be translated and printed for the women. From there, we flew to Asia and met the local missionary, the lead national pastor who translated for us, and the 45 amazing Christian women we were going to teach to be friendship evangelists.

Which begs the question, where do you even start to teach friendship evangelism?

We grounded everything in God’s Word. The Great Commission holds the reason why we share the gospel and the power to do it. Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension are the essence of the gospel we share. Paul and Silas in Philippi’s prison show how our attitudes and behaviors can lead to people asking about what we’ve got that they don’t – yet! Lydia shows how using our gifts opens more doors. Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman models the transition from physical to spiritual—actually sharing the gospel with someone. We practiced through role playing, small-group discussions, and large-group sharing. We sang praise, encouraged each other, and prayed together. The women were all in. They contributed their thoughts, tried out different conversations, and asked questions. Even in the last hours of the conference were seen sketching out a practice of God’s Great Exchange.

For Kristi, Alycia, and me, it was three days traveling to the location, three days of the conference, and three days traveling back home: nine days packed full.

You might wonder, what does any of this have to do with the title? Well, so far, not much! Yet it sums up just how I remember this trip. The missionary, lead national pastor, Alycia, Kristi, and I got to know each other very well. Every morning of the conference, the missionary brought a fresh pot of coffee to the breakfast table—the smell of coffee still takes me back there. Then at the end of each day’s work, he pulled out his cribbage board so we could relax together. Relax might not be the right word, a bit too calm, but we absolutely bonded over it.

That was the coffee and cribbage, and drawing the whole thing together was Christ. You could see Christ in the missionary’s humble consideration of others. You could see Christ in the way the national pastor’s experiences of setbacks and persecution couldn’t block out the joy in his Savior. He practiced caution, and yet I’ve never seen someone personify “godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Timothy 6:6) the way he did. That joyful smile was contagious. As for Kristi, Alycia, and me, all three of us are very driven people. You could see Christ through serving and putting others first. I experienced working with Alycia and Kristi was some of the most Christ-like teamwork I’ve ever been part of.

And of course, you could see Christ in the women who attended the conference, daring to step out of their comfort zones so that even one soul wandering down the path to hell might hear the powerful song of the gospel.

Some of their struggles are similar to ours in the U.S.: People think we’re hypocrites. They say, “You Christians also do bad things. Why bother to be a Christian then?” God’s distinction between men’s and women’s roles often rubs people the wrong way in their country, too. Some of their struggles are different. A teenage Christian high schooler got her cross necklace confiscated by a teacher at school, and other Christian women have faced some pretty harsh estrangement from their community. Yet these women know that “God so loved the world” (John 3:16),  and they want their loved ones to know that, too!

May Christ fill the women from this conference with daring to resist the devil’s lies and share God’s light with their friends and neighbors. May Christ continue to walk with the missionaries and national pastors in Asia so that the trials don’t ever block out the huge hope God’s given us. And may Christ give you some adventures in his kingdom, hopefully that involve coffee, cribbage, and—most definitely—Christ!

Written by Cindy Lendt