ABBA
From Hearing to Seeing: Timothy’s Full Testimony
Never did I think that God would call me to Peru during my last week of winter break to serve at a conference that I barely knew about. But that’s exactly what He did a week before I left with Missionary Ines to be a part of CEJA 2026 where I saw Him work in miraculous ways and pour out blessings upon blessings in the lives of the servants there and in my own. The fact that I was even able to go on the trip was a reminder of God’s mysterious yet sufficient work in my life.
As someone who has been attending Dongsan church for about 4 years now, there are still times where I feel out of place next to the extensive 47 year history of my church. The feeling is amplified when I hear about the mission center and ABBA, and all of the various acronyms representing the several ministries that facilitate God’s work at HHK. Every time a promotional video was played or ABBA was mentioned at church, I felt a mixture of both exclusion and apathy towards the ministry.
That all changed during this 8 day trip to Peru, where I got to see first-hand the sowing and the harvesting that is being done through this humble ministry. I learned the training material like an actual participant and experienced the sowing of seeds in the young leaders. And when several participants came up to me telling me who their Riverside Tree sponsor was, hearing familiar English names with Hispanic pronunciations connected the two countries as I saw the fruits of the labor of my fellow church members.
There was a specific moment during the last day of the conference where we watched a video on the vision of ABBA. It was a video that I had watched at Dongsan previously and didn’t think much of it on my first watch. However, this second watch was different. The Holy Spirit opened my eyes and my heart not just to see the video and the pictures, but His work. Images from Peru to Christ appeared on the screen, and I saw snacks being prepared and participants wearing nametags. And there I was in Peru, having gone to the fruit market as soon as I landed to help prepare snacks for the participants and wearing one of the nametags that I had helped make the day prior. Clips of young Peruvians proclaiming their calling to be a missionary on screen began to align with the ways I saw God work in the hearts of the participants throughout the conference. Our young leaders began to cry as they watched, reminded of how greatly God had been working through ABBA not just in the past, but in the present at this conference. The whole experience was surreal and I had felt like I had become a small part of the long history of ABBA, something that had seemed so distant and unrelated to my life.
Coming back to the States, I was left with and still have a strong conviction to lay my life down for the Kingdom, wherever God calls me to. HHK felt like a separate entity from the church that I served, but being on the field joined my heart to the cause that I once knew only from announcements and videos. God is the same. His Kingdom is the same. His plans are the same. This trip served as a turning point for my calling in the Lord, and I pray that His Kingdom will continue to be manifested in my life, in Peru, and to the ends of the Earth.
