Totally Surrounded

This is an autobiographical story of a young woman who took the Gospel to the remote jungles of the Philippines. The early years of her life were spent in fear and anger because her family was filled with such pain and brokenness. It would have been so easy for Christina Di Stefano to allow those early years to define her. But the Lord reached her hardened heart through the continued work and words of a young lady who befriended her. And when Christina gave her life to the Lord, she gave it all to Him. She was in Bible College when she knew He was going to use her in the Philippines. 

What started as a two to four week mission trip turned into six years spent in remote jungle villages as the only "foreigner" many of these people had or ever would see. And by the time she left, the Lord had used her to:

• establish trust among the native people
• witness in every one of the villages around her "base"
• disciple every new convert in 4 levels of growth
• establish weekly Bible studies in each village
• establish at least one village church
• train leaders through a discipleship program so they could oversee ministries
• establish first-aid stations and train someone to manage them
• establish an educational program for young children so they learned to read and write
• establish trained workers to help people in the marketplace understand how to maximize the nutritional values for the villagers with their native foods
• and to train indigenous workers to run every ministry so that, if she ever had to leave suddenly, the labor would not die with her departure

And she did have to leave suddenly! She had not realized it, but she was operating in the very center of an area of the jungle controlled by the New People's Army, a guerrilla army who often killed "foreigners".  The Lord sent a group of men in, she thought to decide how best to help in the work. And while that was part of their mission, the other part was to extract her safely. The very next morning! Of course, she was in shock, but she knew this was the Lord's direction and so she obeyed. When she came out of the jungle, she was 24 years old!

Readjustment to the States was difficult. She felt restless and out of place. She kept looking for opportunities to return to the mission field, but none of the doors opened. The Lord was transitioning her into a new season and a new mission. She now has a family and they are helping to support a Bible college and orphanage in the Philippines. 

I love one of the quotes from her journal:  "Sacrifice to make my dreams come true is not a negative, but a positive. It allows me to clear the clutter in my life that would stand in my way of being and doing what is God's best for my life."

And I will end with a quote she included from her favorite missionary author,Elisabeth Elliot, wife of Jim Elliot:

"The willingness to be and to have just what God wants us to be and to have, nothing more, and nothing else, would set our hearts at rest, and we would discover the simpler the life, the greater the peace."



This is my #3 out of 52 books I hope to read this year in the 52 in 52 Challenge.