"Teacher, which commandment in the law
is the greatest?" He said to him, "Love the Lord your God with all
your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest
and most important commandment. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as
yourself.
Matthew 22:36-39
Are we – all of us – up to the challenge to do what is required of us as
believers in Christ? This isn’t your
average give-a-few-bucks-on-Sunday morning, pray-every-now-and-then kind of
challenge. This is giving your everything so people can know the love of
Jesus. It may seem like a lot of
absolutes — “all,” “everything,” “whatever it takes.” But that’s what being
totally His requires: constantly going deeper and pouring ourselves out to be
His heart, hands and voice — individually, as a church, as Southern Baptists
working cooperatively to reach all the nations.
This week is the International Mission Board week of prayer for
international missionaries. Read these
stories each day and open your heart to these missionaries. Pray for them and their families as they are
accepting the challenge to do whatever it takes to take the Gospel of Christ to
the world.
Kunkel family in Paraguay and
Japan
When 24-year-old Steven Kunkel became a volunteer missionary to Japan,
his mother gave him a jigsaw puzzle piece.
“God’s still putting the puzzle of
your life together,” she said.
For Tim and Iracema Kunkel, the “puzzle” surrounding their son, Steven,
began almost 20 years ago when doctors diagnosed him with autism, a
developmental brain disorder. The Kunkels were new missionaries to Uruguay.
“Let’s just pack up and go home,” Tim
recalls thinking.
But the Kunkels stayed, serving God with their three children. Because
Uruguay offered few services for autistic people, Iracema studied special
education so she could teach Steven herself. Soon, God opened doors for sharing
the Gospel with Uruguayan families affected by autism.
Meanwhile, Steven made amazing progress. He accepted Christ and, at age
15, felt called to Japan. Later, the Kunkels transferred to Paraguay, where
many Japanese immigrants live.
“A lot of what God’s had us doing
on the missions field ... [wasn’t] so much about us as missionaries,” says
Iracema, a native Brazilian. “It was
about Steven. God was [putting the] puzzle pieces in place ... so this autistic
child could grow up to be a missionary.”
Pray many lost people in Japan
will accept Christ through Steven’s testimony.
Ask God to lead Tim and Iracema to key Paraguayan believers to train and
mobilize for missions.
He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation. Mark 16:15
