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Interserve Partners in Southeast Asia share their experiences of receiving hospitality while riding with a team of dirt motorbike riders across the country where they serve.
We have received welcome and hospitality from so many local people during our years living here in Southeast Asia. As part of our ministry, my husband and others ride regularly together along the borders and through remote areas of the country where we serve.
Divine Encounters
Every two to three months the group set off on a new trip with a prayerful posture, ready and expectant to meet and break bread. They receive hospitality where a welcome is given and love to share the motivating and compelling grace of Jesus that they themselves have received. As they ride, they ask to be directed by God’s Spirit, seeking divine encounters with people He has appointed for them to meet. These prayer rides seek to bring peace, joy and hope into areas and communities facing great challenges, practically and spiritually. The team long to plant seeds of faith that will take root, grow strong and be fruitful for God’s kingdom.
Experiencing generous hospitality
I have great joy whenever I’m able to join these prayer rides too. Last Autumn, we rode to the Northern provinces, connecting with believers and other friends who are journeying closer to Jesus. We arrived at one place shortly before lunchtime, and were welcomed and greeted with freshly baked banana bread and plentiful cool water. When we rode into the yard of another home, the father of the family quickly ran to his motorbike and soon after returned with cold drinks for us. He invited us to sit and rest with them, before taking us to visit and pray for another family nearby.
In January the team rode to the Western provinces. Their route included a visit to a family of believers. The wife of the family was most put out that she had been denied a chance to shower hospitality on the team. She scolded them for not letting her know ahead of time that they would come by, and reminded them several times to give her a heads up next time so that she could have food ready!
Sometimes, however, hospitality can be difficult to swallow and requires grace to receive. My husband tells me of the time where he was part of a new church blessing ceremony in a distant Eastern province among a minority ethnic tribal group. After the service, the celebratory meal was prepared. Enjoying all types of food, he was ready to dig in, when the strange aroma and colour of the dish made him pause. However he was encouraged by those around him and of course did not want to offend. Despite his own Southeast Asian heritage, he found the local delicacy of unwashed cooked pig’s intestines particularly difficult to stomach!
Hospitality: a humbling gift
However it is given, it is always humbling and a very beautiful gift to receive the love that is shown in the generous hospitality of others. Even more so knowing that those who host us so well and bestow meals and refreshments on us, often have very little materially themselves. Yet they are overwhelmingly rich in generosity and love.