Inside Story for Friday 26th of December 2025
Just as the 1996 Thirteenth Sabbath Offering is still being felt across the Southern Asia-Pacific Division and beyond through the work of the 1000 Missionary Movement, this quarter’s Thirteenth Sabbath Offering can, with God’s blessing, also have a long-lasting impact. Thank you for your generous offering this Sabbath.
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Kim Sun, a missionary from South Korea, shared 15 stories of God’s love with the residents of a remote town in the Philippines for three months.
The townspeople were amazed to learn that God created everything in the world for them. They marveled at God’s love in the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. Their hearts were touched to realize that Jesus died on the cross for them. After three months, many said, “We understand that God loves us. But how can we respond? How do we love God?”
“It’s so true,” Sun thought in amazement. “When we know someone loves us, we want to show the love in return.” It was time to dig deeper into the Bible.
For the next three months, he taught about the seventh-day Sabbath, clean and unclean food, tithe and offerings, and other Seventh-day Adventist fundamental beliefs. Many townspeople accepted what they learned. They wanted to know how to love God, and the doctrines showed the way.
Sun served as a missionary for 10 months: offering three months of labor, free of charge, three months of stories about God’s love, and three months of digging deeper into the Bible. That left one month to say goodbye. Sun spent the last month going door-to-door, inviting people to follow Jesus. “I’m leaving soon,” he said. “I would like you to join my church. I’ve been so blessed, and I’d like you to be blessed, too.” Many townspeople accepted his invitation.
Ellen White says, “Christ’s method alone will give true success in reaching the people. The Savior mingled with men as one who desired their good. He showed sympathy for them, ministered to their needs, and won their confidence. Then He bade them, ‘Follow Me’ ” (The Ministry of Healing, p. 143). For ten months, Sun practiced Christ’s method: mingling with people, desiring their good, showing sympathy, ministering to their needs, and winning their confidence; then he invited them to follow Jesus.
Today, Sun is a full-time missionary. He works as associate director of the 1000 Missionary Movement, an organization that is part of the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s Southern Asia-Pacific Division. He trains hundreds of missionaries every year at its headquarters, built with the help of a 1996 Thirteenth Sabbath Offering, in Silang, Philippines. “Being a missionary is the highest calling,” he said. “Missionaries don’t only give Bible studies. We especially need to show Jesus in our lives.”
