It’s Still About Him: The Light to Our Path

By Sherry L. Schoening

Years ago, while on a prayer journey visiting a Buddhist country, the Lord gave the author a vision. The vision showed darkness with a stranglehold on the Earth, choking the life out of it. That was not God's heart for the world and it opened the beginning of a new journey and chapter in her life. What has unfolded as she has sought to seek Him and to be obedient, has challenged her, strenghtened her, inspired her and changed her.

Every journey God allows her to go on, opens another part of His heart for the world as she prays for strongholds to be broken and lives set free and changed by the transformational power of Jesus Christ. She has been called to share these stories to help encourage and mobilize God's people to step into His amazing story, the only story worth being a part of, because it is the only one that will matter in the end, because "It's Still About Him!"

He has called you, are you listening? Wherever He has you, He has plans to use you. He is just waiting for us to be available and obedient.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Mar 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664222816

Sherry L. Schoening

In a book titled “It’s Still About Him,” it seems counter-intuitive to write much about the author. The author is of no real consequence; she lives in a small rural community in north central Indiana. She and her loving and supportive husband of thirty-six years are on the home stretch of raising their six children. She is an ordinary woman, committed to the amazing savior, Jesus Christ. She desires to be a blessing and to minister each day in a broken and needy world. She serves as a physical therapist, as a wife, mother, friend, and as an intercessor. What she hopes and prays is that inter-woven in her story, you will see the living God who is not only real, but is calling people to make themselves available to be used; ordinary people, people like her. She was blessed to share what God has done in her life in the book “It’s About Him: Where Listening Leads,” and is excited to share the continued journey in this book.

Book preview

One

MYANMAR AND KOREA

2017: THE CALL

IT WAS LATE spring or early summer when I began hearing Myanmar when I would pray for the world, and I soon realized that this was the next place I was being called to travel to and pray for. Knowing only a little about Myanmar, I knew that it previously was called Burma and located somewhere near Bangladesh and Thailand. I expected it was a Buddhist or Hindu nation.

I began doing research and praying more about this potential destination. The Lord told me to pray about Dagon. When I pulled up a map, I saw three places I felt I would be called to: Yangon (previously Rangoon), Mandalay, and Bagan (previously Pagan), but I did not see Dagon. As I researched Myanmar history, I discovered that the nation was tribal at its foundation, a fact that had allowed the Mongols and British to conquer it. They decided to put their tribal differences aside long enough to win back their autonomy from Britain.

The first kingdom began in Bagan in 1044; the last kingdom was in Mandalay. The Lord had been stressing His kingdom come, so I felt that was why those two cities were places I needed to go to pray, claiming Christ’s kingdom and authority. I was a little confused as to the significance of Yangon until I typed in a search for Myanmar’s oldest Buddhist temple and saw the world’s oldest pagoda, Schwedagon. Yep, that would be why I was going to Yangon.

On July 9, I was praying for additional confirmation about this potential trip. My fleece involved the Lord helping me figure out what language I needed to be learning about, to let me know who was to go with me, to figure out how I was going to pay for it, and to let me know when. It was no small list of questions to have answered.

The next day, I was working with a patient, a fellow Christian, and we were discussing a vision I was given to pray about related to another continent. The vision involved a black snake. The patient said it reminded her of a group in Fort Wayne she had worked with; several of the men had black snake tattoos on their lower legs. When she had asked them why, they told her it was to scare other snakes as they ran through the tall grass, but she was having trouble remembering what their nationality was.

By the end of our session, the nationality of the refugee people group came to her. They were Burmese. They were from Burma, now known as Myanmar. Burmese was the language I needed to be learning. Now looking back, it seems so obvious, yet at the time my brain was not making the connection.

After her session, I returned to my desk and began checking emails. I saw it, the fourth email down, Arabic, Burmese, and Spanish Conversations. My small rural hospital is a part of a regional hospital that periodically offers classes to help with patient care. I had not seen such an email in a long time but had to laugh that this email showed up minutes after I figured out what language I needed to investigate. My next thought was, Would I be able to make it to the Burmese class? as the drive time to and from Fort Wayne make it a half-day excursion.

As if that were not enough confirmation for me, when I clicked on the Burmese class, it was being offered in my town, Wabash, in nine days. It makes sense to offer the class in Fort Wayne, where there is a large group of refugees, but at that time, the population of Burmese in Wabash was zero, and it is an hour away from Fort Wayne. Why would they offer this class in Wabash? The answer: because I needed it and God was confirming I was to go to Myanmar. He is amazing, and He is a God of details. Question one was answered.

Question two: who was to go with me? As I had prayed for confirmation, the Lord had taken me on a journey that led me to understand that whoever was to go with me already knew. I just needed to find the person. That sounded simple … not.

The next day, I went to check on my friend, Mary, who had broken her ankle. When I had visited her a few weeks before, she had asked to read the book I had written because she could not put any weight on her ankle for six weeks and she was going stir-crazy. I had taken the manuscript to her, and she had started reading my book. She had asked if I knew where my next adventure was going to take me, and I had told her that I felt it was Myanmar.

On this second visit, she asked if I had gotten any further confirmation about Myanmar, and I shared the story of asking what language I needed to start learning and then finding this Burmese class in Wabash in eight days. She was surprised also. I told her that my next obstacle was to find out who was supposed to go with me.

She had a strange expression on her face, so I asked if she were the one, and she responded that she believed she was. When she had finished the book, the last page had spoken of being called to the forgotten people, so she did a Google search on forgotten people, and Myanmar was the first thing to show up. She had also gotten her passport renewed over a year before because she knew she was going to be called to go on a trip with me.

Within two days, I not only knew the language I was supposed to work on, but also who was supposed to go with me. Wow, God is so amazing! Only a few days later, a dear friend told me she felt called to underwrite my trip. I had always seen God provide through our finances miraculously but was absolutely humbled by my friend’s generosity. The last question to be answered was when, and as I checked dates, I felt like it was to be soon, like October or November.

As I continued to pray about the trip, it popped into my head that we should stop over in South Korea and visit Mary’s brother, who had lived there for years and whom she had never gone to see. If we traveled west, Seoul was the transfer hub. When I did a search going through Seoul, the ticket price was $1,280. I told the Lord I did not feel we could afford more than that, and I needed Him to hold that price.

We began talking about possible dates, but Mary was struggling. She had never traveled abroad, she was claustrophobic, and her husband did not want her to go. She also had a nagging fear she would not be coming back after the trip, typical tactics of the enemy to stop the movement of God. Bringing in fear and doubt are so Satan’s handiwork. This was the beginning of several weeks of turmoil and stress about going, a roller coaster.

As I prayed, the Lord told me He had this. So with all the times He has proven His faithfulness, I trusted Him and kept moving forward, praying that God would change her husband’s heart and mind about going. Neither of us wanted her to go against her husband’s wishes.

A few days before the Burmese class, I checked the registration. I was the only one who had enrolled to go, so I was concerned that they would cancel it. Mary signed up a day or so before, so then there were two of us. The day of the class, a couple of out-of-town people showed up, and one of our coworkers joined us after we told him we were heading into the class. The planned presenter cancelled at the last minute, and they were able to find a backup, Minn.

Minn shared that this was her first time doing this class. She asked why we were taking the class, and I responded that I felt called to go to Myanmar and hoped to learn a few words of Burmese to help. At the end of the class, we left learning about the culture and a few critical words. Minn told us she would be happy to meet with us a few times before we left to work with us, so we exchanged contact information.

Both Mary and her husband continued to struggle. I prayed for God to help confirm if Mary were to go, to help ease their fears. Then God started revealing His involvement in the details. Mary called and said that one of her favorite actors was John Corbett. She told me that he had a new movie coming out. She made it a practice to keep up with what he was doing and heard an interview with him saying that he had waited for such a role as this movie, All Saints. She had told her husband that she wanted to go, and he agreed. She then saw another trailer that gave more details about the movie: the setting was from a real story where a small church was dying and denomination leadership had sent a new pastor (John Corbett) to go and close the church, which only had a handful of members remaining. Once he arrives and meets the members, he has a conversation with God and feels he is meant to try to save the church, not close it. He takes flyers around town inviting people to come, and the next Sunday a group of four people enter and are seated at the back of the church. They are Burmese refugees who cannot find work; their families are starving and struggling. So it ends up that helping these refugees saves the church.

Mary told me it was being released August 25 and they would be going. My husband and I wanted to go also, but we would not be available that weekend, but I came across a pre-release showing twenty minutes away on August 24, so we planned to go then.

Meanwhile, Mary had been able to speak with her brother about a possible visit. His initial response was very positive, and he was excited that we might come. Then he also got fearful about it. The articles and stories of unrest in North Korea and Myanmar started increasing, helping fuel the fear that had a stronghold.

Eric and I went to the movie on August 24, and Mary and her husband showed up. They saw us and sat with us. Mary said she missed a call from her brother that afternoon and told us that he never called during the week. It would have been a very bad hour for him to call, so she was concerned something bad had happened. She said she was leaving her phone on during the movie and would have to step out if he called. He did, and she stepped out. When she came back, she was smiling and said that all was well but she had a story to tell us when the movie was over.

After the movie, she went on to tell us why her brother was so anxious to speak to her. Mary’s nephew planned to come to America after his high school graduation and join the U.S. Air Force. Her brother wanted to make connections with someone in America to help with his son’s transition to America and the air force. The plan was to have him come and spend some time with Mary and her family prior to his enlistment. He had made a call that day from South Korea and had reached an air force recruiter in Fort Wayne.

During their conversation, they discovered that the recruiter was from Wabash, as was Mary’s brother. He asked the recruiter whom he was related to in Wabash, and the recruiter said he doubted he would know any of his relatives. After being pressed to give a name, he gave mine. Shocked, Mary’s brother told him he knew me and actually went to high school with me. This recruiter is my cousin’s son. I have literally seen him only a handful of times in the last several years, actually in his entire life. All of his family lives in or near Wabash, but the name he came up with was mine, which is not a coincidence. God is a God of details.

Now what did it take for that to all happen? Mary and her husband came to the movie at the same day, location, and time as we did. She missed a call from her brother at 3:00 that very afternoon, which caused her to leave her phone on during the movie. She was sitting next to me at the movies, which had never happened before. Her brother called from South Korea to tell her he had spoken to someone from his hometown who was related to me. She asked her husband if he were starting to get it. He acknowledged that something was going on. The God of the universe is willing to step into our lives and orchestrate amazing things just to get our attention. Why? Because He loves us and wants us to be involved in His story!

It was strange how in a small, rural Midwest town we have little to no cultural diversity, yet suddenly everything was coming up Myanmar and Burmese. Part of this could be it was on our minds, so it stood out, but I don’t think it was that simple. Just a couple days after seeing the movie, Mary and her husband were moving a mattress in the bed of their truck through the country roads to their daughter’s when it blew out. They were struggling to get it back in the truck because Mary still had a broken ankle she was not supposed to be up on when a young man stopped and offered to help. He was from a town about thirty miles away.

In this brief interaction, the one thing he randomly started talking about was how blessed he had been to find a group of Burmese refugees in his community that he had been working with. Mary and her husband just had to look at each other. At times God can be relentless to help us understand His heart.

Now I would like to say everything was smooth sailing after that, but easy is not memorable. She came into my office with a stack of articles about the unrest in Myanmar, saying things were getting worse there. She did not think God would want us to go with things getting more dangerous. My perspective was different. I told her things getting worse did not surprise God, that He knew this before He called us to go, which might be the very reason we were to go.

During this same time, I had met with Minn to learn more about the culture and language, a meeting that Mary was originally planning on being a part of. What a blessing to have the opportunity to learn firsthand of some of the struggles and history of this nation. Seeing how God was bringing things together was so exciting for me. Mary’s experience at this point was much different. She, her husband, and then her brother became increasingly concerned about our safety, being two Caucasian women traveling alone.

We then met with Minn again and had a chance to meet her sister from Yangon, who said she would meet us when we arrived to get us to our hotel and help us find safe transportation. There was also a friend of mine who works for a teaching organization who had just returned from doing some trainings in Myanmar this summer, so I reached out to him and his connections to see if anyone might be available during our time in Myanmar to meet with us and pray. So it was looking like we would have some contacts in Myanmar, which made everyone feel a little better.

She then confided that she had this fear she would not be coming back from this trip, and initially this scared her. But all of a sudden, she had peace, a feeling that if she didn’t come back, it would be okay. I told her that there was no way to know for sure if we would return or not, but I believed that what had really transpired was her decision to go. Even if she died there, it was really her surrender of everything, including her life to Christ and His sovereignty, which released the stronghold of fear Satan was using against her. The enemy was manipulating her with fear, but without the fear of death to manipulate, she was free to experience God’s peace.

One of her unspoken concerns was expense, yet God knew that. I had someone come to my office and tell me they felt led to pay for Mary’s plane ticket for the trip. They asked how much it would be. I told them $1,280, so they sent me a check for $1,280.

We continued to have discussions about when, and I had checked ticket prices a couple times, one in which there was still one option for $1,280. The next price was $4,500 each for the end of October through the first of November. That still seemed like the time we were to go, but Mary did not feel any sense of urgency and wanted to wait six months to a year to go. Then Mary and her husband were away on a short vacation, and on a Thursday night at 10:30, she texted me, saying that she did not sense any urgency and did not feel she could go that soon. She was backing out. She was not going to go.

Then I broke. I sat in my prayer chair and sobbed. Lord, how could you take us this far and have it end like this? I told Him I still felt we were to go in October, and at that point if I had to go alone, I would do so. Then that still, small voice said, I’ve got this. I admit I doubted at that moment.

Then at 7:24 a.m., I got another text. God awoke me with a dream/vision at 2:29, and I cannot go into details in a text, but I get the urgency. Book the flights. I am going.

Did I not tell you He had it? Oh no, He told me. Later that day, I booked the flights, and over two months after I asked the Lord to hold the price at $1,280, the price was $1,280, yet another miracle. Later Mary shared that she went to bed praying for God to help her understand my sense of urgency if there were one. She awoke at 2:29 from a dream that she needed to warn a family member about something, but she knew she did not want to call in the middle of the night.

So she wanted to wait until 7:00, their normal waking time. She said the minutes and hours drug on with her not being able to sleep, and she caught herself saying to the Lord, I hate having to wait when I feel this sense of urgency. As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she realized God had answered her prayer.

We started finalizing plans as I prayed about which hotels, flights in country, and modes of transportation within the cities. Things were coming together. We decided to take a boat rather than a bus from Mandalay to Bagan. A nine-hour boat ride seemed better than a six-hour bus ride on not great roads.

Shortly after discovering the boat option, I had a dream, and initially I thought it