The testimonies of James and Masency Layomai will remind you that God is at work in the lives of people daily, using circumstances to turn them to Himself.
Download the James and Masency Layomai Harvest Time
Transcript
Chris Harper: Welcome to Harvest Time. My name is Chris Harper, and our host of this program is pastor Gary Walton, the lead pastor of Harvest Baptist Church. And every week, we spend these twenty five minutes together telling you the stories of our church by interviewing our members and other friends of the ministry. We have two services at Harvest every week, the first at 08:45AM, the second at 10:45AM on Sunday. We have Japanese and Korean translation during that 10:45AM service, And that’s also when we live stream at hbcguam.org, hbcguam.org.
We really hope you can join us this week for services at Harvest. Let’s begin today’s Harvest Time by welcoming Pastor Gary Walton. Hi, Pastor.
Gary Walton: Hey, hafa adai, Chris. We’re in a little bit of a miniseries in Harvest Time because it’s connected with our missions conference. We had the privilege in March to host our annual Missions Conference. The theme was Let the Nations Be Glad out of Psalm 67. And we invited several guests to come and join us, including our missionary family, several pastors and their wives from around Micronesia.
And one of those couples is with us this morning and we’re really thankful to be able to introduce them. They’re familiar to those of you that have been around Harvest, both currently and in the past, but maybe for some listening on the radio, this will be your first introduction and you’re going to enjoy hearing about the story of Pastor James and Masency Layomai that are with us in the studio and I want to welcome you guys.
James Layomai: Thank you, Pastor. It’s good
Masency Layomai: Thank to you.
James Layomai: Be here.
Gary Walton: Well, it’s great to have you guys on campus again. Every time you are here, God uses you to be a blessing to our church and our students. You are both graduates of, well, would have been HBBI back in that day, I think graduating in 2008 and 2009, right?
James Layomai: Yeah, that’s right.
Gary Walton: And you came from where? Maybe let me start with you, James, and then Masency. Tell me what island you’re from. How did you end up on Guam and how did you end up at Harvest?
James Layomai: I’m originally from Fais, but my parents moved to Ulithi, Falalop Ulithi. So, I moved there, finished my elementary school, go through high school, finish high school on Falalop Ulithi, then go to Pohnpei and attend the COM, College of Micronesia, for a year. Then go back to Yap and, actually go back to Ulithi. And while, I was there, I climbed a coconut tree. You know, being drunk, I climbed a coconut tree, and I fell down and broke my collarbone.
So that requires me to go to Main Island. And when I went to Yap, Main Island, then, my brother, who passed already, pastor Rollins Luke, He came and picked me up and start witnessing to me and telling me all about Christ and what he did for me. And at first, I I don’t really think much about it, but a man came and preached at the youth meeting at Sonder Junior excuse me, Sr. So he was preaching, he preached about hell. And that get me a lot thinking.
And I go forward, but I don’t think I really understand what it meant. So and from that time, my mind changes, about, coming to HBBI. So, in 2006, I came here with, some students from Yap, Romeo, Regina, and Lucy, who is now a staff at Harvest.
Gary Walton: Yeah. Yeah. Married too. Yeah. Pastor Clinton.
Pastor Clinton. Right.
James Layomai: And I go through Harvest for, like, HBBI student for three years. And I go through the motion, go to chapel, go to church, do all these things, but it’s just work to me. But really my life, I I come to know Christ my last year, and it’s even a mission conference. That’s the cool thing about it. Yeah.
It’s a Sunday school at a mission conference. And I tried to think of his first name. I just know his last name, Dr. Anderson.
He came, was in the cafeteria and he preached.
Gary Walton: Gary Anderson.
James Layomai: Gary Anderson. He was. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
So he he’s here on so in Corinthians, it says before they give their gifts, they give themselves first. Pastor Mark Zimmer has already asked me to graduate, get married, and go back and serve in the church at Yap Baptist. So, you know, hearing that message from dr. Anderson at like, during Sunday school, I battled with that, go through the service, and that God keep using that thing to conflict and help me really think about it. And I go down to the dorm. It was at night.
And, you know, when you cannot sleep because something is bothering you, it’s like you turn on one side, turn on the other side.
Gary Walton: I know that feeling.
James Layomai: Yeah. So all the way to 11:40 midnight. So from maybe nine ish in the morning till 11:40 midnight, and then I realized that I cannot win the battle. So I go on my knees and ask Christ to save me. So that’s and then my life has been it’s not been the same ever since as God has been working a little by little in my life and graduated in May, get married two days after, then we moved back to Yap and helping the church for five years.
Gary Walton: Okay. I want to pick up that story in just a minute. I want to ask Masency where she grew up and her story. Real quick, I think I’ve told you this before, James, but Dr. Anderson, I have a connection with.
I’ve known him for a long time, and in fact, he’s a mentor of mine. I speak on the phone with him just about every month. And he counsels me, encourages me, prays for me. And when you mentioned your testimony over in HBBC the other day, I sent him a note and reminded him of he would never remember, but he remembers when he was here preaching that time, so that connection is ongoing. He’s had an influence on my life as well, and I’m thankful for that.
James Layomai: I’m really grateful for his life.
Gary Walton: Yeah, yeah, me too. Masency, what about you? You did not grow up on Guam, you grew up in Chuuk, right? Tell us about growing up and how you came to know Jesus and then came to Guam.
Masency Layomai: I grew up in a Catholic church and my parents, they don’t don’t know God and they’re not even faithful to go to Catholic church. Was growing up in a family that doesn’t know God. My father is just very alcoholic and he usually hurt my mom. And there is just a lot that I’ve been through in my life. And when I was a teenager, I just come to a point that I just don’t know the purpose of my life being here here on earth.
So I was thinking that I look to my left side, to my right side, it just what I’m gonna see? It’s just so hard.
Gary Walton: Yeah.
Masency Layomai: Yeah. I just don’t know the purpose of life. So thinking about that, I’m just like just hopeless. I just wanna I just I just even imagine myself in the future looking at my aunties. They have kids.
They don’t have husband. They just went through a lot, so I just thinking that, what why am I here? I don’t wanna go through those things that my families went through. And imagining me being growing up and with the kind of life I just wanna end my life. And at the same time, I know that there is hell and there is heaven.
And somehow I know that in my mind. And I know that if I’m going to do something to my life, I know that I’m going to hell for sure.
Gary Walton: Yeah.
Masency Layomai: So what I did is I’m just gonna go to the church to ask the statue or whatever in the Catholic church that I I ask just ask God if if I am myself or whatever I would do do myself that he could if I did that because I just don’t know the meaning of my life, what whatever I’m gonna do with my life. So you can somehow I’m just going there to ask if you can save me. I don’t wanna go to hell. Yeah. So on my way to the Catholic church, there is a it’s the Catholic church is more farther than the Baptist church.
And I went on my way to the Catholic church, It it was raining. So I I ran up to the Baptist church because I don’t wanna get wet. So as I I just ran up there just to stand to get out from the rain. And while I’m standing under, not even inside, just under that porch or where I cannot get the rain from. And I heard about this it’s a former HBBI that was preaching at that moment.
So it was just like those thing that I’m facing, I was, like hearing from inside the church. And he was like he’s like, if you don’t know the purpose of something like that, I don’t really remember the specific things that he say, but I know God really somehow he uses that preacher to just help me to understand that there is hope in Jesus.
Gary Walton: Amen. Macency.
Masency Layomai: If you accepted Him into your life, will have hope. And he also mentioned that Jesus is the only way to heaven and is the truth, is the life, is the light. So I I was like, I’m going there just to ask whatever it’s there, like, in the Catholic church just to because I’m thinking that I’m going to do something to my to suicide, something like that. And that’s when that really get my attention and it’s I wanna go there. I wanna go there to just listen more to what that preacher was talking about.
And that’s when I the next Sunday, I went back and they’re like, oh, come inside. So that’s how I start attending the Gresho Baptist Church in Weichap. And that’s when I really I they were preaching about God and they were just I would say that the things that I’m longing for, I hear it at that church. And I think during my sophomore year or junior year in high school, I there is also a revival at that church. I just don’t know the name of that preacher that came and preached about hell and heaven.
And I I believe in my heart because I I meant that I asked Jesus to forgive me from my sin. And I asked him to come into my heart and be my personal Lord and Savior.
Gary Walton: Man, every part of your testimony, Masency, is so powerful. I wonder about how many people might be listening on the radio or hearing this podcast right now and what you described is part of their story. They look to their right, they look to their left, and they don’t see any hope. And the people around them, the older than them, it just feels like, you know, life is very hard and very difficult. That’s a powerful story.
I know God’s gonna use that to connect with somebody maybe listening right now. And but then beyond that, that God didn’t leave you there. In that very moment, on your way to try to find answers, God brought you by that church. And it makes me think, and James, this is a reminder to me, it makes me think, what if that HBBI graduate, what if he didn’t go back to Chuuk? What what if he wasn’t there, you know, preaching that message during the time?
What if he got distracted and he stayed in Guam or he went someplace else? How critical it was that there was a you know, the Bible talks about how can they hear without a preacher. And there’s this importance of the Gospel proclamation of somebody being there, and that man said yes, and he was there in that time. And God did all of this, and he brought you by that place and caused that rain to come at the right time. All of that’s such a beautiful picture of God’s grace and God’s providence and leading in your life.
And then the truth of the Scriptures, you know, opening up your eyes and your heart is really great. You ended up coming to Harvest, right, after that?
Masency Layomai: Yes. And that’s when the Schallhorn introduced me to Harvest HBBI, so I came and that’s when the Lord just start working in my life through the preaching, the teaching of the Word, and that’s when He also burdened my heart to go and serve him.
Gary Walton: Amen. Amen. I want to ask you about that here in a minute. Pastor James, how did God lead you from your time at HBBI, Harvest Baptist Bible Institute, to back to Yap. You said you served there for a while as assistant pastor and then and then to Ulythi to you and your family together.
James Layomai: Yeah. My freshman year here, I went back for, I was at summer, and, I helped at the Baptist Church in the youth camp even though I’m not safe. But I think that time, God has prepared my heart to come for, to go back in the field and serve. Pastor Michael Saunders
Gary Walton: Mhmm.
James Layomai: I came with a bunch of HCA students and do the camp there with pastor Mark and pastor Roland. And I think that’s where God has start burdening my heart to go back. And so while I was here as a student, like I say for the first that, he said that before they give their gifts, before they give their gifts, they give themselves first.
Gary Walton: Right.
James Layomai: And God used that first in many way. So not only to get me on my knees and ask him to save me, but to really burden my heart. And, Romans ten one, and I come across this while, doing my devotions, says Paul’s burden and his desire is that the Israelite might be saved. And God really used that first to burden my heart about my people. And me growing up in Ulithi, those are my people.
I’m familiar with familiar with the culture. And I think that time from, that time I read that and we’re start my wife and I start getting to know each other. Mhmm. And that time we were praying, God, what do you want us to do? What will you have us to do after we graduate?
So, she wants to go back to Chuuk. I wanna go back to, Yap and help out. But as we pray, I think God really, put a peace in our heart that this is what I want you to do.
Gary Walton: Yeah. It wasn’t just your choice. This was God leading.
James Layomai: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Each one of us has our desire.
Gary Walton: Of course.
James Layomai: Yeah. And we pray, and that’s why I’m really grateful for her because in that process of talking, we pray. Mhmm. We pray together, and she pray in her dorm. She pray a lot in her dorm, and I pray a lot in my dorm.
Gary Walton: Amen. And then when we get married, God just gave us that, you know, direction to go back to Yap. And while in Yap, serving, in Yap with pastor Roland and when pastor Mark came back from his furlough, serving with him for a few years, and God really put it in our heart to go go out and, reach out in Ulithi. Mhmm. And, I talked to pastor Mark about it.
James Layomai: We pray about it. And they help us, the transition to move from Yap to Ulithi. So it was a good transition because that, you know, when you have the blessing of your pastor and the blessing of the church, then you know that God is directing that. Yeah. Yeah.
And I’m really grateful for his direction.
Gary Walton: God’s direction isn’t always easy. I’ve heard you both talk about this before, Masency. The transition for you particularly was challenging and continues to be because of culture. Right?
Masency Layomai: Mmm
Gary Walton: Although Pastor James is going back to Ulithi, which he’s familiar with, there’s some cultural challenges for you. Can you tell us about that and maybe about how God helped you with that and is helping you?
Masency Layomai: At first that God has been really helped me in Psalms 119:105, Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. And that verse, I’m just so grateful our God used that verse in my life because He used that verse to help me just to trust Him each day in each step that I take in my life, even though He will not show me the things that I I face now at the Falalop. God is just using that verse to trust me with even the culture, the things that I don’t know that I have to just everyday in my life wake up and Lord, here am I. Whatever you want me to do, even though I don’t know their language, I don’t know how to do their work, but just here am I. And just give me the willing heart and whatever you want me to do, just help me to be obedient to your calling.
Gary Walton: So encouraging, Masency. Yeah. Thank you. Pastor James, God is building his church there, one at a time slowly. Tell tell us about that.
How how is God blessing the the growth of the body of Christ in Ulythi?
James Layomai: So, when we moved there, we stayed with, my cousin. And then we have a a little misunderstanding, I would call it. And we get up in the middle of the night, and I took my kids, and we walked to where I used to stay before I I came to HBBI
And when we were walking, a lady, the chief’s wife, she was sitting at her porch and look out, and here am I carrying my kids in the middle of the night. And so he as she talked to the husband, the husband’s name is chief Philip. He’s staying on island, actually. Mhmm. So next day, they called me over to their house, and they told me, James, we wanna give you a piece of land to stay on.
And literally, what he the and I’m gonna quote what he’s saying. He say that you can do whatever you need to do on that land, and nobody will know. So, and that’s how God lead us to where we at now.
Gary Walton: Wow. It’s a great spot.
James Layomai: The more I think about it, where we stay before is like the end of the island where there’s not much people interacting. But where we stay now, it’s It’s
Gary Walton: in middle.
James Layomai: Yeah. It’s in the middle. You know? And I I think God really direct us to that place.
Gary Walton: And Yeah.
James Layomai: So we stayed there. We built our local house, and this pastor, Mark, helped us, provide the lumber and all these things. So we built our local house. And as soon as we finished building local house, then 2015. 03/31/2015, and it’s a vivid picture to me.
So that’s when Typhoon Mesack hit. And literally, it’s like tropical an atomic bomb on the island. Yeah. So our beautiful house that just finished, all gone.
Gary Walton: All gone.
James Layomai: So and I already start doing a Bible oh, no. Right after, when we were, in the typhoon shelter during the typhoon, like, the people were start saying, hey. Pray. Come on. Let’s pray.
Because when you don’t know where to look, you cannot look to the left. You cannot look to the right. There is only one place to look, and that is to look up. So and all the people who seems not open to us, they start telling us, hey. You guys have to pray.
Come on. Because, you know, the wind is blowing so hard. The rain our typhoon shelter is literally like flooding. Mhmm. And here we are holding our little kids and, like, watering the typhoon shelter.
So we pray, and it storm all the way in the morning. And when everything settled down, then actually, this boy oh, now I have to mention his name because he came from faith and helped me build this. Elijah. He’s a fifth year.
Gary Walton: Oh, Elijah.
James Layomai: Yeah. Elijah, my nephew Aaron, and another boy, came from Faiz. I actually called them and paid for their tickets, so they came and helped me build this like a teeny weeny hut that just for me And to put my family when I put my family there, then God provided materials to extend it out. And that’s how the Bible study started. Mhmm.
It’s actually there’s a lady from Faith School who’s been going to pastor Roland’s church. At that time, she was staying, in Unity. So she come to our bible study. Then another lady from Falalop Ulithi came. And when she came, I was preaching on Romans five eight.
And I really believe in my heart that she accepted Christ then. Wow. And then when she, accepted Christ, she start witnessing to her family to come, but her family didn’t come. And then a few few weeks later, right, the husband started coming with her. But, you know, the husband was like, I’m just gonna go see what and then God called her to be with the Lord.
Mhmm. And if there is a low point in your life, that’s a low point in our life. Yeah. Because we’ve been praying for somebody to get saved from that island, and God save her and take her away. If there’s something to be bitter about, I was like, man, God, what are you doing?
I don’t understand. But you know what? From her life, God taking her, her family, the people that she’s been talking to, they start coming. And now the husband, been attending actually, the husband is like the one leading our church now that I’m away. Amen.
So his name is Basiluz.
Gary Walton: Yes.
James Layomai: And, what’s that? Her sister, Skylin, and I I saw that picture in church, Skylin and Ronnie’s family. Yeah. So Skylin and her family came. Her mother-in-law, Nathi, and her kids come.
So from that one life, God uses to bring a lot of people. The one life that I almost, like, really bitter and I complained so much to God. God, why? But he has his purpose that I understand. Amen.
Gary Walton: Amen. My heart’s full just listening and I’ve been on Ulithi twice now and each time my heart is burdened. I’m thankful for you guys, your willingness to serve there, the way that God has prepared you for it, and we just we believe that God is building his church there just one person at a time. And we’re praying doing and everything that we can to come alongside. We wanna encourage you.
Thank you guys for being here with us for this missions conference. Your presence is just brings life to our our Bible College and our church. You are all you are family here, and we’re, we’re thankful for your ministry. So thanks for sharing with us today. Really, your testimonies are just a powerful work of God, praying that God would use you powerfully in the years to come.
James Layomai: Thank you very much.
Masency Layomai: Thank you.
Chris Harper: And thank you for listening to Harvest Time. Of course, at this point in the program, we always wanna personally invite you to services at Harvest Baptist Church. On Sunday, we have our first service at 08:45, second service at 10:45. We have Japanese and Korean translation during the 10:45AM service. That’s also the service we bring you live here on 88.1 FM and khmg.org.
We hope to see you this Sunday. Thanks again for listening to Harvest Time.