Discipleship Training
Centre
ALUMNI STORIES
"Our waiting isn't a waste."
Recent alumni Chand Masih & Huynh Thi Quynh Giao (2023–2025), are heading to Japan in May 2026 to serve with a local church. They share their experience of waiting for God to open the way while they served the church in Chand's homeland of Pakistan.
Life after DTC
Chand (from Pakistan) and Giao (from Vietnam) felt called as a couple to serve in Japan after completing their DTC program in May 2025. They got married the day after Valedictory Service, and returned to Chand’s hometown of Faisalabad, Pakistan, in August 2025 to wait for a clearer way forward.
For eight months, they waited, with no answers. Then in March 2026, they received their three-year visas to Japan.
“Our waiting time is not a waste,” Giao said, when DTC caught up with the couple in January 2026 over Zoom, while they were still uncertain of the way ahead. They said the waiting process has taught them to lean more on God and live in the present by encouraging the people God has placed with them in Pakistan.
Wrestling with questions
In the weeks before and after they completed their program at DTC, they were focused on connecting with organisations and churches in Singapore. They had hoped to find supporters for ministry in Pakistan or Japan, but to no avail.
Chand recalled: “We would sit together and cry together for God.” They wrestled with questions like: “Why are we not able to see anything ahead of us?”; “Why is it so difficult for us to adopted by any church?”; and “What can we do here in Pakistan?”
In their doubts, God helped them to trust him through different means and experiences.
Giao said: “God always comes beside us and confirms with us that the way is already prepared. We cannot see it, but it doesn't mean that God has not prepared a way for us. We learn much more about trust—trust in his time, trust in his protection, and trust in his provision.”
Chand sensed God’s assurance that God was leading them. He was reminded to live in the present for the kingdom of God, and that while waiting for Japan, they should see Pakistan as their mission field. Recalling Apostle Paul’s ministry to encourage people, Chand thought of many people in Pakistan who were disappointed in life, whether due to their family situation or financial woes. Some pastors were also disappointed about their ministry.
He said: “It’s not difficult to find people who are discouraged in the church and outside. They're around us. God sent us here to encourage people. He is giving us the opportunity and responsibility while he fulfils our needs.”
Encouraging churches
The couple began to see how God was using them to encourage the church through their personal testimonies.
Chand shared about his journey from Pakistan to studying at DTC in Singapore and then back to Pakistan. His experience of God working in his life encouraged his listeners to trust God for their lives. Giao’s story of trusting God also touched them as they saw how God was also working in someone from a different culture.
“We are encouraging churches to continue their trust and their journey," Chand said. "It’s not the end of the world when they feel broken, when nobody comes and stands with them.”
Chand could also encourage his family. When he first returned home after DTC, he was struck by their dull faces, worn out by situations at work and at home. Then the couple had an opportunity to spend one night with a relative.
He said: “We didn’t do too much, and we didn’t bring any big gifts. She just felt our presence and our stories encouraged her.”
When he met her after one month, her face had brightened up. This incident and others like it were God’s assurances that God had a purpose for them in Pakistan.
Sharing lessons from DTC
One way in which the couple have been encouraging churches in Pakistan is to share their experience of living in a cross-cultural community at DTC and the practical lessons they had learnt.
Speaking to the church about servant leadership, Chand contrasted his idea of leadership before going to DTC with what he later observed at DTC. He used to think of leadership as ordering people around to do things for the leader. But at DTC, he saw the lecturers joining the students to serve by doing cleaning jobs and washing dishes. In conversations with others, he conveyed his conviction that ministry is not a one-man show but Christ’s body coming together to serve.
Giao was also initially shocked by the way some leaders in Pakistan are honoured. In some churches, she saw chairs placed on the stage in the sanctuary for the leader and guest speaker. For her, growing up in the church in Vietnam, no person could be elevated to that kind of honour. She was concerned that such honour could be misused against others who are also created in God’s image and have dignity.
Chand felt God was also showing him that he needed to preach more to his people, and to preach more clearly. He admitted that before DTC, he did not spend enough time to prepare a sermon well, so he could not give his hearers a clear message from Scripture. But after being trained at DTC in preaching, he was taking preaching more seriously.
“God can feed us.”
Chand recalled that when he decided to marry Giao, he shared his concerns with her about how they were going to survive financially. He did not have much savings, and he had no paid job or ministry after graduation that could give him a regular salary.
But she assured him, “If God can feed us separately, he can do for us together more than that.”
They did not have a monthly salary or financial support from churches in Pakistan, but God provided for them through their friends.
Giao said: “God never let us say that we lack anything. Even before we speak out our desires and needs, God has fulfilled them already.
"God keeps proving that he loves us so much. Just as God takes care of the flowers and the birds (Matthew 6:25–34), he also takes care of us. God reminds me that his provision is not about how much or what we can do for him because sometimes we feel we cannot do much or we can do nothing. It's more about his love and grace in our life.”
Just as God has been generous to them, God has also been teaching them to be generous toward the community. They have opened their home and their hearts to people, spending time with them, praying with them, and sharing whatever resources they had.
Chand was reminded of God’s provision during Israel’s 40 years in the wilderness. They did not produce anything at the time. “The only thing they had to do was to listen to God's voice and obey and practise the commandments.” Similarly, he thought that God was teaching them to fully trust and obey him through their actions: “He becomes our source of everything we need in ministry, our family, and our lives.”
"God cares even for
small details."
Giao experienced God’s care while adjusting to her new environment more than 4,000km away from her home in Vietnam.
Sometimes she missed Vietnamese food or her favourite Korean food, both of which were not readily available in the city’s shops and restaurants. One day, she heard a knock on the door of their rented apartment. A Korean missionary they knew had come to give her some kim chi (Korean fermented, seasoned vegetables). Recalling the gift with tears, Giao said: “I felt like God cares even for the very small details.”
Another time, Chand brought her for a ministry trip to the Kalash people in northern Pakistan near the border to Afghanistan. On the way back, they had to stop at a police station. As there were previous cases of Taliban forces kidnapping foreign visitors in the area, and as it was getting dark, the police did not allow them to continue their journey and insisted that they stayed the night at a hotel. To her surprise, the police then sent six security guards to protect them as they slept.
Giao said: “God reminded me that his protection is even greater than human protection. We could see with our eyes the six security guards, but God’s protection is more than that.”
These experiences of God taught her to trust him even more. They affirmed the words of a well-wisher at her bridal shower. A sister from DTC had wished her to be a “baby” before the Lord, not to worry too much, but just trust in him. That has been her posture, taking each step at a time and seeing God “doing for us beyond our expectations”.
A time for training
While reading the book of Exodus about God delivering Israel out of Egypt, a detail caught Giao’s eye: Instead of leading the people through a shorter way to the Promised Land, God brought them into the wilderness. God knew that on the shorter route, they may face battle with others and then lose heart.
Similarly, Giao said, God knows when they as a couple are ready for the mission field. They came to see that the delay gave them more time as a newly-married couple to strengthen their marriage bond before facing more pressures in the mission field.
Their waiting time has also been a period to sharpen their ministry skills. Since graduating and moving to Pakistan, Giao has spoken from the pulpit “more than ever before in my life”. To her surprise, she found that churches in Pakistan welcome her, a foreign woman, to preach there. She has also preached in villages, on the streets lined with homes of people from another faith.
Yet, at times, they felt tired from waiting. So, they asked for prayers for God to sustain their zeal for ministry and continue to put the burden for people in their heart. As they waited and served, they continued to read books and learn, and take regular retreats to listen to God, just as they did in DTC at the start of every term.
To be sent out...
The couple’s vision for missions work in Japan was birthed during DTC’s annual mission trip in 2024. Their host was a Japanese pastor who was a DTC alumnus. Before they left, the pastor had invited Chand to serve with his church.
Giao recalled that when they shared with churches and organisations in Singapore about serving in Japan, most of them advised the couple to return to Pakistan to serve there.
Returning to Pakistan, they shared their vision to serve in Japan with the pastor of Chand’s home church and were surprised that he affirmed it. The pastor said: “The church will send you.” In September 2025, the pastor with other leaders laid hands of them and anointed them for the missions work.
Chand sent a WhatsApp message to his friends: “Though our churches have limited resources, they gave generously—sowing $500 into our mission for Japan. One pastor said, ‘You are the first fruits of the missionary vision from Pakistan.’ We are humbled and grateful.”
As they prayed, they concluded that if they were sure of God’s leading, even if they did not have adequate support, they were willing to go to Japan as tentmakers, working to support the ministry.
But God was already opening the door to Japan for them. One day, they received news that the church in Japan would support them one-third of their budget. Then, a friend committed to give them a small sum every month, the first person to do so. Soon after, one of Giao’s relatives asked how he could pray for them. Learning of their need, the relative and his wife decided to support them another one-third of the budget, “so then at least you do not need to work and can focus on the ministry”.
Giao said: “God has already opened the way, but we must also take our step of faith. Every time we feel discouraged or disappointed, God sends us encouragement.”
On Sunday, April 18, 2026, the church held a send-off ceremony by anointing them and praying for them. Even as they are preparing for their move to Japan, they went on a mission trip to another city in Pakistan, five hour's drive away. Chand sent a WhatsApp message asking for prayers: "May we be guided, protected, and used to spread love and hope."
