Fearless

Fear. The word itself has power. Fear is a great enemy, and it prevents many of us from living out our potential and calling in life. Punkin Durio at one time grappled with fear as many of us do, yet she overcame it in a most amazing way. This is her story.

Punkin was a hard worker and a good friend, but her success for the Kingdom cannot be explained by any natural trait she may have possessed. In fact, it is best explained by the trait she did not possess--fear. When God called Punkin, He equipped her in a way that is hard to comprehend: He took away her fear.

More than thirty years ago, Punkin received a call to take the gospel to every nation on earth. For three decades, she went about answering that call. At the time of this writing, Kashi Samaddar, a Dubai-based businessman (born in Calcutta, India) has travelled to 218 countries, setting the world record for the most countries visited. He is also the first person to visit all 194 sovereign states with his mission of travel, tourism, and peace. With absolutely no fanfare, Punkin has surpassed those numbers, having visited 230 countries. She is now the most traveled missionary, as well as one of the most traveled people, in the history of the world. And up to this moment, her story has never been told.

Punkin's story is about the character of a creative God who will sometimes use the unexpected to fulfill His promise to the world. Her story is also about the heart of mankind. Perhaps like no one before, Punkin could report through personal experience that when you get past culture and language, all human beings are basically the same. They all show the faded signs that they were created by the Almighty, stamped with His likeness, even if they don’t personally acknowledge or cultivate it.

If God has secret agents on this earth, Punkin was in that corps. To the natural eye, she would quickly be lost in a crowd. However it seems she was noticed by all who needed to see her. Those who didn’t have that need let her pass by unseen. By any worldly measure, Punkin should long since have been captured and jailed—or worse. She was “wanted”—dead or alive—in an Asian country, sought in the Middle East, and on watch lists that no one wants to be on. Yet throughout these many years, God hid her in His cloak.

This book will attempt to show in a concrete way how God can use anyone who will answer His call. Nothing more is needed; He will provide everything else. That’s how it worked with Punkin, and God—as the Scriptures point out in Acts 10:34—is not a respecter of persons. What He does for one, He is willing and able to do for others. He has a plan and a purpose for each of our lives, and those plans and purposes are for “peace and not of evil, to give [us] a future and a hope” (Jer. 29:11, NKJV). All we need to do to fulfill those plans and purposes is to allow God to urge us past the fears that hold us back and to step out in faith, trusting Him to do His work in and through us, just as He did in Punkin’s life.

The chapters in this book will reveal the fantastic and hard-to-imagine events in Punkin’s life, such as her harrowing escape from the authorities in an Asian country. It will verbally paint her journeys to the ends of the earth, including her frozen brush with death in Antarctica. It will remember good friends made along the way, like the Massai Warriors of Africa who reckoned Punkin as one of their own. And the book will certainly not forget those who have paid the ultimate price for our suffering Savior. Readers will be reminded about the goodness of God and of His people in the far-flung recesses of this world.

In the end, readers will learn that it is the willingness to say “yes” to God’s calling that makes us into more than we could ever have dreamed or imagined.