Looking Back & Praying Ahead

It’s hard to believe that we’ve already been married for one year, and that we’ve spent the past eight months overseas. There’s definitely been a lot of struggles and new experiences for both of us. Grocery shopping by rickshaw, driving on the other side of the road, teaching in a school, waking up to the call to prayer, various insects invading our kitchen,and trying to pray together when everything seems to be a distraction.

Over our spring break in March, we were able to go to the mountains and spend some time praying and talking about our vision for the next year. We want to focus on both knowing God and making him known; which is how we’ve found ourselves over here!

•  to share the gospel with the least reached

•  to love and serve Muslims

•  to love and serve in the nation we are called to

In order to fulfill God’s purposes there are several areas we feel that we should focus on in the coming year.

1) Learn the Language --> Language Classes
2) Be Tentmakers  --> Professional Development
3) Be Examples --> Personal Discipleship & Accountability
4) Build up the Church --> Fellowship, Training, Prayer
5) Be Forerunners-->  Study End Times, Prayer
6) Use Spiritual Gifts --> Practice, Study, Prayer
7) Share the Gospel --> Strategic Outreach, Friendship

While we were in the mountains, we checked out the language school that we had planned to go to this summer. We really feel that if we want to be more fruitful in this region then we need to be able to speak the local language. Since sharing the gospel and discipleship take place best in the heart language, we are limited with our current language abilities.

The language school is the best option in the region and is always totally booked in the summer. Since all the students who attend the school are foreigners, the prices were a bit higher than we expected. With both of us taking four classes a day for ten weeks our course fees amount to $2750. There’s no discount for people earning in a weaker currency!

When we add up all our expenses for the summer, considering that we will be full time language students, we come up $4000 short of what we can afford on our local salaries. That includes food, utilities, classes, travel, visas, and housing for the summer months.

Would you pray about supporting us financially this summer so that we can spend these ten weeks focused on language study?

In faith, we’ve already put a $200 down payment to secure our housing for the summer. Praise the Lord for providing an affordable apartment through a local pastor.

We are really looking forward to what God has in store for this summer and this coming school year. Please pray for us:

•  That we could finish this year well and be a light in our workplace

•  That we would focus our time and energy on living out God’s purposes for us

•  That we would continue to encourage, challenge, and bless each other in marriage

•  That the Lord would provide all the finances needed for our summer language study

Spirit of Death

"There was blood splattered all over the walls. Her neck was just hanging from her head; half off. Nobody knows why he did it. It was the most disturbing thing I've ever seen."

This is a paraphrase from a conversation I had with one of my friends this week. I called her to see how she was doing, and she told me the gruesome story of how her husband's aunt had been murdered by her own servant. Living in an upper to middle class section of the city, an incident like this came as a shock to the family. Nobody knows why, but the servant (hired about a month an a half ago) attempted to chop off the aunt's head with an axe. The blade was too dull to make a clean cut, but he succeeded in cutting into her neck enough to kill her.

A second servant had gone out for Friday prayers when the murder took place. When the second servant arrived, he saw the aunt partially decapitated and the other servant running away. He caught the murderer and called the police and family. My friend was one of the first to arrive at the scene, even before the police had come.

Are you wondering why you did not see this story on the news? If this had happened in the US or Europe it surely would have been in the papers. But here, these kind of unnatural deaths happen all too often. I wrote another blog before about the little blurbs about gang rapes, killings, and other horrendous crimes that come in the back of the paper where almost nobody bothers to read them.

As I reflected on this crime, I felt that there must be a spiritual reason behind the high frequency of unnatural deaths and heinous crimes. My friend's aunt who died was only in her early fifties. It reminded me that we are engaged in a spiritual battle. Over here, I feel that we are deeply entrenched in territory the enemy has held for thousands of years.

Oh Lord, even though many times it seems so hard to pray and to press in, help me to intercede for the peoples of this land. So many people die unnatural deaths every day, and most of them have probably never heard the gospel. Lord, help me to be intentional in sharing the Word of truth. Empower me with boldness. Send more laborers for this harvest over here, so that all may hear the truth that is the power of salvation to those who believe.

Praise & Prayer Update March 11th

Praises:

• D and a friend went to a city in our province (3 hours away) to do some outreach training over the weekend. It seems that the training was well received. Please pray that those who attended would feel a burden to be intentional in reaching the lost.
• H is finally driving! She was able to go out shopping this weekend and hand out some literature in the local language. Pray that we both would want to sow the Word abundantly, even if it may not always be well received.
  
• We have both been able to share more with people at our workplace. Pray for the student who D will be giving the Bible to this week.
  
• Electricity! We have had 20+ hours a day of power which has been a blessing in school and at home.
  

Prayers:

• Travel - We will be leaving the country on Saturday to check out a language school for the summer. Pray that we will focus on the Lord during our vacation and that He we will also be intentional about sharing with the different people we meet during the journey. It will take 1-2 days of travel to reach our destination.
  
• Platform - Please pray for us as we make decisions about what we'll be doing professionally next year. We need the Lord's guidance as well as his provision for the proper visas.
  
• Strategic Outreach - We heave been feeling burdened to be more focused on sharing and being strategic with our time. Pray that the Lord will give us his plan and method so that we may bear fruit in this land. May we not only think of our friends and coworkers but may we have vision to see multiplication of faith among the people groups of this region.
  
• Laborers for the Harvest - There are 180 million people in this country who speak over 60 languages. Most foreign organizations in the country focus on mercy ministries, and while those efforts are much appreciated we are not seeing many people come to know the Lord and follow him. In short, we are not seeing much eternal fruit in this field. Even if there may be foreign workers in a village hospital (which would still be rare) there may not be an active witness of the truth. Pray for more workers who are willing to be bold, creative, strategic, and full of the Holy Spirit to come to this land. Pray that those of us who are here would not get bogged down in the mundane or neglect to focus on what's going to make an eternal difference.