A modern day Athens?

This morning I was watching some of the things going on outside. In addition to the many people coming and going, the various men yelling up to the people living in the apartments what they are selling, I noticed a woman walking through this lumber yard. As you can see, there are some cows tied up in the yard, as there are every day. She was nicely dressed, and carrying something to give to the cows to eat. I noticed her giving some sort of sign after giving the cows what she was carrying and it occurred to me that she was worshipping the cows at that very moment. As I was astonished, I began to feel very sad at what she was doing. I realized again, through all that we have been doing so far to get set up here in our city, that people are so very lost.

The people of South Asia are a very spiritual people, as I notice by all the idols, false gods and temples that are everywhere we look. It makes me think of Paul in Acts 17, and how he was greatly distressed to see that Athens was full of idols and he even saw that the people were very religious. It is distressing and sad that 99% of these religious people we walk past every day here do not know the One True God, and are going down a road that is leading them to eternal separation from Jesus.

However, as my partner here pointed out that as bad as the idol worship was in Athens, those false gods and idols are nothing but myths and legends today. God has defeated and crushed the beliefs in those false gods, and we may be privileged to witness and be a part of the beginnings of another revolution that will take down the false gods and idols we are seeing worshipped right here.

Please continue to pray for the people of South Asia, that God will bring these people to know Him personally. Pray for the nationals who come to accept Jesus to be sowers of the Word, to grow His fame among these people, and for the people to be receptive to what the truth is. It is not anyone's power or might that can do this, but it is God alone who can accomplish His task through faithful and obedient followers.

Many Thanks on this day of Thanksgiving

“First of all, I ask you to pray for everyone. Ask God to help and bless them all, and tell God how thankful you are for each of them.” 1 Timothy 2:1

Happy Thanksgiving to you all. While we are living in a temporary apartment here in our city until our new flat is finished, there are some thanks I would like to share during this time of Thanksgiving.

We are thankful for God’s provision while we are here to have found an apartment so quickly, and a new one at that! Even though we are waiting for it to be complete, it is a blessing, and we are thankful.

We are thankful for our health while here. The “crud” has gone once through the family, but it seems to have gone away and it was nothing major. Nothing a little antibiotics couldn’t cure.

We are thankful for our team members here in our city, the newest members of our family, who we are able to spend time getting to know and who we will be spending much time together for the next few years. They have been a huge help and blessing to us as we have been getting set up here and we look forward to the growing relationship and fellowship our families will have in the future working together for the One True God.

We are thankful for our family members who have sacrificed a normal relationship with us and our children to encourage us to follow God’s purpose in our lives, and seek Him.

We are thankful for our friends and our church family back home, who have also sacrificed close relationships with us to encourage us to do God’s work on the other side of the world. Your support and prayers are much appreciated.

We are thankful for our prayer partners back home as well as overseas, who lift us up to the Father often. Even through the busy-ness of life, I know that they have committed to partnering with us in prayer while we are here. Not only lifting us up, but also the people we are engaging here in South Asia to come to know Jesus as we do.

We are thankful for the IMB who has allowed us the privilege to be vessels to be used by God.

Most of all, we are thankful for a Heavenly Father whose love for His children is larger than we can even imagine. He took the time to create us, put us together as a family, and ready us for service in a far away place. He has brought us out of many pits, some so deep that we could have easily given up. But through faith in Him we persevered, and became stronger from those times. The times may not be easy here, but we know that God will provide for our every little need. We will cling to Him and rely on Him for everything. We will consider it joy to do what we must to make His name famous in this place.

Culture Shock or, Culture Integration?

Alright, call me a sports nut. I love football, basketball, baseball, hockey, any kind of sport I can watch. And, I can understand all these sports. These are the things I grew up watching and cheering. And now what sport is popular in South Asia? Cricket. It might as well be chess for all I understand it!

We have been at another IMB couple's house in another city in South Asia for a language workshop, and of course, the huge match between India and Pakistan is taking precedence over many other things. So, with a day to do nothing but relax after our train trip, myself and another co-worker sat and watched, for about 5 hours the first in a series of matches between the rival India and Pakistan. And, amazingly, I found myself beginning to understand the scoring, and the whole game! It was pretty exciting, actually. I have a desire to watch another game and even seek out the highlights. So, I'm either really hurting for some of my beloved sports back home, or maybe, just maybe I am beginning to integrate this culture into some of my own. Don't worry, there is still room for following some football on ESPN, only Monday night football comes on during the morning. Hey, maybe that means I'll be able to watch a full game and not fall asleep!

Anyways, we are all fine and will begin language learning with a helper as soon as we return to our city. In about a week or two, our apartment will be ready to move into, and then starts the task of filling it with furniture and making it a home away from home. Then we will be settled and concentrate more on our tasks.

Finally!

Well after some travel delays, cancellations and lost baggage (which was retrieved finally!), we are here in our home city! God has been good to us through all of it, and now it is time to go to work!

We are staying at another GCC’s house temporarily while they are stateside, though they are with a different company. It is fully furnished, but we are still living out of suitcases for now. However, we have located and seen some apartments here with the help of our team members, who have been an incredible blessing to us regarding us getting set up to survive life here early. I knew that God had a place to stay for us long before we even chose to follow His plan to come here, and in a matter of days we have signed a contract on a brand new apartment. It will be ready in 2-4 weeks for us to move in because the electricity, cabinets and cleaning needs to be finished. God is showing us His provision right at the start.

The kids have been doing fine, no bad signs of culture shock, other than jet-lag waking them up at 3AM for about a week, but we are pretty much over that now. The other part of culture shock is the fact that they cannot just go outside to play, or play with the national kids. These kids are not around much because they are in school 6 days a week and when they get home from school they are doing homework for the afternoon. Our team members have 2 kids, and my daughter and their daughter, only 2 years apart, have become very quick friends. My 4 year old son just likes to play video games or eat, which is a close match to their 15 year old son, the only difference is age!

We will be traveling as a family for some intensive language training in another city next week. It ought to be fun, because we’ll be traveling by train. We then come back and find someone for our one on one language teaching, which is called “barefoot learning”. That means that there is no formal classroom, but we are to use our language teacher for a couple hours per day and then we are on our own to practice what we learn. That is our primary task now for the next 4 months, as the company will pay for our teacher for that long. We are on our own to learn what we can from there. I realize that it is very important to know the language to be affective, because we have been very dependent on our team members to help us get things done. Hopefully we will be able to learn enough to survive on our own soon enough.

I hope that I have not bored anyone, but this is definitely a process more than we had ever expected, and sometimes seems very overwhelming. However, we know that God is with us, and He has been working here long before we arrived, and just as Joseph told Pharoah that he could not do it himself, but God could. We know that we must rely on God for all of our needs. Pray that we can incorporate ourselves into the culture and the community to show Christ to those who have never heard of Him.

Arrival!!

And we have arrived!! Through many cancellations, delays and 3 different airlines (our arrival came from a different airline and a different location than first booked) we are in the country that God has planned for us to be in, to begin the work that He has chosen for us to do, even before we were born. We are happy to be here, and are waiting on 8 of our 12 bags that did not arrive with us! Big surprise, as many others here are waiting on their luggage also. Through this, we have learned not to take for granted even the simplest of things. Air travel was rough, and now we have little clothes, but I know that we are to trust and rely on God and not the things of this world. So we are praying that our bags will come to us before heading to our final destination city on Tuesday. Our team members are waiting for us there with temporary housing while we will look for a place to stay. Thank you for all your prayers during travel. God must be planning to use us for some great things, or our enemy would not have been trying to hinder us at the last minute from coming, and discouraging us by our bags not being here. Pray that we stay focused now more than ever on His word and rely on Him alone.