New Place, New People, New Joy

We were excited about the graduation where one of the students from the West graduated. It was so amazing that God provided funds for us to travel to the West and do inductive Bible study. It is always a blessing to share about mission trips. We believe that God is always faithful to lead us into different parts of the world. What He has commanded us to do, He always helps us to do. We believe it is always God’s mission and we are just instruments of Him. We were in a place we had never been in the West. We were so excited to do this mission. It was such an amazing time with the pastors and leaders who attended the Inductive Bible study classes for up to 3 days
Every day the classes were filled with excitement. It was not that we are good or experienced teachers, but that we know that the Holy Spirit was moving in most of us. We believe in prayer and that it was because of prayer as well. We thank God that it was more than mission, it was like a unknown family reunion before we are in heaven. 31 people came plus some others who were working in the kitchen. We had the chance to disciple all of them. Our time with them seemed so short, even though it was 3 days. We did not want to leave them and they did not want to leave us. It always brings us joy to see young men who are hungry for the Word of God. Hopefully they have fallen in love with the Word of God. We have been lead to do more missions in the coming days. Let all glory be to God.

And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.
-Matthew 28:18-20.

New People:
Christmas is one of the most amazing seasons. It is when we can invite anyone in the community, our non-Christian friends and family to share with them about Christ. Every year we invite as many people as possible at Christmas. This year we had a lot of new people come to the Christmas outreach. We had little kids, young adults, and the elderly on Christmas day. On Christmas Eve all of our church members gathered together and sang Christmas songs. Many of us shared about how God is working our lives. It was a time of great joy. We also prayed together for the Christmas day outreach.
We could see how excited the people were to have a Christmas outreach. The church members were excited to sing, dance and bless the non-Christians. They had invited their in-laws, sisters, brothers, and friends. We could see that the church members are growing in the Lord, by seeing how they cared about their friends and family. Thank you God, for these church members who have a heart for the people! We heard testimonies of those who came about how they had heard the word “Christmas”, but never knew what it is all about. Thank you, God, for these new people.

“This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.”-John 15:12-15.

It is always good to do new things as God guides. For the past couple of years we have been doing a Bible study in the Leprosy camp, but we had never done a Christmas party there. This year, while we were having Bible study, we asked “What do you want to do for Christmas?” They replied that they didn’t have any plans. So our team made a plan to feed them some special food and dessert. We were full of joy as we did this, because we had never done this kind of event before. We had also never had a Christmas party with this Bible study group. We were so joyful as we sang and danced and shared a Christmas sermon in the mist of these people. At the same time, we were able to give some of them audio Bibles. We are very thankful to the people who had been praying for them and provided us with audio Bibles. One elderly man in the leprosy colony came to us with an extremely old audio Bible. He asked me to fix his audio Bible. It was not working. I asked him “How many hours have you been listening to this?”

• Please pray that God will lead us into new places to do more short-term training.
• Please pray that the new people, who have been hearing the Gospel through our outreaches and the radio, may come to Christ.
• Please pray for the people of the leprosy colony. May they may grow in the Word and grace of Jesus Christ.