Hi!
Thank you all for your encouragement and for your prayers! Your prayers are certainly changing things over here! Less than two weeks ago we were bored out of our skulls and now we are busy, busy, busy and loving it! We are continuing to teach the family that i told y'all about in the previous blog three times a week. They have six children and although we are only officially teaching the mom and one of the daughters, we usually have the majority of the family sitting in the living room for the two hours that we teach. It has opened up tremendous doors in our being able to reach out to them! On Monday, they asked if they could hang out with us outside of class! That is a huge step in our being able to develop a relationship with them! We're meeting them tomorrow night to eat dinner and just spend time with them! That is a tremendous opportunity for us and it has opened up so fast! So please remember us tomorrow night (tomorrow morning your time. haha).
We also began the public group class that i mentioned on my last blog. Monday was our first class and we had 3 ladies, which is exactly what we expected. Our supervisor explained to us beforehand that anyone that came would probably be almost literally a scout, sent by other women to find out if the class was good. He said that if they deemed it worth everyone's time, they would tell all their friends, and that we would have quite a few more women next class. So...i guess we'll see! The great news about this class is that it has gotten us 2 more students that want to be privately tutored! My teammate tutored on of the ladies today and i will tutor the other one on Sunday! These are excellent opportunities!
The d-ship group is also going really well! The girls are continuing to learn, to memorize scripture, and to have fun doing so! One of the girls actually asked us all to have a sleepover at her house on Friday night. This will be a great opportunty to continue to build relationships with these girls and for them to hopefully see the Disciple's life lived out.
I've got a couple things that i hope you'll keep in your prayers as you remember us. First of all, and thankfully, the weather is getting cooler here (meaning that the temps are now in the 90's, haha). This is great, but with this change in the weather is coming quite a bit of sickness. Our supervisor, language teacher, and our language teacher's daughter are all getting over colds and fevers and my teammate is having some problems as well (we're praying she's not catching the same thing). It's also causing my allergies to act up and i'm getting some really bad headaches during the day. Just pray for our health. Also there have been some issues between teammates that have arisen and need to be completely resolved. Nothing big, but something that could cause problems if it isn't dealt with fast. The last thing we want is for any of us to lose credibility in front of our students, so please, keep us in your prayers.
It is truly an honor to be entrusted with the task that we've been given. Thank you all so much for keeping us in your prayers! Love you all!
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Quite a bit has been happening....
In case the title didn't give it away, quite a bit has been happening round these parts since my last blog. For about the first four weeks i was here, i'm not gonna lie, things were downright frustrating. Classes would not work out with any of our students; none of them would commit. About a week ago, i was supposed to have my first student, and she called an hour before class to cancel. Such was life for a while. We were enjoying the d-ship group (which is still going amazing!) and our language classes and we really saw some cool things happening Spiritually, but we were really bored and really ready to get started. For a while we thought that we would just never end up teaching. After my student cancelled, i really think i lost all hope. All of a sudden, though, everything started changing! On Sunday we got set up to teach an English class once a week for several students at a time, as our one-on-one strategy had so tragically failed. Then last night we got a call saying that we had 2 students who wanted to start today - a mother and her teenage daughter. We had our first class today and it went so well! They are a very open, warm, and hospitable family who are very eager to learn English, and just as eager for us to learn their language! We will be privately tutoring them 3 times a week and will be teaching a public class once a week starting Monday. We have continually asked for these opportunities and they are finally here! Please continue to pray for us and for these wonderful opportunities that we have! We hope and have asked that through these opportunities we would really be able to reach out to some of these women, so continue to ask for that as well for us.
As i said earlier, this d-ship group is amazing! The way it has worked out shows how much God has orchestrated it! We have 5 girls, ages 11-15 coming; they are so excited and are learning so much! It brings me so much joy to see them learning and applying what they have learned in every day life! Our study is on the truth, and we are focusing specifically on filtering out the truth from the lies that our culture and media feeds us. Of course, the way we filter it is through knowing the Truth, and letting the truth set us free. We had our third study on Sunday and, as we studied the truth about ourselves, i was overjoyed to see how many examples they gave from the media about the lies that we hear about ourselves everyday. Through what we were studying, they were able to combat those lies with truth from the Word! We are also memorizing a verse a week from Psalm 19 over the course of this study, so that by the December, we will have the whole chapter memorized. We're working on verse 3 right now! Keep these girls in your prayers! There is such a lack of d-ship for youth here and the enemy would love to keep these girls in the dark! They are truly being counter cultural by choosing to know and memorize the Word and apply it daily.
Thanks so much for your thoughts, prayers, and encouraging texts, emails, facebook messages, etc. i am really loving my time over here and am feeling at home and full of joy and peace. Discouragement comes with the territory of being away from home and doing the work over here, but when i am discouraged, it is truly y'all's prayers that get me through! So, thank you so much and keep praying!
As i said earlier, this d-ship group is amazing! The way it has worked out shows how much God has orchestrated it! We have 5 girls, ages 11-15 coming; they are so excited and are learning so much! It brings me so much joy to see them learning and applying what they have learned in every day life! Our study is on the truth, and we are focusing specifically on filtering out the truth from the lies that our culture and media feeds us. Of course, the way we filter it is through knowing the Truth, and letting the truth set us free. We had our third study on Sunday and, as we studied the truth about ourselves, i was overjoyed to see how many examples they gave from the media about the lies that we hear about ourselves everyday. Through what we were studying, they were able to combat those lies with truth from the Word! We are also memorizing a verse a week from Psalm 19 over the course of this study, so that by the December, we will have the whole chapter memorized. We're working on verse 3 right now! Keep these girls in your prayers! There is such a lack of d-ship for youth here and the enemy would love to keep these girls in the dark! They are truly being counter cultural by choosing to know and memorize the Word and apply it daily.
Thanks so much for your thoughts, prayers, and encouraging texts, emails, facebook messages, etc. i am really loving my time over here and am feeling at home and full of joy and peace. Discouragement comes with the territory of being away from home and doing the work over here, but when i am discouraged, it is truly y'all's prayers that get me through! So, thank you so much and keep praying!
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Two and a half weeks in...
Hi again!
Hope everyone is doing well over there! I have been here in my place of service for two and a half weeks now and am adjusting pretty well I'd say. The heat is a little difficult to adjust to and Ramadan has severely altered the schedule over here (and peoples' moods too...turns out you get a little cranky if you don't eat in 115 degree weather for a month!) Anyway, Ramadan is almost over, Eid is about to start, and I'm getting used to customs, security issues, and the weekly schedule over here. Sadly, i haven't been able to start teaching yet! Our job description has changed a little and we will now be tutoring ladies one-on-one. This will be a great move as far as allowing us to easily build relationships with them, however, because things are so crazy with Ramadan and Eid, none of the ladies want to start until next week. Though we were frustrated at first, we are now using this time to prepare, to learn language (we started language classes last week), and start a d-ship group with our supervisors' and language teacher's teenage daughters and some of their friends! It's amazing how i was taken out of the US and put into another country only to find out that i'm still passionate about the same thing: d-ing teenage girls! We had our first group on Sunday night and the results were so overwhelming. They loved the group and the study, learned so much, and asked if we could have it every week! Please continue to pray for this group as we'll meet every week. Pray for me as i teach and the girls as they learn, grow, and change. Also, please be praying that we would learn the language well so that we will be able to better communicate with the ladies we will be teaching, and pray for our students, as we will begin teaching in (hopefully) a week or two.
One last request before i go. I'm sure many of you have heard of the pastor in Florida who will be burning Qur'ans on Saturday. As a person and a Christian, i am appalled that fellow believers would preach such hate and drag the name of our Lord through the dust in this way. As a worker in this part of the world, however, i am shocked by the foolishness of this act. Does he even realize what danger he's putting his fellow Americans overseas in? Please keep me and all the workers in this part of the world in your prayers these next few days. I am not as much worried about the danger as i am the rift that will be formed because of this one act. For people like me, who are trying to establish peace with Muslims, this could really hurt any headway that has already been made, or any attempts in the future. Please pray for safety, wisdom, and peace for us these next few days.
Everything is going really here; i'm enjoying the change and really love where i am living. Thank you all for praying for me thus far. I love you all!
Erin
Hope everyone is doing well over there! I have been here in my place of service for two and a half weeks now and am adjusting pretty well I'd say. The heat is a little difficult to adjust to and Ramadan has severely altered the schedule over here (and peoples' moods too...turns out you get a little cranky if you don't eat in 115 degree weather for a month!) Anyway, Ramadan is almost over, Eid is about to start, and I'm getting used to customs, security issues, and the weekly schedule over here. Sadly, i haven't been able to start teaching yet! Our job description has changed a little and we will now be tutoring ladies one-on-one. This will be a great move as far as allowing us to easily build relationships with them, however, because things are so crazy with Ramadan and Eid, none of the ladies want to start until next week. Though we were frustrated at first, we are now using this time to prepare, to learn language (we started language classes last week), and start a d-ship group with our supervisors' and language teacher's teenage daughters and some of their friends! It's amazing how i was taken out of the US and put into another country only to find out that i'm still passionate about the same thing: d-ing teenage girls! We had our first group on Sunday night and the results were so overwhelming. They loved the group and the study, learned so much, and asked if we could have it every week! Please continue to pray for this group as we'll meet every week. Pray for me as i teach and the girls as they learn, grow, and change. Also, please be praying that we would learn the language well so that we will be able to better communicate with the ladies we will be teaching, and pray for our students, as we will begin teaching in (hopefully) a week or two.
One last request before i go. I'm sure many of you have heard of the pastor in Florida who will be burning Qur'ans on Saturday. As a person and a Christian, i am appalled that fellow believers would preach such hate and drag the name of our Lord through the dust in this way. As a worker in this part of the world, however, i am shocked by the foolishness of this act. Does he even realize what danger he's putting his fellow Americans overseas in? Please keep me and all the workers in this part of the world in your prayers these next few days. I am not as much worried about the danger as i am the rift that will be formed because of this one act. For people like me, who are trying to establish peace with Muslims, this could really hurt any headway that has already been made, or any attempts in the future. Please pray for safety, wisdom, and peace for us these next few days.
Everything is going really here; i'm enjoying the change and really love where i am living. Thank you all for praying for me thus far. I love you all!
Erin
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)