Hello everybody! We hope you are all doing well! The last few months have been challenging but also encouraging! We have been able to meet up with some IMB people recently and it has been a huge encouragement for both of us!! We were able to get advice on how to deal with different cultural things and we have learned quite a lot! We have also been able to do a lot more outside the church. Joey has been going to a Homeless Care Center on Wednesday's where he is able to talk to homeless people about Jesus. This is something he really likes doing! He feels like now he has been able to do more personal evangelism since he is going outside the church. He's been talking to a now converted Jehovah's witness about getting baptized. He has been a real encouragement to me! We are actually going to go to some classes about reaching out to Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus. There are so many people here from those backgrounds and we want to learn more about them so that we can try to share Jesus with them! We are about to go see about helping out in a "safe church" for new converts from those backgrounds. Please pray that God would give us more opportunities like this to get outside the church more! We know that we are here to do youth work but we also feel like we could be doing more while we are here! There is a huge need for evangelism here and the Christians here need more encouragement to do it! There is a lady here in our church who is on the Mission and Evangelism team and she really wants to do more with sharing the Gospel to all the people here. She was talking with us today about it and she would like for people in the church to be trained to evangelize and so we told her about Way of the Master and she thought it would be great! So pray that her urgency would continue and the people of the church would not be scared to do what God has called all of us to do!! We are excited about what God could do through this!!
Please continue to pray for our children and youth work here! We aren't sure really what God wants us to do through all of it! The leaders in youth forum aren't sure what they want and so it seems like we aren't getting anywhere because no one knows what they want so everyone is going with the flow. We can't start new programs because they think we have too many already and that we should just develop the ones we have. So we aren't able to start our afterschool program because it would be a new program. So pray for God to show Joey and I want he wants for all these youth and children! But I was actually able to talk to one of the youth girls today who has really opened up to me about her life that she wouldn't tell anyone else. While I was talking to her I just prayed that God would show her what is right. She is very confused and hurting!! Please pray for her (Becky)! I have also been able to do a bible study with 2 other girls on a Friday. They just want to know more about a lot of things and they are interested in sharing the Gospel as well but they are scared! So pray for them (Becky H. and Ruth) and me that I would have the wisdom to share what God wants me to! And Joey spends a lot of time with a boy called Callum. And he is always asking Joey questions about different things in the Bible. So we are building relationships with these guys which is what we want to do! It seems like it has been a slow process but we are getting there! God has perfect timing!
There is one more thing I would ask you all to pray for! (I should really write y'all more often! I have written a book today!) Anyways, you all know that we have been asked to stay a 2nd year and we agreed to that. Now after only being here for 8 months we have been ask to stay a 3rd year. Which means we would have to get our visa extended and our insurance extended. We haven't got a clue what we should do. We have to tell the pastor by this September because if we decided to leave at the end of 2 years then in the fall he will be looking in to getting someone else here when we leave. If we decided to stay we will have to work on getting our visa extended and things like that. We don't know what God wants for us right now. We are praying so hard because honestly if it were up to me I would want to go home. I miss home a lot! But I am not sure if that is what God wants! Joey said he would find it hard to leave no matter when we left. So he is waiting on the Lord! Please PLEASE pray for this!!
We miss you all and love you!
By His Grace,
Brooke
