Well, December is almost over and I've never been so ready for a NEW YEAR! Crazy that we're almost to 2024 and halfway through the gap year. I have so much to share with you so get ready for a longer read today :)
Thanksgiving seems like so long ago but I guess that's where I left off. Our thanksgiving looked really different this year but it was special in its own way. We celebrated by cooking together as a team and sharing what we're thankful for in each other. Below is a picture of our thanksgiving dinner.
Next up... we celebrated Jaden's 19th birthday by making breakfast and going to a trampoline park and rock wall! Lots of fun memories.
As we moved in to December, ministry started to slow down. Our team was sick for several weeks which kept us from our usual schedule and pretty soon after that, we celebrated Christmas and are now getting ready for our next country, THAILAND!
However, there were still many highlights from December that I want to share...
First, I want to share about the Christmas party we helped run for the students here! Every Friday night, the national staff run something called "patnychka" for the students at the English center and any of their friends. This hangout is similar to a church youth group but without the spiritual aspect and is basically a way to reach students and have some fun with them. Each Friday night is different... sometimes there's new food, games, educational talks, or dancing but for Christmas, our team got to plan our own Patnychka. We talked about Christmas and its meaning, played holiday music and games, and made chocolate chip cookies for the students. They'd never had these cookies but many of them said they'd seen them in movies and always wanted to try. It was so much fun for us and more so for them. Here are a few pictures :)
Student meetings have slowed down a little bit but God is still at work here. Anna and I have continued to meet and discuss religion for hours at a time... it's been really neat to hear her story and learn about the muslim faith as I share mine with her. We had our last meeting this week and as sad as I was to goodbye, I am hopeful that God will save her in His timing. Continue to pray for her if you will! I gave her my Russian Bible to keep and she's regularly meeting with one of the national staff here. I know God is working in her and I've learned that our success in witnessing is not to save people - it is taking the initiative to share Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit and leaving the results up to God. Here are some pictures from our meeting this week.
Back in November, I also got the chance to hangout with another girl, we'll call her Paige, who's become such a sweet friend of mine. Paige is from the city we're currently in but she studies at a university in China where she was first exposed to the gospel and has lots of christian friends. We connected at the English Center when she came home for break and got to meet several times before she gave her life to Christ this week! It was so special to witness a former muslim read scripture and describe it as "freeing" compared to what she grew up with. We read through John together and I'll never forget when she pulled up John 13, which is Jesus washing the disciples' feet, and just couldn't comprehend that the savior of the world would get down and do such a job as washing feet. The even cooler part of this story was hearing of the many believers that have shared Christ with her before I did. Like I mentioned above, we often measure our success in ministry based on how many people we "save" when there is really so much more to it. Our team has starting using the "Engel Scale" which is a helpful tool in evangelism to tell where someone may be in their exposure/knowledge of God. A negative ten is a person who has never heard the gospel before, a zero is the point where a person gives their life to Christ, and a positive ten is when they enter Heaven. This system has shown me that there's so much more to sharing the gospel with someone than simply leading them to Christ. A conversation that moves someone from a negative eight to a negative seven is still something to be celebrated, and Paige had many of those before I got to lead her across the line. In the same way, as we pack up and head to Thailand soon, I am celebrating the students that moved one step closer to zero during our time here and trusting that one day, another believe will lead them across the line.
You can continue to pray for Paige as she starts this relationship with God. Pray for her as she flies back to China soon and that God would surround her with christian community and resources to grow her faith. Pray for her family who are still muslims.
Here are a few pictures for you to see :)
Man, there is so much more I could say! I want to share some things God's been teaching me lately before wrapping up this post. I'll be honest, December has been the hardest month so far and I'd say one of the hardest months of my life. God has been doing a lot of work in my heart which is something I praise Him for but I can't deny the painful process in which He chooses to work.
I don't know about you but I experienced some real silence from God this month and it tested my faith in ways like never before. I faced a lot of challenges, temptation, failure as a leader, and guilt but when I would sit down with the Lord, he felt so incredibly silent. For the first time, reading my Bible felt like words on a page and nothing more. It was miserable, and I reached a point where I didn't even know if I wanted to keep walking with God and doing ministry anymore. I considered giving up and coming home for weeks but I think God had some things he wanted to teach me through that. It's in the lowest moments that we're (usually) most humble, most vulnerable, and most desperate for the Lord to show up.
I was taken to John 11, which if you're not familiar is the story of Lazarus. I couldn't help but notice Mary and Martha in this story - their brother had just died because Jesus didn't show up "on time" and they could've easily lost hope in the midst of silence, assuming that Jesus didn't care anymore. Instead, they embraced the silence from Him and rested in His plan. They knew that He was the Christ and He knew that they would be able to withstand the silence.
This totally changed my perspective of God's silence. I learned that it can be a sign of God's trust in his people and build an even more intimate relationship with us. Oswald Chambers said, "When you cannot hear God, you will find that He has trusted you in the most intimate way possible - with absolute silence, not a silence of despair, but one of pleasure, because He saw that you could withstand an even bigger revelation." These lessons have made the silence all the more worth it and as I wait for God to speak, I can rest in who He is and His great trust in me.
Thanks for listening to all of that - I pray it was an encouragement to you! Here are a few ways you can be praying for myself and my team:
Pray for our transition to Thailand this Monday! We're so excited for what God has ahead in this new country but you can pray for our adjustment to another culture and ministry. Pray that I'd find food quickly and easily this time :)
Pray for the students and relationships we're leaving behind in Central Asia and that God would further the gospel conversations we've had.
Pray for our team - for continued health as we're getting over sickness and for unity as we enter into the next half of the year.
Pray that God would grow my relationship with the girls on my team even more than He has.
Pray for Micah and I as we lead - that we would not get discouraged or disheartened and that God would give us wisdom and humility.
Thanks friends! I know this post was longer but if you're up for it and want to check out some of our team adventures this month, I posted some pictures below.
Until 2024,
Bailee ♡
