Between Trips

Preparing for yet another trip, I ponder where the time went. The calendar reveals a missions conference at Calvary Church in Canterbury;

a quick trip to help Carol's parents on Cape Cod;

and an eventful visit from Alfred Snoctober!

Glad to have power back after 8 days! thank you, Jesus!

Marathon Trip

It is good to pace yourself, if you can. However sometimes, in spite of everything, you just have to depend on God's grace alone to get you through what He is calling you to do.

October 7 we drove to Rockville, MD and did a Friendship Partner training there. Three churches were represented and we are excited to see groundwork laid to reach out to Montgomery College.

The next day we were blessed to connect with people at Tapestry Vineyard before heading over to spend the afternoon and evening with former international student friends and their beautiful children.

Moving on to VA, we were blessed again to see Abby and Nick briefly amidst several days of appointments with key players for Washington D.C. area ministries.

Then we drove up to Lewisburg, PA to teach another F/P training. This time four churches were represented, with two of them anchors for reaching Bucknell University.

After 2 weeks on the road we reached home tired but happy to see God calling people into the harvest fields with such good response!

New Friends

We had the pleasure of spending several days in Annandale, VA to do some I/S training. These are always great times of meeting new family members who share our passion for reaching the world with God's love by serving international students.

We enjoy the training, roleplaying, interaction and questions.

It is surely a blessing to serve alongside these saints! and help their ministry called International Friends.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart

We started on our journey knowing that tropical storm Lee was making a mess of things. We cross many rivers on our trip to VA where Richard is teaching tonight and tomorrow. We prayed "Father, you called us to go ...". And He is faithful who calls you!

We traveled by interstate in the pleasure of dry weather,and beautiful sunlight.
Scenes like these were all around us, but never touched us. Above,left is a roller coaster in Hershey, PA. Above right is Wilkes-Barre, PA where interstate rt 81 was closed. The top picture is the Susquehannah River in Harrisburg, PA not far from where we crossed the river . We were high and dry! Thank you, Jesus! The only heavy rain occured while we were eating dinner in Gettysburg. After that we had light scattered showers until we arrive in VA. We were very tired from 8 hours on the road, and feeling VERY BLESSED having lived Proverbs 3: 5&6! (I do not know where the last picture is from )

Riding in an Airplane

Our trip to China gave us many hours of opportunities in airplanes to have conversations with strangers. What is amazing to me is how difficult it was to achieve! Ipods, Ipads and earbuds help people keep the "riff-raff" out of their personal space.

Add on eye masks and the wall becomes more effective still. Even on a 15 & 1/2 hour flight! My gentle questions yielded only wordless noise and one word answers. It was refreshingly different on our departure flight from Hong Kong. I(Carol) sat next to a lovely young woman who was open to conversation.

She personified for me what I had been reading about in "The Meeting of the Waters: 7 Global Currents" by Fritz Kling. She was HongKong Chinese, attended college in Australia where she met her Korean boyfriend. She was flying to Cian to visit him. He was there studying mandarin to enhance his International Business degree. (multi cultural experiences) We had wonderful conversation about world values versus Christian values (not American values) and how they affect personal life, family, business and government. It blessed me that after collecting luggage at the baggage claim she thought enough of how we connected to come and say good bye again and show me to her boyfriend. I am glad Father knows them by name because I intend to keep them in prayer and hope to meet them again when I get home.

Keeping In Touch

In this day, keeping in touch with people should not be difficult. We have emailing, snail mailing, texting, tweeting, phoning, skyping, and on and on it goes. One of the lessons from our trip was keeping in touch matters ... ALOT!

One way we have accomplished this in our ISI Northeast region is our monthly prayer call. Each month, at the appointed time we, as many as can, dial in to a conference call and Richard co-ordinates and leads us.

We praise God for who He is, share answers to prayer and thank Father, share requests and pray for one another. It has help us grow in comraderie and affection. We are no longer strangers when we meet at conferences or when we travel. Although awkward when we first started 10 years ago we have pressed through.

There are many good lessons for me as we seek to keep in touch with our student friends around the globe --- just do it; press through the awkwardness; praise God; share answers to prayer; share what God is doing as well as our requests; do it routinely. Excuse me, a - skyping - i - must - go !

China: it is the people

How does one start to share a two week trip that has been overwhelming since before it began? where does one begin? There are so many God sightings (seeing God at work using you in others' lives, or others in your life); so many experiences;so many "ahah!"'s.

In wrestling this through with my Father, the one theme that kept recurring was the people, His people. People that He cares about that are trapped and need to be set free ... one at a time.

We saw the en-masse, and we experienced them as individuals.

One co-worker that was able to visit many students who had returned home came to the conclusion that we need to do more to reach and teach them while they are here. We need to go extra miles and invest all we can.

The challenges as they return home are huge, especially if their culture is, not nurturing for their new faith.

We saw alot, experienced alot and are left with alot of God's heart for His people, the ones who do not yet know His amazing love.

In many ways, for all the differences, they are just like us.