Merry Christmas from East Asia

I hope this holiday season finds all of you doing extremely well and anticipating the celebration of the birth of Jesus with many friends and family! Things are very well on this side of the world, and the holiday season gives all of us living here the opportunity to share the true meaning of Christmas with all of the locals who inquire about Santa Clause, Christmas trees, etc....

Things are going to be extremely busy for us here during the next two weeks. I am personally done with my college classes for the semester and I am geared up in our Cultural Sharing Project that is going on during the holidays. We have two different groups of friends coming from Ohio and Missouri that arrive today here in our town and they will be with us through New Year's Day. In all there are 14 people coming from the states. Tomorrow will be an all day training day to prepare with the group to do a Christmas Program at 10 different schools in 4 different cities over the next 10 days. It will be an exciting opportunity to communicate the real meaning of Christmas with thousands of students in our area. The program will be an explanation of many Christmas traditions such as Christmas trees, Santa, lights on houses, Christmas foods, etc.....as well as teaching them many secular Christmas songs (jingle bells, rudolph) as well as some of our favorites such as Silent Night, O Holy Night, Joy to the World, etc...and then being able to tell them that all of the gift giving we do at Christmas is to remind us of the best gift that has ever been given when Jesus was born 2000 years ago. It will be many of the students first times to ever hear. We will get to perform this on average to over 1000 students, sometimes more, most every time we perform and it will most likely be the first time most have ever heard of the true meaning of Christmas. We will use some drama, singing, and special music as well.



As far as my guys in my room go, they are having finals the next 2 weeks before going home. There have been no other new brothers as of yet, but I am not discouraged as I know Father is the one who ultimate does the work. There has been much progress in many of their lives and there are about 5 who I believe Father is really working on. The two that are brothers are growing and I have been able to meet with them weekly to help them grow in the Word. These next two weeks are very important to everyone on campus as they prepare to take finals, so I have been helping them a ton lately with their English study as another way to show the love of God with them.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Ryan

(Ryan is currently serving with an unreached people group in East Asia that has been adopted by Thompson Station Church.)