By Branden
Where We’ve Been
As young children we are asked, “What are you
going to be when you grow up?” That question comes with many responses, but we
can say we have loved where God has taken us over the past five years and how
He articulated our stories. As we try to get our bearings, during these last
two weeks we’ve been home we have had some time to reflect on where we have
been. As you know the English Center in Central Asia is fully functioning and operating
for what it was designed to be. But the last week in May and the first week in
June were a perfect culmination of our time in Central Asia.
A church from Michigan that visited last
November wanted to plan a trip to come back in the spring. The spring turned into early summer and
their trip was going to land the last two weeks of our time in the country. Our
first response was to try and get them to come earlier because we thought that
a two week project was too much for us to handle seeing that we would have only
three days to get our family and things together to head to the States. But we
decided to yield our desires for this time to the Lord and do all we could to make
this last project one of the best. We set out to have two English camps, one per
week, and on the last two days of each week we would take thirty students to a
local lake where we would have spiritual classes in English with the goal that
each member of our team and the Michigan team would be responsible for sharing
their faith with the people they invited. Without a doubt it was the peak of
our time there; within a two weeks period sixty students heard the gospel and
Annie had the chance to see one of her closest friends profess that Jesus as
Lord and the only way to heaven! When we returned from the lake she presented
the three girls she shared with on the trip each with their own Bible. Words
cannot describe their faces and their excitement to have a Bible in their own
language! Not only that, but looking back over the last two years Annie and I
personally shared the Gospel with around 250 students. Although the soil seems
hard, in that we only saw three of those make decisions to accept Christ, we
are continuing to pray for these seeds that were planted. Studies say it takes a
Muslim thirty times to hear the gospel before they accept Christ as their Lord.
We believe God is still calling some of these students
into the family and in time we will see their faces again.
Where We are Going
We have been shocked that many peoples’ first
question has been, “So, are you done?” Our response is, “Are we ever done?”
Even though we are finishing up our long term living in Central Asia, our focus
is still reaching the lost. For the last
six months we have been praying about where God is leading us. As we mentioned
Annie needs to continue her nursing for her license, but we want to carry on in
this life of missions. Over the course of the last three months God has been showing
us exactly what that will look like. He is leading us to continue to work with
college students here in the States, where many of their lives are just as lost
as those in other parts of the world. More specifically He is leading us to
build a camp for college students. Branden is planning to stay on staff and will continue to raise support for this ministry and find partners that
want to continue to see lives changed. We will be contacting you soon to see if
you will continue supporting the work of reaching these students. Also, we want to say we have had some
struggles. It seems that some of our support is falling off quickly. We are not
sure why. We hope that you feel like we have fulfilled our role. Our support is
our only source of income and living here in the
States is three times more expensive than Central Asia. We would like to ask if your giving has to
change would you please consider our needs and our position. We love you dearly
and very grateful you have helped carry us this far. We look forward to catching
up with you.
