Coming Home

By Branden

“I really want to know who you think Jesus is,” one of our students asked as we walked to our community service project! This semester we have been having discussion clubs on Mondays. It has been one of our students’ favorite days. This past Monday, our topic was on society. We discussed things the students like about their society and what they would like to see change. Together we agreed on two projects to do as a class that would represent our English center and would make a statement to the surrounding community. Our first mission was to clean up an alley by our center that is situated between two major roads, one of which is the original Silk Road. One key rule we have at our center is not to share our faith on the premises. The reason for this rule is so the students don’t feel deceived, feeling we have bait and tricked them. So when this student asked me this question off sight it was the perfect opportunity to share who I think Jesus is! I was surrounded by the other students when this guy asked and I literally saw all their ears perk as they waited for my response. I talked until we arrived to the location where we would be doing our project. Even though it was a super nasty job we all walked away looking at a clean alley thinking, “Wow, look at what we can do together if we just take a step in the right direction.” And I was smiling so deeply inside that God gave me this opportunity to share who Jesus is to me and to get deeper into the lives of our students.

Team Work
So many excellent things have been happening this past month. We started out the month spending three days with our leaders from the States doing team building and learning ways to be more effective in our work. This was a much needed time for our team that consists of six different nationalities. We are blessed to be a part of an organization the takes the time to pour into their people and step in when they see the need.

Athletes in Action
One of the other many things Campus Crusade does is to put together basketball teams in the States and have those teams join National tournaments around the world, which becomes a huge platform for sharing the Gospel. On the Monday ending the leadership conference we welcomed one of these Athletes in Action Teams to Central Asia. Every morning they were on campuses talking to students, inviting them to their games. Each day our team passed out invitations to student meetings we had both weeks while the team was here. During these meetings we had fun activities for the students and in the course of the program one basketball team member came up and shared how they came to faith in Jesus. Americans have a good platform; add in a former NBA player and they really listen! After they heard the player’s testimony we placed a believer at each table to continue the discussion. The first week around 210 students heard the gospel and the second week after the tournament another 200 plus students heard this truth! The second week was particularly special for me, as four of my students from the center sat with me during this time and I got to share my testimony and how I came to faith with them. We are still following up with all these contacts; please pray that we will follow up well and students will see this as fact and be receptive to it!

Reaching Our Goals
Wow, another university year is coming to an end! We can hardly believe it has almost been two years since we came here to start this center! Looking back brings to mind our initial goals of getting the center up and running, showing the local believers how it can work, and then passing it over to them as their long term platform for attracting students. We recall the days leading up to our official opening, not knowing if anyone would come. That first week we had about 5-7 members join, all the way to now when we’re having 67 students study at English Center! We have two levels of students, and the beginner level is being taught by two of our local staff. It feels incredible to see all the work God has done to help us attain our goals!

Cross Roads
Recently we have been facing life-changing decisions. Annie’s nursing license will become inactive if she does not practice within five years and it is coming up on that time. So, we have had a big choice to make. Should we stay here, look at what other location our Organization might want us to go to and let her licenses go, or go back to the States and have her start working again? We have been praying about this for months and months. After seeking God’s will we believe He is leading us out of Central Asia. We will be handing the center over to the locals as we have planned and Annie will go back to the hospital. Although, we sense God’s hand as we step in this direction it has been a bitter-sweet conclusion to come to. We are sad to leave our second home here and the work we’ve been so active in. But at the same time we are looking forward to what God has in store for us next! Crusade is working with me on trying to place me in a position where I can still be used with my gifts in Evangelism. I am not certain what that exactly looks like right now, but I look forward to sharing the details as they become clearer! As we seek the Lord about this we would ask you to pray for our direction, as well.

Tickets Home
Even before this decision, we knew that we would be returning to the States this summer for our furlough; so we have been saving one hundred dollars a month for the past three years toward our return travel home.  We were able to get tickets for our family for $4,400 on June 7th. We need an additional $800 to cover the cost of our voyage. If you are in a position at this time, can you assist us with this one-time need? We are truly grateful for all that you do for us! Thank you so much for your support! We look forward to sharing more stories like these in the coming months!

New Semester Starts With A Surprise

Friendships are Made:

“The worst part of our winter break was that we could not come to the center everyday! And the best day of our break was the day we went ice skating with you and our friends from the center!” This was the response we got over and over again as we asked our students about their holidays. They had four weeks off from the university and we naturally closed the center during these weeks, as well, in order to spend the much needed time to plan for the upcoming semester. It was exciting and humbling to hear how much they enjoy the center and the time they spend there!

The Key To Their Hearts:

We have seen an incredible difference in our ministry this past semester at the center compared to the previous year we spent on the university. Although, we had several occasions to share the gospel the prior year, we had few accept, and we never built the deep bond and rapport like we have now with these students at the center! We feel having these deeper friendships and connections with the students will be the key in seeing them later accept Christ as their Savior and Lord. We are no longer just foreigners and strangers that came to their country to try and change their beliefs, but we are friends, that love and care for them. We are people they respect and trust. We have heard many, many testimonies of the local believers here in Central Aisa and the common denominator in all of their stories is someone built a relationship with them along the way and through their lives they saw Christ, and were forever changed.

What’s Next:

Already we have been able to share about our beliefs and about our personal relationships with God on several different occasions and because they trust us, they listen and still come back. Our goal by the end of the semester is to have one-on-one time with each student coming to the center and present them with the chance to accept God’s sacrificial gift. Continue praying for their hearts and the timing of these conversations.  Another part of our work here is to train and raise up the local believer staff to take on the long term ministry. Recently, the largest part of that has been showing them how to run the center as a business and use its potential to reach students for the Lord. This is a new way of doing ministry and has been challenging at times to persuade them of the benefits. We are thrilled to see them become more involved with the center this semester. We can tell they are catching the vision of this strategic platform!

Kicking Off Another Semester With Tennessee Friends:

Words cannot describe the energy and motivation we get from having a group of like-minded people here working full blast along side of us!! We were blessed to have another team from our home church come last week! It was a week full of excitement! Two of the people on the team, Brandon and Amanda, were returning after just being here in October; this had a huge impression on the students that got to know them last semester. The other two, Luke and Joanna, brought just as much fun to the week! Each morning Branden and the team set out on two of the largest universities in the city and were able to do a lot of advertising for the center. We have had several come and join because of the work they did. The team also took the load off of us for the week and taught all the lessons at the center. Then in the late afternoons they spent quality time with the students hanging out, dancing, and playing Uno a hundred different ways. Most of them had opportunities to share their personal testimonies with students during the week and continue planting seeds of truth in those lives. When they left, we weren’t the only ones crying; they impacted these students on such a deep level, even the guys were bawling as they said their goodbyes!

Taken By Surprise:

In His Word, God calls us to leave our families in order to follow Him. For some maybe this isn’t a huge sacrifice, but for us this has been one of the hardest things about living on the other side of the world. Therefore, you can imagine the sea of emotions we had when Annie’s dad showed up with the team and surprised us all! On top of the fantastic week working with friends, we were able to spend some wonderful quality time with him and allow him to see and be a part of our lives we’ve been living here in Central Asia! It was hard to say good bye when it was time for him to leave, but we were so blessed by the valuable time we had with him! We are still stunned from his initial appearance!!

The Ultimate Sacrifice

by Branden: 

It was a cold snowy morning in Central Asia; we had gathered students that had been coming to our English classes from several universities around the city.  The students had the day off for celebrating the Muslim holiday Eid-al-Adha, which is their most honored holiday because it is the day they sacrifice sheep for the forgiveness of their sins they have committed over the past year.

As I walked into our English center I was amazed by all the students that had come that morning to meet with us!  They had two days off for the holiday.  The previous morning we had a "game-day" in order to lighten the mood for what we had planned for this particular morning, when we would be talking to the students about the five languages of love.

When men walk into a room it is cultural to shake all the other men's hands.  As I glanced around the room I recognized all the other guys, except one.  His arms were crossed and he was slouched in his chair with a light blue toboggan on; he seemed as though he had been drug their unwillingly.  I usually approach new people first to make them feel as comfortable as possible; so he was the first person I greeted that morning. 

As I made my way around the room shaking the others hands I ended up at a different table from the new student who had caught my attention.  When we transitioned into the main topic we realized the groups were too big.  After splitting up the groups, I ended up, unintentionally, at the table with the student who I had met earlier.  As we walked through the five different points each person in the group had a chance to share something in the last week where they had shown love or been shown love.  When the time came around to this young man he sad up in his chair and said "You probably won't believe me, but I killed fifty sheep on Sunday for Allah and we gave more than half of the meet away to the poor"

As he sat there in his self righteousness, I began to ask question as if I had no idea about this holiday.  After he finished, I felt the Lord pressing so hard that I couldn't keep my mouth closed when it was my turn to share.  Respect is a big deal here; so my first words were, "I respect what you did and giving to the poor is a great thing." Then I shared how I experienced the forgiveness of my sins on a daily basis because of the ultimate sacrifice for me when Christ hung on the cross and I no longer have to kill sheep to earn my way and favor with God.

Although there was some tension in the air, I was prompted by the Spirit to respond to what this student had said about his faith and forgiveness of sin.  Four students were able to hear about ultimate forgiveness and having a personal relationship with the living God.  Opportunities like these are bringing us closer to all the nations hearing truth.   

Student Center Opens in Central Asia

From Branden and Annie

Last week we said good bye to some wonderful friends. A group from TSC came and helped work at the student center. Click on the link to watch the video of our work here.  Last week was our official opening of the center. Also last Friday I taught them pumpkin carving. They had never seen it or made jack-o-lanters. We all had a blast! If any of you are interested they are planning trip in 2012 maybe in Feb we will keep you posted.

http://animoto.com/play/iHePDngWmzWFNjXxORc0zg

Blessings

Branden Annie

Fundraiser Opportunity!

By Branden and Annie:

 

Dear Friends,

Our family is doing great and are excited about this short term team that will be coming in October to work with us!  This team will help us launch our new student center, teach English classes, coordinate recreational events and bring supplies. Here is some information on how you can help support our ministry, the team coming in October, and have fun while doing it!

There is a great local event called Sodium in Franklin.  This event will be a blast for the whole family - with live music, face painting, balloon artists, climbing wall, video games and more. Pizza, drinks and desserts will also be for sale. You can attend this event and also help with a fundraiser for the short term team coming in October. We hope that you can make it and thank you greatly for your support! Click here to see more details on facebook about the event:

https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=161940827219088

Summer Months Fly By

By Branden and Annie

“Commit your way to the Lord, trust in Him, and He will bring it to pass.” Psalm 37:5
The summer months have flown by and the school year is quickly approaching; we still have a lot preparation and foot work that needs to be done in order to get our new academic center up and running! Please commit to pray for us as we undertake this enormous project! Our director left for a year in the States and has given this task over to Branden. Our goal is to have five hundred students become members of our center and be coming on a regular basis.


SUMMER PROJECT

We were privileged to have a team from a church in California come the second week of July and help kick
off the promotion of the center. For nine days we spread ourselves among seven universities and
passed out around fifteen hundred brochures to up-coming freshmen. In the afternoons we invited students to come visit free English clubs in order to create interest in what we will offer full time in the near future.

OUR VISION

We want our center to be unlike the other academic centers around the city that only offer high priced grammar classes. Our vision is to be more like a club, where there is an upbeat environment to practice speaking English. We want to attract students with interesting topics, guest speakers, and special events! Each day we will offer something different; for example on Mondays we will have cultural day where we will invite individuals to come speak on their native country (there is an international church with several countries represented, we also have a Chinese team and a Korean team here long term). On Tuesdays we will have our usual fun filled interactive English clubs. On Wednesdays we will offer grammar with preparation for test like similar to the SAT. Thursdays will be career day. We will discuss topics such as resumes, interviews, business etiquette, etc. We will also have guest speakers come from around the city and speak on their professional experiences such as doctors or embassy employees. On Fridays we will open our doors for anyone to come and check us out. On these days we will show films in English that we will discuss afterwards.
Our goal is to build a place for the students to get connected and feel a special identity. We will not have any clear spiritual meetings at the center that would destroy our platform. But as we build relationships with these students and their friends we feel that we will have many “open doors” to present the gospel.

OPPORTUNITY AWAITS YOU!

We also have an opportunity for you to be a part of this project! Our home church,
Thompson Station Church, in Tennessee is coming here October 7th-16th and we want to invite you to come along!!! If you are interested, here is an opportunity to come and serve with us! Please pray and consider if God is leading you to come! We are excited to have some of our ministry partners come be a part first hand in the kingdom work they have been praying for and financially giving towards! For more information you can contact Brandon Akers at bdakers@gmail.com.

MORE TEAMS!

Please also remember to pray for us during the month of September. We have two more teams coming from other states to help jump start the semester and the grand opening of the center! We are thankful for this timely help and are praying for the students to be further interested due to the presence of foreigners!  We love you all and are thankful for your partnership with us! Hope you are enjoying your summer months!

(TSC supports the work of Branden and Annie through GOCTW offerings and will be sending its first team in 2011! For more info on how to join this team, go to http://www.goctw.org/.

Narrow Is The Gate

Branden and Annie - Central Asia May Update

(TSC supports the work of Branden and Annie through GOCTW offerings and will be sending its first team in 2011! For more info on how to join this team, go to http://www.goctw.org/.

Real Expectations

“For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, there are few who find it.” (Matthew 7:14)

Wow, this verse has carried us many days since we last wrote. Our goal as we said in our last letter was that our team would give five hundred students an opportunity to hear the gospel before the end of the semester. Annie and I personally had several opportunities this semester to share. Annie shared with thirty eight students and I shared with thirty four.

We are very thankful that twenty nine came to faith, but it showed us the reality of this verse that the gate is small and the way is narrow and real expectations are that few will find it. Even though it is so hard to see students reject this, we continue to spend time with them if they want to be with us and come to our classes and student meetings.

Another time Annie and the girls were planning a time to bring in a local cosmetologist to share about make-up. Afterwards they would share about the more important topic: inner beauty. Annie took the stage and shared about how important inner beauty is and Father’s love. Two girls kept interrupting.   One kept talking about her viewpoint of the topic and was not giving Annie an opportunity to share what was fully on her heart so girls could hear this important message. Annie came home and said how hard it was because of these two girls. You just never know how God is moving; the very next day some of the staff girls followed up with these two girls and both of them came to faith and are really walking in a relationship with our Father.

Our plans for the summer

Next week we leave for a southern city of our country. There we will have a week of seminary classes. We are required to continue our education and have requirements to fulfill in order to stay on staff. Our organization brings in a teacher for that time and we have exams at the end of the classes.

Our student center is finally finished and we will be preparing to open it in July! Right now we are meeting and discussing how to use this new tool to gather students for the fall semester. We will also be giving aid to the families left without homes from the war last June.

We want to end by saying thank you for your continued support as we work together and these stories couldn’t happen without your support

Update from Central Asia

Wow! What an incredible month it has been in Central Asia! It is always an awesome blessing for our Creator to use us to spread the life changing news of His Son to others! He has given us so many opportunities to do just that this month!

Student Meeting

On Friday afternoons we have a “social club” for students to come
hang out and listen to presentations on different topics. At the
beginning of November, Branden was asked to speak about
relationships at this meeting. After sharing stories from his own
life he had each table discuss their thoughts to three questions.
There were four tables of about eight students and one of our
staff, who led the conversations. We heard afterwards that three
of the tables were able to share the gospel as a result from the
questions Branden presented.

At one table our staff girl asked her group, “Do you know anyone
who would not just forgive their enemies, but would die for
them?” To which several responded in astonishment, “No, why would anyone die for their enemies?!” Another believer responded, “I know someone who would; and actually did die for their enemies.” The entire table was intrigued. The girl continued and shared what Christ had done on the cross. Because of this, the staff was able to set up a time to show this group of girls the Jesus Film the next week.

English Club

Annie started teaching an English club one day a week beginning this month. During her second class she played an introduction game in order for the students to get to know her better. After the game she allowed the students to ask any other questions they wanted to know about her. To which one girl asked, “What is the highlight of your life?” Annie had the opportunity to share that the highlight of her life was when she accepted Jesus as her personal Savior and friend and that she continues to have a personal relationship with Him daily.

Ministry on the Universities
Branden has also been going to the universities on Tuesday afternoons with Nate (named changed for security), our team leader. They have had several opportunities using the tool Soularim to have life conversations with students and present the love of Christ to them. This past week he and Ethan (named changed for security), another staff guy, were able to sit in
the cafeteria with five students for over an hour and discuss the meaning of life. Branden
shared his personal testimony of how God changed his life and what Christ means to him.
Before they left he challenged them that if what he had said to them were from God and not just from him they would know in their hearts it was truth.

These are just a few of the stories from this month of the opportunities we have had to spread the news of Christ to this city in Central Asia. It still amazes us that for many of these students it is the first time they have heard that there is someone who loved their enemies enough to die for them. A fact that is so common in our country comes as a surprise to many here.

Our director challenged each of us to share the gospel with fifty new students before the end of the year. We have not yet reached that goal, but between the two of us we have had the privilege of sharing with forty seven students in the past two months! Continue to pray for the hearts of these students to be enlightened to the Truth. We love you and are incredibly thankful for your prayer and financial support! God Bless!

Branden and Annie

(Branden and Annie are serving with an unreached people group in Central Asia. They are supported monthly through the Go Change the World Funds of Thompson Station Church.)

Update from the Other Side...

An article from Branden and Annie...

As the fall semester is coming to an end here in (our city) we are remembering all the conversations and new students we have met. This past semester our team held seven classes a week ranging from twenty to thirty students in each class; so just this semester alone our team met about two hundred new students. Looking forward into next semester, we have examined what did or didn’t work well as we tried to get deeper into the lives of the students. One thing we are very thankful for today is that the Korean couple on our team saw a (national) university girl make a decision to follow Christ. It has encouraged us greatly that the Lord is moving here; we
need to just keep proclaiming and leave the results up to him.

Also, about two months ago I met a (national) guy and spent a few days getting to know
him. What made our friendship so unique is even in this far away land his sister is doing a workstudy abroad in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, of all places. During those days I spent with him he was very interested in what I was doing here and why I seemed so happy. This opened a door
for me to share my personal testimony about how God met me and changed my life on those
railroad tracks one summer in Iowa. He works at an internet club where lots of students go because they don’t have computers in their homes like we do. I stopped by there one Friday to see if I could take him to lunch, unfortunately, he could not leave because there was no one to watch the store. In this culture anytime you leave someone they always walk you out, though, and as we were departing on the street he looked at me and said, “Branden, I have been thinking a lot about what you said about your life and I think I might want to accept this Jesus.” I stood shocked and filled with excitement, but not surprised. I told him I wanted to talk more about this with him and that what he was considering is very important. Even though Annie and I's primary focus right now is to learn language so we can explain things clearly in their native tongue when given the opportunity, it is exciting to know that we are and will
be used when we yield ourselves to investing in
peoples’ lives.

Brandon and Annie,

Central Asia