I was quite surprised that Christmas season here is busy like all around the world. This was a good time for us to transition into sharing the G0spel. We hosted many Christmas parties; read from the Bible about Jesus’ birth and shared with our friends.
A fun fact: people here exchange apples on Christmas Eve as a sign of wishing peace on each other because in the local language the word for ‘peaceful night’ and ‘apple’ sound very similar.
I have some bad news. My friend Thomas made a decision to come into the family, but he has been reluctant to join a training group citing exams, and life just being busy, as excuses. He has been avoiding us since then. But this hasn’t discouraged me from moving forward and pressing towards the goal.
But I have more exciting news, Code and Alicia got baptized. God is really working their lives. Praise Him! Code has already shared with all his friends that he is a Christian and has even helped in bringing one of his friends to Christ. Alicia’s home is a couple of hours from where we live and so we got to visit her family and see her witness to her parents and relatives. She boldly prayed in her heart language in front of everybody and it was cool to see how she isn’t afraid to live out her faith. Isn’t that awesome?
Victor, one of my buddies at Cornell was visiting his relatives and so I got a chance to catch up with him and show him some of the work we do. It is winter vacation here and so for the next month all of the students will go back home for spring festival. At the end of next week, all of us will be going on a retreat for 10 days with other missionaries from all over Asia. Be lifting up this time — that it would be refreshing and that we would come back renewed and replenished.