First, let me just say I am sitting in the coffee shop in tears, because of the encouragement from your comments! I am blown away by your support and believe me when I say we feel your prayers. Please continue to offer us feedback through comments even if its just to let us know you are praying because it is seriously amazing.
Second, today was our first full day of ministry in our new groups and it was amazing. I am blown away by the receptiveness of the community we are in. We have four groups this month, each assigned to a specific location and a university in the area, so today we got to visit those locations and cover them in prayer. We happened to have a university inside our "area" as well, so we stopped near their courtyard while they were having P.E. class. There was a large group of students playing Chinese hackey sack! "Yes" people who know me! I said hackey sack! I happen to be like the best in the world, so it was awesome. Anyway, we start playing and talking and some of them spoke pretty good English and we were able to talk to them! They were like, "America?! America is good!" Super easy stuff. So we told them what we were doing and got a ton of phone numbers! We're going to get up with them and talk about Jesus whenever they are free. I'm so excited. They were so excited to talk to us and many of them had never seen a foreigner except for on tv. So we talked for a long time. These were some of our new friends!
They were awesome. Then we found a daycare in the area and our contact had mentioned they had many people come to their church because of volunteers in their daycare. So just take a minute to get this in your head… Imagine if a bunch of Chinese people, who don't speak English, showed up at a daycare in America, and wanted to play with the kids and take a thousand pictures of them. SKETCHYYY!!!! However, in china it's completely cool. So we go to one daycare and the plan was for us to talk to them and set up a time for us to go back. This is why you should never make plans on the race. They open the gates, want us to come in now, and give us 30 minutes with the kids. So we're like doing follow the leader, dancing, singing, high five-ing and hugging all these adorable kids. It was awesome, and I really wish I had pictures for you on my phone but I was way too absorbed in those cute faces. I had to use a lot of self control to not take one home.
We finished the day at our assigned university and spoke to a lot more students. At one point at the second university we were in the cafeteria and getting a little frustrated because we weren't really hearing anything from the spirit. We decided to go outside and just pray and wait for God to move. I began praying, "Lord, I don't know who's heart you have prepared so just send them to me," and up walks a guy out of nowhere who says, "I speak English!" So it was super cool and we got to talk to him. Another guy said his mother was a believer and he sometimes studied the Bible with her, so we're definitely going to check on getting him into a church. One guy said he was nervous to speak to us because he had never seen an American in real life. We're borderline celebrities. But we have so many numbers and contacts who we will hopefully be able to pour into the rest of this month!
Prayer Requests:
-For the people we spoke to today that seemed interested in the Gospel that God would begin stirring their hearts to become Christians
-For those that were not receptive that more people would come along when were gone to try to reach them
-For many opportunities to meet with the contacts we received
-For our team leaders who are already feeling the burden of leading a team for 11 months!
-For all of our teams for growth and unity
Please pray specifically for me for an increase in the Holy Spirit and discernment. Today I felt a bit disconnected and let it get me down, even though we were doing great things. Thank you all again for your prayers!
