every morning i wake up here and wonder what the Lord has planned……because i have no idea. this morning was no different. i woke up and started reading my Bible and praying for the place we are and the people we are meeting. kim came in and asked what we were doing today. no one really had any plans. so we decided to go to the internet cafe and later go walk around the city….we still haven’t gotten to do that. so we all came to the internet (and i finally got to call home..yeah!!!) and checked our email. after a little while laura and i decided to go walk around. after trying to buy only one montow…very
difficult, we started walking down the street and of course got all of the usual stares, all of the little kids saying hello and lots of giggling. we got about half way down the block when we heard a few people behind us yelling, “hello!!!” so we turned around and saw about 3 girls inside a doorway waving at us. we waved back, they giggled and then started waving for us to come in. so we went inside. the place we went into was very, very small. it comfortably fits about 10 people. once we got in and everyone who came to look at us came in there were probably about 20 people inside. the girls who invited us in are around 17 or 18. a couple of them can speak english a little. so we told each other our names, and one asked us to take our picture with her. the place we were at had a little photo booth, you know like the ones at the mall, and they developed the pictures there and made stickers out of them. so we sqeezed into the booth and took some pictures. while we waited to have them developed we talked, as much as we could and laura and tried to figure out a way to see these girls again. this was obviously a devine appointment from the Lord and we didn’t want to let it go. so we told them we were having a party and invited them to come….hoping this would be ok with everyone else. they said they would like to come tonight and then pointed outside and asked us to take another photo. we said sure and headed outside. they took us down the street and into another business….we had no idea what was going on. they took us upstairs and we realized what was happening. we were at a professional photographers….in his studio. he had props, backgrounds and all sorts of photography equipment. it was so funny. so we posed for some photographs….so weird. it was so funny. one minute we are walking down the street and the next morning we are in a studio having portraits done.
after all of that we were off to get ready for our party. first thing we had to find everyone else and make sure this was all ok. on the way we ran into a few more people that we have met and invited them too. altogether we had invited around 8 or 9 people. we found the rest of the group and of course it was alright. so we went to a bakery that we found, got some goodies and sodas and headed back to the room to clean up. when we arrived we found that the maids had been in our room and were doing their laundry in our bathroom. these ladies are really funny…..seriously, we love them. we invited the one in there to our party later, and as we cleaned up the room she sat on the bed and watched us, which laura pointed out was very ironic.
the girls arrived and as jessica made little cards for them, laura put the food out and kim and i blew up balloons we prayed over the room and the amazing opportunity that the Lord had given us. it got close to 7 and we started to watch out the window and wait. after a few minutes we saw a few of the girls…but then they started going the wrong way. kim yells, “friske!!! hurry go get them!!” so i run down the stairs (we are on the 4th floor…no elevator) and get out onto the street. i look up and the girls are yelling from the window trying to tell me which way they went. so i am going down the street and i finally see them. i am running now, they are really far away, and i run for a little while until i finally catch them. i thought the faces of the people were funny when we were just walking down the street, but now there is a crazy american girl running down the street and they really don’t know what to think about that. so i catch the girls and they tell me they are sorry they are late they had to come get something from one of their houses. i tell them it is ok….we just thought they thought we were staying in a different place.
so finally we all get back to the room. there are about 6 girls there at first. and we get to know all of their names and jessica pulls out the makers and we decorate the balloons. we really had no plan of what to do. more people came and all together we ended up with 12 people….including the hotel manager and his family. they asked me to pull out my guitar, so i did and we sang worship songs for a little while. it was so much fun. they stayed for a little bit and we invited them back on monday. our friend that we are working with will be here and will be able to help us with translation. we are hoping that maybe we will be able to share the gospel with them.
please be in prayer. this is so amazing. just these relationships that the Lord is allowing will mean so much when future missionaries come. this is such a blessing. please be in prayer for this place and these people.
sorry i can’t put any pictures up of our new friends…..when the become believers 🙂 it will not be good for them to be identified.
