6 months ago I was holding a 9 weeks old baby boy about to board a flight yet again to Asia Pacific. It’s now been 6 months since we moved here and praise the Lord we’re still here and pressing on.
We’ve been keeping very busy with language study trying to put in 40 (or 30 for Bethany) hours a week. Our days are full of language and culture opportunities. We’ve been pushing ourselves to get out of our comfort zone and make new friends. It’s less difficult now that we have a certain amout of language under our belt, but it’s never easy. A good amount of our hours are filled with language sessions, listening and transcribing our recordings. But when we are not doing that we keep quite busy with so many other things…
Nicole just started Awana at out local church! She really enjoys it!
We were invited to our friend’s sisters 15th birthday party. They had a great feast called ‘Bakar Batu’ which is a way of cooking food with a pile of large leaves, veggies, meat and hot rocks layered and buried in the ground for a couple hours.
Bethany really enjoys going to the local market to buy our fresh fruits and veggies. There is always so many fun new foods or animals for sale! Shopping there never gets old.
Clay is such a blessing to us as he makes it very easy to make new friends!
We are daily desiring to understand the language and culture around us with the hope that one day we’ll be able to communicate God’s love in words they will understand.
This family are our close neighbors and are becoming good friends. We recently had them over for dinner which was a big step for us combining two very different cultures under our roof. It was a pleasant time and we’re thankful!
Recently Josh led a guys camping trip! They hiked several miles, fished for their meals and went on a evening boat ride on the lookout for crocodiles.
For about an hour before dark is the only cool part of the day where it’s somewhat enjoyable to go out for a walk. As a family we try to do this as often as possible. Slowly but surely we are building more relationships in our neighborhood.
We have made many relationships with the local people here. More recently Bethany has been paying special attention to a little 4 month old boy that was abandoned by his mother at birth. The adoptive mother (Delina) cares for baby Valentino but does not have money for his formula. For a week Valentino was only given water and now he is very ill from malnurishment. Lord willing God’s love would be shown to Delina and Valentino as Bethany focuses on nourishing Val back to health.
We’re so thankful for how well the girl’s are adjusting here. Both understand the language well and are speaking it daily!
The beauty here is breathtaking! As a family we try to make it a priority to get out to refresh and reenergize.
For our love and passion to know and serve Christ to become stronger daily.
For overall encouragement and a guard against stress
Our monthly support is currently at 55%. But with additional gifts we are just around 75% supported every month meeting every one of our needs and more! Praise God! We are confident the Lord will provide this need for us as He has time and time again. Pray for those the Lord will use to see the urgency for the gospel to spread and that our financial need would be met. We’d like to see our monthly support raised this year so we can continue saving for large upcoming expenses such as moving and house building.
Check out Bethany’s blog for many more stories!: http://joytopraise.blogspot.com/
Or e-mail us at: josh_weeks@ntm.org
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