Summer is over and fall is coming for those of you in the northern hemisphere. Fall is a season that we miss every year, so we just pretend it’s here by drinking apple cider and lighting scented candles 🙂 Our last 3 or 4 months have been almost constantly busy. We have had 38 guests stay here at our house/the guesthouse during that time, including friends, co-workers and leaders in our organization. Apart from those guests, we have also had a number of events here and I have gone on trips to other places.
In June, our co-workers returned from their almost year-long furlough. We had missed them and are glad to have them back. Then we had some of our leadership guys come for a visit, including some guys that we had never met before. They are a key part of how we are able to function in this country, so it was good to meet them.
In early July, Alisha and I celebrated our 16th anniversary with a short trip to another town. Soon after getting back, we had some friends visit for 2+ weeks. In August, I took a trip to the area we used to work in to check up on our co-workers there. They are finishing up language and culture study and are looking for a people group to begin working with. There have been some doors close there, so we are praying for wisdom as continue the search.
I went back there for a regional fellowship time earlier this month and got a chance to see how the different works are going in that region. In between those two trips, we also had some very good friends with their kids come visit who we hadn’t seen in 3+ years. We were very glad to see them and our kids were also glad to have their old friends visit.
But the biggest event that we had been planning over the last several months was regional fellowship in our area, which we hosted at our house. Our dining room was just big enough to host the 35-40 people who came to that, which includes our team here in town. It was a big event for us and we (mainly Alisha) had been coordinating with the visitors who would be sharing at it.
It was geared towards helping our new language learners in town to see what the needs of the different regions and what some of the difficulties of living here are and how to thrive in the midst of it. We felt that it went really well. Even though we have events like these once or twice a year, this fellowship time was different in that it took place over four days (compared to one or two in the past) and also because we hosted it all here at our house.
Beyond just being informative for our new language students, we felt that it also served to help bring us together as co-workers and fellow believers. We had people from four different countries (but all serving here in Asia-Pacific) and the speaking was done in two languages. During these last two weeks of fellowship time here and also in the area we used to live, as we worshipped and fellowshipped together with people from many different cultures, I was reminded of Rev. 7:9-10 which talks about “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb… and they cried out in a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.'”
Having a chance to see even a smaller version of that is quite an experience. If you have never worshipped God along with believers from other cultures and languages, it is a special thing. Even though we serve in a support role, our goal is still to see God glorified as people from more cultures and languages are taught the truth of His word.
Anyways, things will be settling down a little bit in the coming months, although I do have two more trips planned over the next two months. One will be out of the country to attend a week of meetings about the new language learning program we will be teaching to our e2 people (e2 refers to the process of learning the national language and culture).
Apart from all that, our kids have been back in school for the past five or six weeks. They are enjoying it, although Scout is still having some struggles with some things. Davy is in kindergarten and he loves it. He’s a much more social person than the rest of us.
Praise:
-for being able to host friends and co-workers
-involvement in regional fellowships
-that our regional fellowship went well
Prayer:
-upcoming language consultant trips over the next two months
-kids to be able to adjust to higher grades and more difficult classes
-people group/ministry location for our co-workers in our former region
Thank you all for your continued prayer and support!
The McIlroys