Oh, the gifts

Bear with me, this is just a bit of a reflective post. It seems like a good time of year to reflect a bit...

We opened lots of gifts on Christmas. It was wonderful. I am not one to skimp on gifts, and neither are our moms and friends, so we had this really fun Christmas!! And we had a couple of somewhat frenzied weeks that goes along with Christmas (moreso than we normally experience here)--trying to get presents finished and delivered to our friends around town. {We are actually still getting pumpkin bread baked and cds burned with Christmas music to deliver this week. It's easier to do that here because nobody really knows much about Christmas or really even care too much...}

But even with all the frenzy and fatigue that happened the couple of weeks before Christmas, I found myself just reflecting on the gifts that we've received the past year or so. About 4 days before we went back to the states, we had a Thanksgiving party. And we had all sorts of friends come that have been friends since we first got here. And some that we'd met within the last year. And about two days before that party, I had gotten the phone number of a friend that I met our first summer. So we got to invite her and her two friends to the party.

And we got to hear all about how the Father had touched her life and opened her eyes through the earthquake (and post earthquake) to receive His life. And her two best friends had their eyes opened. The first believers in one area of this state that is still one of our favorite places we've ever been to. What a gift.

And another friend: our friend Jake. He believed the summer before when a volunteer came through. We were working at the hostel for two months and had friends visit. And in the week that they were here, they met Jake (his English was already good AND he wanted more English practice). And they talked to Jake about eternity. But the amazing, totally God-sized thing about Jake is that when our volunteer friend talked to Jake and his mom, they were totally ready. Jake's grandmother believed. And her whole family ridiculed her and treated her with disdain for believing. But sometime before she died, she told her family, "someday a foreign believer is going to come through here and you will believe when you hear his story". And our friend got to be that person. And we get to be friends with Jake. What a gift.

While we were in the states, we got an email about our friend Laura. She was one of the first people we met when we moved here. And she has this tender heart that is drawn to the elderly and to children, and her elderly friends introduced her to us and Luke, and she started to spend lots of time at our house. And she was MOVED by the stories that we tell that go from creation all the way through Jesus. She was just wrapped up in every story we ever told. And we were told that she believed. So we spent time with her and talked about important things with her. However, she was the only one of her friends who was on the path to believing, and she pulled back. Because she was told, you are part of OUR people. You must believe the TBdhsm that everyone we love so much believes...

But, while we were in the states, we got an email from a friend over here that lives in another city. And our friend Laura had believed while she spent a year in Thailand (with the elderly couple that initially introduced Laura to us), and she was so excited to invest her life into the people that we love so much. What a gift.

And there's so many more. We need relationships here. So when we returned from the states and so many of our friends had moved away (people don't live here too long--plus, our friends are very nomadic in their culture...), we were discouraged. So we asked for new friends. And I felt a tug in my spirit that I needed to go dancing once a week with our friends. And that first week, I met several ladies from our area that are still becoming friends. What a gift.

And we feel so thankful for the gifts, but we also need help and wisdom and strength in moving forward. In being faithful with the gifts and blessings we have already received...