 Merry Christmas, We wish you a Merry Christmas, rejoicing in the birth of our Savior. Thank you for your love, encouragement, prayers, and generosity. -Sam, Namie, Floris (10), and Elora (8) SEEDS OF FAITH GATHERED  (Sunday afternoon) I’m thrilled to share with you about a new church gathering that’s been started about a month ago. After much prayer, brainstorming, consulting, and discussing, Sunday church services have been started in our Roma neighborhood, by couple units from our org, together with other workers. Praises!!! All Glory to God!!! Roma church team is dedicating their passion to meet at our team’s community center space. There has been other efforts and sweats poured over in the past 10+ years for church planting by various workers, and this is the continuous effort of that dedication and love towards the unreached Romas in Albania. For some reason, the previous efforts (or strategy one might call) did not come to the visible fruit of a gathered church, however, there is a sense of new-ness in what’s started this time around; a sense of God moving. There are more people in the room than in the picture, and I wonder if you can feel the tightness and warmth of the space. PRAY – for more people from the neighborhood would come to explore, especially who have the hidden seeds of faith; the work started in them with desire to know God. – for workers who are involved every week to make this happen, to be encouraged and be strengthened in faith. In our evangelism effort in conversations, Sam and I felt challenged by the Lord to ask individuals how they feel about their faith or what they believe in life. Over the years, we noticed growing visible signs of seeds of faith in increasingly more conversations! As the church continues to meet, it’s been a joy for us to bring up a conversation about the importance of gathering. Our personal prayer time for the church also has been full of promises. PRAISE – for what God does and what He will do! – for God’s timing and His perfect plan and care for the future believers to come forth, from the Roma families and surrounding marginalized neighborhoods. – for God doing His thing through so many previous and current workers as His vessels. We thank God for workers in the field. READING, WRITING, AND LOVING      Individual mentorships and skills training at Goodtree ministry have been steady. We are recognized and trusted better from the new neighborhood up in the mountain. Many of the suspicious eyes have turned into familiar faces of greetings, as our staff continued the routine of visiting houses for teaching literacy. PRAY – for Oksana. She is a mom of 2 little boys. It’s hard to find a volunteer for us to occupy her boys while she learns letters, but every chance we can offer, she is eager and bright. – for Diana. She is spiritually ever growing and loving Jesus. At her new job as a massage therapist, she needs help with math; keeping the right change, and communication skills. Pray for wisdom for our team to guide her well. – for Demir. Pray for protection from negative influences of his peers. He is left under other family’s care while his parents have left to seek refugee help from another country. – for others not mentioned. Pray for spiritual awakening, as well as intellectual growth in learning new skills. PRAISE – Looking back, God has always brought new women to teach. When it seemed like there was no one interested in training, they somehow popped out of nowhere so far with desires to learn. Praises for His continuous pursuit in these two Roma neighborhoods! – Esmeralda delivered a healthy boy, Mateo. And she has come to the above church gathering on her own!  (muffins baked with Romani flags for International Romani Language Day) AN HONEST PRAYER REQUEST      (current view of Tirana from an airplane) For 5.5 years in Albania, the country went through a drastic development. Road in front of our house was not paved, now it is. Our neighbors commuted by bicycles and we were one of the few families with a car. Now many families have 1 or 2 or even 3 cars. This really changed the scenery. Rent prices and everything else went up, and we nearly didn’t realize that our living cost jumped so high over time. In November and December, Sam and I have spent a great deal of our time, writing devotions to prepare, cutting and drying many lemons to prepare for soap making, shopping and cutting fabrics and embroidery yarns to prepare to teach sewing skills. This period of preparation was chaotic, falling behind with our children’s homeschool, and feeling behind on the preparations to try to carve out time for it, while feeling inadequate for what we didn’t get to accomplish yet. It didn’t seem as nice as the pretty pictures above. 🙂 Since October, we have been putting aside some days to raise more financial support for our living cost. We were praying over people, writing, and following up. It was also a sweet time of prayer for our current supporters. We have always loved asking our current supporters to be our partners, as we believe so much in what God does. I’m not sure why exactly, but we have felt rather discouraged and inadequate this time to be diligently asking and praying towards our goal of $1200 more monthly in our fund. In this past week, God has reminded us that He knows our financial need, and His care is all over us as well as all our supporters and friends who also struggle in finances. In our discouragement, yet in faith in our caring Father, we thought we should really ask for prayers from all of you. Could you pray that our need will be met, as we continue to pray and seek for new supporters? More importantly, could you pray that God will increase our faith and that we would not fear? We already feel strengthened by knowing your faithful prayers and sharing this burden honestly and humbly. Thank you so much for your prayers! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR HOPING FOR THE UNREACHED ROMA PEOPLE GROUP IN ALBANIA. |