Wednesday 28 Apr
Pete and Nomes share how God is enabling them to build deep, life-giving friendships.
“It is our hearts desire that all people, and in particularly our H friends, their families and the wider H community, would come to experience wonderful new life that is found in Jesus.
One of the things we are thankful for since returning to Central Asia in November last year, is just how warmly we have been received by the local people, especially by our H friends and Nomes’ work colleagues.
The other thing that has been surprising is that, having returned, we feel more at ease and confident in our ability to communicate than when we left. Many of Pete’s H friends have commented that his ability to converse actually improved significantly while we away! The time we spent last year doing online lessons with our language nurturers Mike and Andrew was clearly time well spent.
All of this means that, by our God’s grace, we are slowly building deeper friendships and broadening our relational networks. We are so grateful that we are once again being invited to key social gatherings with Mike’s friendship group. One highlight was joining six families on a weekend away.
A few weeks later, Pete offered to shout all the guys to a meal out at a nice H restaurant. During this meal, the guys decided that this should be a monthly event and so Pete is now having regular opportunities to connect with this group. More recently, Mike invited Pete along to his older brother’s wedding in his parent’s village. This was another wonderful experience of H culture and hospitality.
But even more significantly, over this period Pete and Mike have had a number of significant conversations about matters of faith. In a recent culture and language lesson, Pete was able to give a basic explanation of the Easter story, explaining as best he could the grace and forgiveness that we can receive through Jesus and the fact that we seek to do good in loving response to the grace we’ve received, not in order earn our way to heaven.
This was not something Mike had ever heard before.
While he hasn’t brought it up again since, we are praying that the Holy Spirit would be at work and that there will be further opportunities to build on this conversation in the coming weeks and months.”
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