A Rare Moment of Transparency

The blog is generally about happy, surface level, daily activity type things. And I mostly plan for it to stay that way. But let me take a moment away from pictures of Josiah and bizarre cultural situations to tell you...

We've been pretty lonely.

That statement has not yet ceased to be true, but I think we are feeling more hopeful. And so while I feel hopeful, I want to just take a moment to say thank you and ask you to pray for us.

Thank you for commenting on this blog.

(Really, thank you for communicating with us in any way at all.)

Now, that is not at all meant to make anyone feel guilty who does often or ever leave comments. Because honestly, I don't expect you to. I used to and then I realized that not everyone is into reading blogs and especially not commenting on them. (I rarely comment on other blogs.) So I put that little map over there to remind me that you do care. :) But I will say that blog comments (and facebook messages and random emails... generally any communication) help us to remember that we still have friends and people still love us. Hopefully soon we won't have to rely solely on the internet for relationships!

Please pray for us as we choose a church community to connect with.

We feel hopeful about building relationships because we have started to have consistent contact with other believers. We attended Discovery Bay International Community Church for the month of July and met lots of wonderful people and had good fellowship. This month we are attending Tung Chung Church and have so far been very welcomed and been able to make personal connections. After years of working in churches, it is nice to be able to spend some time exploring other churches before we choose where to worship consistently. And after several weeks of being too sick to go to church and not really knowing anyone, what a blessing to connect with believers again!

(A note about church: At this point in time, we are seeking to attend an English-speaking international church. This is due to the fact that a) we only speak English and are not currently studying Cantonese full-time and b) Nathan's ministry focus is not the people of Hong Kong. [Click on the SALT tab above for an explanation of ministry focus.] We hope to have lots of opportunities to minister in the church context. The international churches in Hong Kong are very international with people from all over the world, as well as locals, attending.)

Please pray that Nathan can sleep.

Though we have sensed God's leading and seen His provision during the past many months, and though we know we are where He wants us to be, this move has been hard. Months of traveling, moving, uncertainty, sickness, etc. have been stressful. And now that we are more settled, Nathan faces new work, new goals, new expectations... and a lot of unknowns. Times of high stress seem to equal insomnia for Nathan and he has been getting very little sleep, though he is quite exhausted.

Please pray for the many Asian pastors that need more Biblical training.

We are not so silly to think that God cannot accomplish His work without us. But we do believe that He has called us to be part of a pastoral training movement in Asia, and our involvement in that work is certainly impacted by the first two prayer requests mentioned. So ultimately, pray for God's Word to be made more fully known in Asia. But as you think about how God may choose to use us in that process, pray that we are able to develop friendships and get necessary sleep... you know, just some of the basic human essentials! (Thankfully, God continues to provide - through many of you - the other basics... like shelter, food, and clothing!)

And one more thing...

You'd think that being lonely would mean that we would be better about communicating individually with people. Somehow that isn't always true. We go through spurts of good communication and then there are other times when the idea of maintaining relationships via the internet is just depressing and we don't do it. I personally have a "I should reply to this person when I can write a thoughtful email" list that hasn't decreased much recently. So if you feel like we owe you some communication love, send us a gentle reminder! We really do appreciate you all. We know it isn't easy to remember friends on the other side of the world, so thank you.

Thank you for praying.