The "M" Word

New Team Members

There has been some exciting changes for our team brewing for some time. We are adding two new team members to our team here in Central Asia. As you know, the approach to Short-cycle church planting with Avant Ministries is about God's power flowing through a team using five operating principles. The core of this approach is the team. Well, really it is God's power flowing through the team, but I want to focus on the team at this moment.

So we built our team, we trained our team, and we deployed our team. Good enough, right? Wrong! It seems that our team is ambitious enough to take on the Dust Valley, a large unreached area in Central Asia. This task is so huge that we need to incorporate a great couple from the land down under into our team. Tonight we start the process of telling our personal histories and learning about who we each are to explore how best we can work together.

God is good to us. We feel that our new team mates have much to offer the cause and we will better off with them. Pray for us.

We in America feel so proud

I love America.  I wouldn't want to live anywhere else, yet I do because of my calling, my job, my task, my project, whatever you want to call it.  One thing I have learned during the years of not living in the US is that Americans are not very savvy when it comes to learning languages.  We are so proud when one person can get by in one other language.  One young lady (about 5 years old to be exact) I know speaks three languages and understands a fourth.  The children on our street play in two different languages.  And every adult I meet normally speaks at least three just to get by here in the city.  Most English speakers (people from here that speak English) are actually using their fourth or fifth language when the conversing without problem in English.

So what's the point.  Maybe, we should change the way we think about learning another language. It can't be done in one easy 10 minute a day process for three weeks, but it can be done.

Feeling kind of Goth

Could it be the cold that is settling on the city?  Maybe it is the black boots that everyone is sporting these days?  What about the snow that has already fallen once?  Nope, it is none of these things that makes my thoughts tend toward Edgar Allen Poe or maybe some Johnny Depp movie. 

It is the crows.

The crows have descended on the city and the evenings make me want to color my hair black and sport some mascara.  They fly over the city in huge flocks and settle on the trees making filling the air with their sounds.  Each evening just before dusk it is a ritual to step outside and watch the sky turn black as the crows fly over.

So put the cold, with the boots, with the snow, and add in the crows and you have all the makings of some dark tale.

Sometimes Central Asia is just strange.