Asia, C/N/V 국 

​Dear partners, January 2025
Happy new year!  Isn’t January 1st just such an awesome day?  When I heard the news on Christmas morning that the Pope was inaugurating the year of jubilee with the message of spes non confudit (Rm 5:5), my curiosity piqued and I learned that the year of jubilee comes every 25 years according to the catholic calendar, instead of the Biblical 50, and that the last year of jubilee was 2000!  I don’t know what that year signifies for you, but February 2000 was when I first set my foot on the m-field, meaning that I will be celebrating my “silver anniversary” next month.  That realization simply took my breath away and I was awe-struck as the many moments of his grace, faithfulness, humor, and sovereignty flashed through my mind’s eye.  Oh, what a ride it has been!  
The majority of my work in 2024 had been in assisting C & M and plowing the soil, gingerly due to helicopter-parental supervision.  There certainly had been moments of uneasiness and doubt, that I wasn’t quite living out the life of m, and the sense of being lost at times.  My seemingly omniscient partners, though, would send emails and texts just in time to buoy my spirit, at times to the point of tearful hilarity.  Thank you, friends.  You can’t imagine just how lifegiving those acts of kindness are!  And equally reviving are our upcoming plans.  We had been scheming ways to share the good news without raising the ire of these controlling parents, inviting them to the small group meetings at C & M’s ch, but some would discontinue once their parents discovered the religious nature of these meetings.  

 

But then, our students who had managed to achieve necessary IELTS scores and are now preparing for their studies in the US or UK, have sought me out for advice to help them prepare for life abroad.  And as everyone knows, one can’t possibly understand the western culture without the basic knowledge of the Bib I will be stateside from mid-January to early February, taking advantage of the long lunar year holiday here, but once I return, we are p’g to get weekly studies off the ground for them.  We would really appreciate you lifting this project up with us.