We just went to Monticello, the former home of Thomas Jefferson, with a group of internationals. But that is not what the students were most impressed with.

Our Japanese friend shared:

 One of the greatest things I had during this visit to the US was meeting God and his Son again.

She had grown up Catholic in Japan but it has not been very real to her.  Now she has been attending several Bible studies and her faith is becoming real.

When we go on trips we have great opportunities to speak more deeply.

When we traveled to Monticello over Spring Break, I (Mary Kay) ended up sitting in the far back seat with a student as another student had a tendency to get car sick and so she sat up with Fred who was driving.  (God can even use car sickness!) What a blessing as the student from Korea and I got to chat more privately.  She has been attending many Bible studies and she shared this comment:

I met lots of good people who have a faith and trust in God here.  I will keep reading the Bible and I am trying to understand God’s Word better.  I learned here what having a sincere belief is and having a faith mean.

She continued: “How do I find real Christians when I go back home to Korea?” as she said many people in Korea just go to church but it doesn’t impact their lives and they don’t read the Bible.

Please pray for her to find that community of strong believers.

I (Mary Kay) was to meet with Tsen but she was late in arriving as she and her husband had had a bad argument.  It was a time to listen but then I was able to share the theme of forgiveness with her.  Also we discussed various techniques of communication.  Several days later I followed up with a text and this is what she responded with…

We are getting pretty well. And we tried the speaker listener method. It worked! Thanks for your suggestion and help!

MK: I am so glad to hear that you did the speaker listener technique!

Yes. We tried. And we are more gentle today.

This is real love. Being more gentle with each other, even when we don’t feel like it. As part of our work with young couples, we introduce Christian truths in marriage counseling. We now are leading a Sunday marriage group, mostly non-Christians.

Some of our work is from the PREP program which we highly recommend, as it teaches communication techniques that changes behavior, while allowing us to introduce Christian principles to change thinking. Here is the Floor – Speaker Listener technique that we are teaching them.

You can look up “PREP Christian” or write to us for more information.

MAY we all be more GENTLE this Valentine Season!

We were reading a story about my brother-in-law who struggles with Parkinsons. At the end of the story, he shares that he is thankful most for salvation. I was reading with a non-Christian (Wei), during our weekly reading, who had expressed no religious interest for the last 4 months. He asked:

What is Salvation?

We pray for the opportunities, and we jump when the fish bites! I started a dialog about heaven and hell. Stopping me, he explained: “Oh yes, I have heard about heaven. Good people go to heaven and people who do bad things go to hell.”

Trying not to let him off the hook, I asked what it means to do good, or to be bad, and whose standards are we using? I got him to see that we all do bad things when we compare ourselves to Jesus’ standard in the Bible.

So who goes to heaven?

I looked for an analogy. “My son Joey goes to school here to. And he is having a party, but you cannot come, why not?” “Because I do not know him.” “That’s right. It doesn’t matter how rich or how smart his friends are, but it is important that you be his friend and know him. That’s how it is in heaven.

We all have done wrong, but the question is, do we know Jesus, do we know God?

We started reading Matthew, and Wei was surprised to read that Jesus was a real person, and that he was born 2019 years ago! But now Wei has a Bible app and he knows where to start reading.

Please pray that Wei will continue to pursue this new discovery, soon, as he returns to China next month!

… who lives with you, as yourself – Leviticus 19 :33-34.

The only thing better than going to the Museum of the Bible was bringing non-Christians there! Here we were walking in a recreated Nazareth village and we saw a description of hospitality.

Love the foreigner…

One student shared how he had been in America for two years, but he didn’t have any friends, except for now the Chinese Christians reaching out to him.

We had lots of great conversations and clarifications with our seeking friends. We saw how forgiveness was powerful for rescuing people in prison, I told them what I had seen when I worked there.

We sat at a table and saw the universality of Christians with different meal time thankfulness from across the world. We kind of experienced the Old Testament as we walked through the Red Sea.

My (Fred’s) most difficult conversation was trying to explain the American revivals in the 1700s and 1800s. I prayed as an atheist student openly shared his ‘faith’ in Psychology and his distrust of religion (he was from a Muslim culture, very understandable). But a non-Christian quickly defended religion!

I pointed out that Jesus was very opposed to the religionists in his day, and that instead of religion, I suggested we each need a direct connection to God to cope with the confusing issues of today.

In the end of the conversation, we left respecting each other, open to more dialog, and I think very curious about us Christians who don’t believe in religion, but who believe in Jesus.

I knew the picture of the Lord’s Last Supper, but I really loved experiencing eating the same meal like Jesus ate.

– Bebe, an international attendee

It was our first ever Seder Passover Meal for internationals. We had experienced a few, and we had a good group that had recently read about the last supper. Unfortunately the traffic was bad, we ran out of time, so we are saving the foot washing till later. A surprise!

Bebe told many of her friends about the dinner, and other stories of Jesus. One friend responded, “I didn’t know there were love stories in the Bible!”

Bebe thought she had to know the whole Bible before becoming a Christian, but we corrected that thought. Please pray for her and her boy friend who are close to the kingdom!

Hospitality is the glue for thriving relationships. 

Each of the students pictured above (except for 2 that returned to their home countries) have continued to be in our lives this semester.  Some are attending Bible studies for the very first time! Bridges and conversations continue…

We just took internationals to a restaurant taste testing. Two years ago we took Shiba. Now she is a young believer and she told me (Mary Kay) last night during our video Face Time Bible study that she had attended a Christian retreat for the first time!

She heard testimonies of other internationals coming to know Jesus.  She now gets up early in the morning to spend time with Jesus, reading His word, and her unbelieving husband is noticing how self-disciplined she has become. 

Her love for Jesus is so evident!