Time to say Goodbye

Outreach has begun! Last week our other two outreach teams took off to Ethiopia and Sri Lanka (it was a super sad good-bye). We are leaving tomorrow evening. This past week we’ve been busy doing prep work for outreach. We’ve done a lot of worship and intercession, practiced dramas and songs, research work and learning how to give a sermon, done evangelism in the city,..

Evangelism was great. I was able to visit Carrie-Ann again (remember, she was the first door I ever knocked at and whom I’ve visit a couple of times after that). It was a great time, we had a long talk with her that left her in tears, we prayed for her, gave her a Bible and got her facebook so we can keep in touch with her while we’re gone.

The same day a friend and I felt to go into an art gallery and started talking to a security guard from India. His name is Amandeep and he is a Sikh. We asked him loads of questions about the Sikh religion and after that he wanted us to share about what we believe in. He had tears in his eyes when we shared about God’s love and how you cannot earn your salvation or his love. He couldn’t believe that God can and wants to speak and was very interested in everything we had to say. In the end we got to share the gospel with him and pray for him and we definitely were able to plant a seed that afternoon.

By the way, Matty who is one of our leaders has been sick for over a month now with some mysterious sickness that makes him feel tired, nauseated and dizzy and the doctors haven’t been able to find out what it is. Last week we found out that he won’t be able to go to Cambodia with us because of that. It was a very tough decision for him to stay back but he also strongly feels that God wants him to stay in Perth and rest. We are praying that he recovers and will be able to join us in New Zealand. Please pray for Matty’s health and that his strength and energy will be restored so he can join us in NZ next month.

As I’ve mentioned before I’m taking off tomorrow afternoon. We’ll be staying a day in Thailand before we fly to Phnom Penh. I’m stoked to be able to go back to Bangkok, even if it’s only for a day.

We’re going to be living in a small village about two hours away from Phnom Penh for the first two weeks. The pastor we’re going to be working with already told us that we’ll be working in orphanages, doing a lot of evangelism in the village (around 300 people live in that village, mostly Muslims and Buddhists) and doing CHRISTMAS MINISTRY! Yes.. that’s right, I’m going to celebrate Christmas all over again because Cambodians don’t care about the date, it’s the event that counts! I never would have thought I would have to bring my Santa hat on outreach haha

After that we’re going to Battambang to work with the YWAM base there. I’m not quite sure what we’ll be doing there though. I just know that that base has a great variety of ministries there and that we’ll probably be working in orphanages again and building huts.

After that we’re flying to Auckland on January 30^th where we’re going to travel the main cities from North to South and working with different churches and youth groups and also with the Maori people for a part of it.

I won’t be taking my laptop with me so I don’t know how often I’ll have a chance to go on the Internet but I do hope that I’ll be able to send you an update every once in a while.

Please keep me and my team in your prayers. Pray for safety on our trips, for team unity, that we’ll all be able to draw closer to God, for our ministry times, that we’ll be able to impact the village and tell every single villager about Jesus, that we’ll be a blessing to them, that we’ll learn to love and to serve selflessly, for wisdom and cultural sensitivity,…

I would appreciate your prayers a lot! Thank you!

Love,

Steph