Beloved Brothers and Sisters,
Greetings to you all in the Name of our Lord Jesus. We trust that each of you are doing well and safe under the protection of our Father. At this time, Joel and I are also doing well by His Grace. We know it is because you have been lifting us up in prayer. We also pray for you, our brothers and sisters in Christ, on a daily basis.
We continue to spend time evangelizing to the Long Neck Pathong people. Joel goes to their village to preach there every Sunday evening as that is the only time that they can come together. So, it is in between their work and their coming and going that we do our one on one witnessing and sharing the Gospel. Fridays and Saturdays Joel is usually up in the Lahu village for preaching the Saturday evening services and also the Sunday morning services before he leaves to go to the Pathong village. When he is not in the Lahu village, Joel is always across the border working either with his Uncle Aram on Literature translation and corrections, and/or he is up in the Shan village with Pastor Saithoon evangelizing among the Shan people. Now the work has also extended out to the N-Shan people, another branch of Shan who live way out in the rural areas and have never heard the Gospel.
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N-Shan work
Now we want to share a little more about the N-Shan evangelism work. As we mentioned in our previous newsletter and also in the above paragraph, due to the fact that these people live in such rural mountainous villages, not many people have gone there to share the Gospel of Salvation with them. However, now God is really opening doors for us to go in and visit them. Each time we go, we get to know them a bit more and earn their trust. Their first request was for us to come in and teach the village children the Alphabet and how to read and write. The second thing was that they would give us a space to build a small hut where the teacher could stay and live while he or she held classes for the children. All the lessons are in the Burmese language. Thirdly, some of them are starting to ask questions about our living omnipotent God. As the children get to a point where they can start reading, we can also use a child's Bible or tracks or Christian literature for them to practice reading from. So one way or another, God is opening up doors and preparing the hearts of these young children and the adults for His Word to be planted. At the moment, Saithoon's wife, Ahdu, is teaching them the Alphabet and spelling. The children are so excited to learn and actually get to use a pencil and paper! This is all new for them. She is also teaching them about hygiene, like bathing, washing their hair which is full of lice, combing their hair, and also teaching them about proper toilets. Like digging a big hole and building a shelter for it, instead of just going anywhere along the edge of the village in open space! All the children have worms, and I'm sure the adults do too, due to lack of hygiene. Besides teaching the children school and all the other necessary life hacks, Ahdu was also able to share the amazing saving grace and salvation of Jesus Christ with a witch woman. Ahdu and her husband are both working diligently in reaching deep into these people's hearts for the Kingdom.
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