The last couple of months have been filled with growth. As we reflect on our time here, our hearts are overflowing with thankfulness for what God has done. We can see His hand at work and are overjoyed at how He is moving.

The highlight for our last couple of months has been our trip out East. My language teacher, Hatice, invited our family out to her ancestral village for a week this summer. It was incredible! We met her family, her extended family, her extended family’s family, friends, friends of friends and so on. We were welcomed warmly and enjoyed every single minute. Jackson was even ‘adopted’ as an honorary grandson by Hatice’s father. We were even invited to come live in the village! Many of our new friends live in our city during the winter and have invited us to come and have a meal. We are praying for God’s favour and are trusting Him to move. Our ongoing faith conversations are only deepening, and we believe that God has big plans in store for not only Hatice but her entire family.

We have had growing relationships with our neighbours in our site and beyond during this season. We have been invited in for coffee, over for doners, our kids have played together, the women have spent afternoons lunching, out for pide as families and so much more. The doors are wide open for a relationship, and we are so thankful for the work God is doing here. We are trusting Him to move – to anoint our words and to soften hearts. At the same time – we are working hard to catch up with language learning and cultural acquisition.

One of the incredible open doors for us during this season has been ice hockey. That’s right, hockey. We’ve just traded in our double-doubles for tea. Our son is playing on a U12 team here and my husband is helping to coach the team. It has been an amazing experience and we’ve been welcomed into the ‘hockey family’. We’ve enjoyed eating together and spending time together, and we have learned so much language and culture from these families. One of the little girls on the team is ADAMANT that my husband will learn the language properly and has made it her personal mission to teach him. We’ve shared good laughs, and had great times, but inevitably the conversation turns time and time again to why we are here. The conversations about Jesus are only growing, and it’s a pretty regular experience for people to come with questions for us. During the most recent trip to another city for a tournament, I was seated on the team bus with one of the other moms. During the course of the conversation, it quickly turned to matters of faith. She is not a native, she is a refugee here from another Asian country in the silk road region. It took four languages, multiple online translators, our children and 20 minutes to explain just who Jesus is. The fields are white and ready for harvest!

Please Note: For the sake of security the identity of the Global Worker(s) and exact geological locations have been omitted from the article.