In December we celebrated five years since moving to the Middle East. In light of that we thought we’d share five things we’re thankful for.

1. This month our team purchased a car thanks to a generous grant from an International Organization. It will save us tons of time and money since we had been renting vehicles or taking the bus in order to do our weekly outreach trips. Praise God for this provision and the freedom it will give us to travel to share the Gospel!

2. Some of you may have read our blog post from November stating that we’ve been working our way through a list of 600 people who have requested Bibles online over the last few years. A friend with considerably more computer skills than us accessed the archives from the last 4 years and we discovered that there are actually 900 people on the list. Well, it turns out there was a glitch in the database and there’s actually 1700 people on our list!! And that’s only from 6 of of the 81 provinces! We are so grateful that the Holy Spirit is stirring up hunger for the Truth in so many hearts.

3. We feel the distance from our families most poignantly over the Christmas holidays. But despite missing them we feel so blessed to have great friends and teammates to celebrate with here. As Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.” Mark 10:29-30