Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! Tuesday we rang in the year 2066. We are in a different year here than the rest of the world.

This past week was also Easter. Easter is not celebrated here in this country, but we could still celebrate it. He is alive! It was different, not celebrating at home or in the usual way, but it was a nice day. Our Father taught me some new things this Easter. One thing that stuck out to me this year was how His Son gave the great commission after He appeared to His disciples, it is part of the Easter story. It is because of the cross and the empty tomb that we are here. We decided to make a speical treat for Easter. We got huge bananas from a family in this village, and we bought chocolate bars and cashews. We attempted to melt chocolate over a fire, but it didn't work out so well. Then we put the chocolate on the bananas and then the cashews. The chocolate is not the same as the chocolate in America, and it didn't quite melt the same way it is supposed to, but it was still chocolate so I was excited! Our treats did not end up looking very pretty, but they still tasted good!

For our first several days back in this village we cooked for ourselves. We cooked over a fire. It was a lot of fun, and fried rice sure beats daal bhaat every meal! We do not need to cook for ourselves anymore during our time in the village, but we enjoyed it and are planning to still cook a few meals ourselves.

Tuesday evening some people brought a man to the ch_rch who has a demon. The demon killed his mother and three animals. Now it is in him. Sometimes the man is normal, and then other times it is the demon speaking and doing things. One man told us that once he went into the same room as the man and whenever he came into the room the demon called out his name and he had never met the man before. The team decided to go into the room where they were laying hands on the man and sing worship songs. Even when we were in the room we were seeing changes in the man. One minute he was normal and then all of the sudden he would make a loud noise and be saying things and either be curled up into a ball rolling on the floor or flailing around and acting like he was trying to grab something in the air. When we left the man was fine, but unfortunatley, it was only for the moment. The demon was not casted out. It is really sad. With J_sus there is freedom, but some people like that man are opening themselves up to evil and then become controlled by it. There is so much more to life than that. Please keep this man in your thoughts.

Wednesday evening BREY started. There are 31 students in BREY. The students are really nice. We eat meals with them. Every evening, for 45 minutes we will be teaching English. We have split them up into five groups, and we will each have a group. Next week we will be teaching a session about the fruit of the spirit. I am looking forward to spending more time with the students and getting to know them better.

Requests:
For the man with the demon, for the demon to leave
That our English classes would go well
For our messages

Praises:
The opportunites we have had and will have to interact with the students
The fun we had cooking over a fire

-Natasha