up for the challenge

Well today was the first official day of class for the new DTS.... and we made it! :) We ended up with ten students; six guys and four girls. The students I wrote about before are here, and settled, but we also have Stephen (from LA, but is Taiwanese and speaks good chinese), Szh Fan (the boys have given him the english name of "Matt") from Taiwan, and Lee Yo Rou (the boys have given him the english name of "jake").

Each student is VERY different from the rest; all have different life stories, family stories, and places that they are in life. The girls are the spiritual leaders, as a whole. But that doesn't mean our guys don't love Jesus. But please be in prayer as the majority of our guys come from difficult backgrounds, all 6 guys are 20 or younger, one is re-doing DTS, and one isn't even a Christian yet... (I'll explain that in a later blog). They're digging right in from the start; this week's teaching is on Hearing God's Voice and the Fear of the Lord. Today was mainly the first. Our base director Don Gillman is teaching this first week. Wonderful stuff. Thank you for caring and for praying for me and the rest who are involved in the school. The following are some specific prayer requests I have for this week.

Please pray for the students;
- that the one who isn't a Christian yet will come to understand Christ's sacrifice for him, and what his role in alife devoted to Christ looks like...... and that the ones who haven't been walking with God recently will be shaken up by Christ; radically changing the way they live out of the overflow of their heart's desire for more of Him!!!!
- that they will learn to love each other inspite of their differences, and include each other in their daily lives/activities
- that they will be bold in the way that they share Christ through their lives and words in the ministries they work in

and for the staff;
- that we will love the students out of the overflow of our love for Christ, and that it would be unconditional love
- that we will wait on the Lord on behalf of our students; and when God speaks, that we will be obedient and bold in speaking into their lives.
- that the students will see Christ at work in our lives, and desire a deeper walk with Him because of that.