Rejoice with us, friends!

I have been meditating on Philippians chapter 4 through the last weeks of intense stress. The word “Rejoice” has flashed through my mind through the toughest moments of language learning, parenting, stress management gone array, and a calendar that feels too full. The Lord has been so kind to put reminders in our life of all that He has done and rejoicing feels possible even in the chaos. This month, we would like to share with you some of those reminders. 

It wouldn’t be a monthly newsletter from us if we didn’t include a language update. We both passed our final exam and the semester, but we plan to retake the same class in the fall. Our professor encouraged us that we understand the content but aren’t comfortable with it yet to integrate into our writing and speaking. We agree and feel that more practice would help a lot. It is just such a relief to be on SUMMER BREAK! 

Jeremiah and I were happy to team up on a project at church that we mentioned in last month’s post. We worked alongside our partners here to film testimony videos of some brothers and sisters who are part of our International community. A common theme is that Croatians are deeply moved by hearing other people’s testimonies, and I’m right there with them. One of our greatest joys here is serving in the International ministry and seeing the nations worship together weekly. 

Meet David from India. He is a dear brother who is working to support his family who serve in ministry in their home country.
https://youtu.be/p5Au_GhM9Ms?si=-_VpC2IVHIqHQQuu

K serves alongside Jeremiah in tech weekly and is an honorary uncle to our girls. 
https://youtu.be/gag_MHlASh8?si=oAPd6oytTvHqFQXm

Igor is someone with a story you can’t make up. He went from gang life in Russia to being a missionary in his own country. 
https://youtu.be/C_b95JbCwWw?si=LoPaQ47sIuTWIoWX

Ana is a beautiful soul who fled the Philippines for a better life, and to help support her 15 siblings. 
https://youtu.be/Vqhdpi7Rh3k?si=BYLFNFrKh8B-2HGu

We will have more stories to share with you in the future, but the final thing we are rejoicing over is the arrival of our first volunteer mission team from our church on Monday! We are praying that the Lord would give us opportunities to proclaim the Gospel, and that will certainly call for celebration, but in the meantime we are simply rejoicing over having familiar necks to hug and laughing with old friends. 

Thank you for praying for Louella and her language learning journey. As we work towards finding a preschool program for her in the fall, I have seen her confidence rising even when she is in uncomfortable situations, and she is proud of herself for greeting strangers in Croatian. 

We look forward to jumping into all that this summer has to offer and we can’t wait to tell you more about it!

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