Allah, The Great Deciever

I've been talking with my tutor about lies.... she's telling some big ones to her mom this semester, living in fear that her school will find out she's camping in the dorms without paying, and living hundreds of miles away from the guy she says she thinks she wants to marry, but can she trust him?

Many people in our line of work have read a book that explains three different paradigms of thought for most people around the world:   honor/shame (our Muslim friends), guilt/innocence,  and fear/power.    I've tried to poke at another possibility with this friend of mine..... How do you have relationship (with God or anyone) if you don't have trust? 

And this is huge for our Muslim friends because one of the 99 names for Allah is "The Great Deciever".
I mentioned this to my dear tutor friend, M, with whom I've been chatting about this.  She was surprised... (there's so much that she doesn't know about her own religion!)  Pray that she would wrestle with this.  Ask that she would become dissatisfied, disillusioned with Islam.

Muslims are taught that they just need to submit to Islam without questioning it, without critiquing it's reasonability, historicity...  One great thing we've got going is that we're a 2 day train ride from the home province of Islam, of these students.  Some of them are willing to go public in dating relationships here, and they would never do that in XinJiang.  We're praying for a similar daring-willingness to begin to dialogue abut Christianity, and openness to see the holes and error in Islam.

For anyone interested:  here's a long write up about this name from a Christian apologetics view, and here's a Muslim defense.

The Nature of Love

We are glad and hopeful for a new opportunity that the Lord seems to be opening up for us...  

We will begin soon meeting weekly (for just 3 weeks to start, to see how it goes) with our tutors- the girl who has tutored me and her boyfriend who tutors my hubby- for something like premarital counseling.  (You can see their pic on our family blog, posted earlier in Oct.)   They have been dating three years and broke up a short while ago for just a few days, but it was difficult enough that they expressed interest in meeting with us to talk about their relationship.  

So how do we counsel pre-Christians to love each other selflessly?  1 Corinthians 13 is simply NOT accessible to us or to them apart from Christ.  But we’re still planning to start there and try to point out our total inability to love like that.....  but that great changes can take place in us not when we simply try to love like that... but instead when we first realize that we have been loved like this.  Would you ask for clarity in communication and that they would see Christ in the Word and even evidence of Christ in our own marriage?   Many things that seem so cool to us, strike them differently (ie.  Daddy serving his family pancakes on a Saturday morning.... not, “he takes joy in serving his family” but “why is he doing a woman’s job?”).  Would you ask that the Lord would penetrate their hearts and give them understanding?  Ask that the Lord would draw them to himself as he lures them with his True, Eternal, Saving, Forgiving, Perfect Love.  

biz bek hoshal boldok

Thank you friends for praying for the party in our home yesterday!  We had a great time.   It seems like our time together was truly marked with sweet joy.  Such a grace from God!  We thought guests would arrive around noon or a little after, but instead 8 girls were here at 10:00 am to help prepare food.

It was great that we got to host these friends without having to prepare all the food (just the shortbread cookies, brownies, lemon cake, banana bread!) and it was a special joy sharing the hosting responsibilities with our tutors who were the ones who invited all their friends.

There were 18 guests for lunch and almost all of them stayed till well past dinner time playing games, singing, a little bit of dancing, and lots of nibbling goodies and laughing and fun.

We are asking the Lord to bring move in these friends, to give them hunger to learn more about Christ.  But we also don't want them to feel pressure to attend a Christmas event we host, because we've hosted this event for them for their holiday.

Would you ask for wisdom for us as we plan a study for this Christmas season?  Perhaps we will have a party with them with celebration and some brief explanation of Christmas earlier in December and then we can invite everyone there to come to a more detailed study of what Christmas is for after that?  (We also have to balance what we possibly can do schedule-wise.)  We're unsure right now, how this will turn out, but we are eager for the Lord's leading for us and revelation for these precious friends!

Thank you for joining us in prayer!

Feast Day at Our Place

For many Uyghurs, Islam is much like Catholicism was to the mafia guys in "The Godfather" movies.  Even though they have many misteresses and kill guys daily, a crucial unifying bond that's vital to their identity together is that they go by the name "Muslim".... and if you mention any critique of Islam it's like insulting their mama.  Don't go there.  

This week is a Uyghur festival, one of their most important holidays.  Korban is a feast day whose meaning originally comes from the story of Abraham offering his son Ishmael (in the Koranic version) to Allah,  but for most of our Uyghur friends, this celebration is simply a day to enjoy traditional food and music and be together with Uyghur friends and family. And this year, for 10-15 students, the party's at our place.  We're excited!

We’re opening our home for our friends who are univ students and I think they're pretty excited to come hang out in a family home (versus the dorm) and be with our zany kids and eat their favorites... polo (like rice pilaf with meat, carrots, onion) and lots of fruit, veggies, nuts and loads of Western cookies and banana bread that i've been preparing for days.   

Most of them probably have never read the suras (verses) in the Koran that talk about the sacrafice this holiday supposedly commemorates and most of them probably don't care... but we are still hoping for opportunities to point to “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!”  Here's a post that explains a bit more about the traditional/Islamic view of the Korban holiday.  

Our friends will be coming around noon and will stay till... the party ends.  Will you please pray that the Lord would make his presence thick in our home, that we would be able to demonstrate his love, speak his truth and proclaim his grace to these precious friends!?

One more specific... would you ask that there would be friends who come tomorrow who would be made curious, hungry, thirsty, to hear more of Christ... ask that they would be willing to join us for a study, introducing the true significance of Christmas, that we hope to host in our home this Advent season.  

Thank you for joining with us in the harvest work for his glory!