Dear Friends,
Happy New Year!
One thing we kept reminding ourselves about last year was God’s faithfulness. The more we meditated on who He is, the less scary the days were. We are reading Psalms in our Quiet Time these days and it helps tremendously to reflect on God’s characteristics. We often read in these passages about His love, His righteousness, His grace, His faithfulness, His sovereignty, His holiness, and the list goes on. When we focus on His attributes, we find peace in the midst of our circumstances. He is the never-changing, Almighty God we can find refuge in.
While last year was incredibly challenging, it was also very blessed. God didn’t stop being God, and we learned a lot of lessons about true reliance on God.
We hope this year will be less challenging, but we give thanks to God for last year and how we could see His faithfulness through it all.
During winter break our Hungarian students went home and some of our EU citizen students as well. We had 23 students left on campus and we invited them all to our home in small groups. It was wonderful to get to know them better, play games with them, talk with them, spend time with them in our home. We were also able to invite some of the BI staff to our home as well. We truly miss the fellowships at our house. This past year has not been very easy in this sense either!
Our hope is that this year we will be able to have more fellowships again. But whatever happens, we know that God is in control, and instead of complaining, we want to do everything we can to serve the BI students and staff. They are all very dear to us.
We would appreciate continued prayers for wisdom as Chris and the leadership makes decisions. They all try to make the most of this situation. Please also pray for our students as this year has been far from normal. Please pray they would be able to focus on the classes (even though they have to listen to them from their dorms due to government regulations). We are all tired, but we know and experience that God gives us strength for each day. Praise Him!