To our homeschooling readers, I want to let you know about some great book giveaways this week, and in the coming weeks.

Life in a Shoe is hosting a giveaway of Vision Forum's exciting new adventure series, Ballantyne books. They are giving away a book a week, and also one entire set of the books at the end of their book-a-week giveaway. As a homeschooling family, we love to find good books and as you will see when you check out the links, this is a *great* series of books, especially for adventure-loving boys.

Biblical Womanhood is giving away the Ballantyne entire series! Be sure to check out their website for more information. What an awesomely generous ministry ... be sure to check out their website while you are there.

Awake Northwest

This weekend Ron & Melissa Jackson, who were missionaries in South Africa for 12 years and now live in our community, hosted a missions conference of sorts at the Ellensburg Foursquare Church. The invited speakers from Seattle Bible College in Everett and a church in Lynnwood, and they also invited various ministries to set up display tables to get the word out about what's available locally for outreach opportunties. The event was sponsored by several local churches, and while attendance was on the light side, the impact was significant.

We were able to host a display table for ISI during the event, and I got to share from the front a little bit about where we're coming from in ministry and what our vision is. We met quite a few people who wanted more information about ISI at CWU, but just as importantly -- after a time of discouragement in ministry -- God is stirring our hearts for further persistence in our call. And more important than THAT, He is calling us to not forget our first love -- JESUS -- as we pursue our passion for international student ministry. Thank you, Lord!

If you visited our table this weekend and are now visiting our website, we'd love to hear from you in the comments section! Let us know any ideas, suggestions, or questions you might have. God bless you!

Yasu's Testimony

Yasu arrived at Central Washington University in September 2006 for six months of study. If you recall, our church hosted a Soup & Bread night at last October, to which many international students were invited. A couple at our church, Dave & Lori, got to know a couple of Japanese students that night, and on Halloween these Japanese students asked Dave & Lori if they could be involved in their family’s activities, and if they could bring some friends. Yasu was one of these friends. Before leaving to go back to Japan, Yasu gave his testimony at church – he had become a Christian while he was here.

Here is part of what he said in church recently: “I looked for love all of my life and I found Jesus in America. He was what I was looking for all my life,” a celebratory round of applause occurred here, and later he continued. “For the last month I have cried a lot in church. I was afraid of going back to Japan because I have never met a Japanese Christian, but I found this verse,” he then quoted John 14:27 where Jesus speaks of not being troubled or afraid because He gives us His peace. “Now I am really excited to go back to Japan,” Yasu said, “I can teach Jesus in Japan. So many people do not know Jesus’ love and grace.”

This is why we do what we do. Not all international students become Christians while they are here, but as Yasu mentioned, so many of them have never even met a born-again Christian, ever. One of our goals is to help change that in a major way for the internationals who attend classes at Central each year.

Time off, Time Back On ...

For a couple of different reasons, we took some time off from active ministry after Christmas -- one being that Neil got hurt at work and required surgery (he amputated two fingertips while using a jointer, but that's all the detail I'll give out of respect to our more queasy readers! Suffice it to say that his fingers, while they still feel funny to him -- and are a bit shorter -- are healing nicely.)

We recently said good-bye to our Chinese friend, Rong. She flew back to China two weekends ago. I was sad to see her go, we really enjoyed our friendship with her. She actually had not felt well during her last two months in the USA and we hadn't seen each other much. Thankfully, we were able to get together for a few hours a couple of days before she boarded the bus for the airport. In February we said goodbye to some Japanese friends -- they were part of the 4-month AUAP program. One was named Yu, a young lady, and she was quite a bright spot. She wept and wept when we had to hug her good-bye -- it's such a difficult part of this specific ministry. There will always be these good-byes.

Neil and I continue to move forward in what we believe the Lord is calling us to here in Ellensburg. We were re-encouraged of late to continue pursuing the development of the Friendship Partner program when we learned that one of the Japanese ESL students received Christ around Christmas time. Some friends of his had come to our Soup & Bread night at church and had been befriended by a young family. About a month later his friends brought him to a get-together with this couple, and he started coming to church with them. He attended quite a bit -- he was commonly seen reading his Bible -- and recently I asked him if he was a Christian. He answered that he had in fact given his life to Christ! I was able to put him in touch with the former ISI staff person from Ellensburg (Jordan), who is now living in Tokyo.

Steve, from the ESL department, contacted me recently and said he has 70+ new students arriving at the start of Spring Quarter. That, too, encourages me to "press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me" by pursuing the FP program development.

Silent Night -- in Japanese!

We had a knock on our door the other evening, and outside were about 15 Japanese students -- caroling! We knew several of them from Talk Time. They sang (very well, I might add) Silent Night, in both English and Japanese. I wished at that moment that our house was larger so that I could have invited them all in! We handed out candy canes to all as they went on their merry way. What a pleasure that was.