February Update

As most of you already know, we took a bit of a last minute trip to the States over the holidays. This was necessary in order to renew Jamie’s tourist visa. Because John has a residence student visa, we are hoping that the Immigration department will allow Jamie to also acquire residence on the same visa. This hasn’t been approved yet, so please continue to pray with us for an approval.

However, it was really great to see family and friends over Christmas and New Years. We surprised our families during the week of Christmas as they didn’t know we were coming home. We were so thankful for this fun opportunity to have a brief unexpected visit. We were in the States for 3 weeks and have now been back in Beirut for about a month.

John’s final exams took place the last week of January and we are thankful he passed all his MBA classes and is able to continue the Graduate Assistant program again in the Spring. AUB pays for his tuition in exchange for him working 20hrs/wk at AUB assisting 2 professors. Second semester starts Feb 10. Please pray for new relationships with classmates in the weeks to come.

Jamie is still really enjoying volunteering for an NGO where she is able to serve and love others. She has mainly been serving in administration and this allows her to build relationships with the other women in the office. Please pray for those relationships to deepen and for the women to truly know God’s love for them.

Please also continue to pray for peace in Lebanon and that the political sects would give way to humility and compromise. The people here are tired of war and terrorism and are hoping for political leadership that allows for this nation to flourish and be as it once was. There has been more unrest here than usual in the last month, so we are hoping for things to calm down and not escalate further. But we are all doing great and feel relatively unaffected by the situation around us and still feel safe and unthreatened by the conflict. In fact, we feel safer walking around Beirut than most of the American cities we have lived in, since crime, theft and homicide are so low in Lebanon.

We love and miss you all.
John and Jamie