The journey has begun.

We are in South East Asia!

We are so thankful to be here as a family, It is a dream come true for us!

We have been here for about a week now, it feels like the time has flown.

First of all, we are so happy that we made it through the journey here, 30+ hours with a one and a half year old… Praise God!

So what have we done so far? (Apart from overcoming jet lag?!)

We are staying with friends here, and that means we have the privilege of bombarding them with questions… So we have tried to learn as much as we can about the country we are in. Wanting to understand what the people here are like, wanting to understand the spiritual climate and the challenges as well as the opportunities.

The last couple of days we have traveled out of the capital where our friends live to a city in the north. It was fun seeing even more and in our time there we had the privilege of going to a ”pottery village”.

(If you don’t know, we love doing pottery and in England we do pottery through a pottery our church run, and it is an amazing way of connecting to people.)

So it was so fun being able to see how they do pottery here and dream of how we might be able to bring pottery and the gospel to some community one day.

One of the challenges we have faced is the language, our friends know some of the local language but they are still learning, we know none of it... and English isn't spoken by many. So we are having to rely a lot on what other foreigners say about the country and the people here, and haven't been able to hear much of the locals point of view.

However there have been a few that we got to talk to, I have been trying to understand what people here are like. A christian guy I talked to came from an animistic background, and today we talked to a couple of girls that came from some remote villages, and got to hear some of their stories of finding Jesus, living in communities that are remote and often dangerous to be a christian.

It hasn't been easy to connect, it seems people are afraid of saying the "wrong" answers and are hesitant to say what they really think or feel.

I hope to meat some more people that are even more open to speak about faith and believes, but will have to fill you in about how that goes later.

We have been seeing how every day life here works and the challenges and joys of being here as workers. Our friends work at a christian school that has a cafe and we would love to share with you all more about the work they do. We have been able to be with them there and experience first hand the work they do and all the opportunities that could be available to workers wanting to set up a business in this area of the world.

For now, we are thankful to be safe and healthy, thankful for all the good food, thankful for the opportunity to be here, connecting with people and seeking God's heart for this place.

Our prayer is that God would give us a even bigger heart for the people of this nation and the people of South East Asia.

Bless, Jonas, Beth & Ezra