pray without ceasing

an excerpt from a mass email i sent out earlier. . .

" Dear family and friends,

Until I sat down to write this, I hadn't realized how long it had been since I last wrote! I apologize for my lengthy silence.

I would like to break my loooonnnnnnng period of silence by asking for prayer. Every semester, our school has a three day weekend that is designated for ministry trips. This semester, that weekend is this coming weekend. Some of the trips this semester are here in town and last only one day. Some are to towns nearby where those involved will be spending the night. But every semester, there is always a trip to another island of Indonesia called Madura. Those going will stay from Thursday - Sunday. While I am asking prayer for ALL of these ministry trips, I would especially ask for you to partner together with our school in prayer for the team going to Madura (I will be going as well). Madura is a very strictly Muslim region and parts of it are under Muslim law. Because of this, when we go, all the girls must wear pants, long sleeves, and head coverings, and we cannot be very free in what we say. Because of the nature of our trip, I would rather not share many details via email, but I can tell you that we will be working with several schools there to teach English. We are planning to visit 2 schools but are expecting to get invited to more once we arrive (this is what typically happens).

Specific things that I would ask prayer for:

1. First and foremost, health and safety for all the teams. Every team except one (which will be working on campus) will be doing some traveling; the team to Madura will be driving most of the night Thursday and again Saturday to make the 10 hour drive there and back. Flu has been going around the past couple weeks, and some of the teams will be staying in village homes, so those are both major health conerns.

2. Unity on each of the teams. We have a handful of kids at our school who aren't saved, and in fact, there are 5 Hindu students going on the Madura trip. Also, as with any group of teenagers, there are some who struggle with having people in authority over them. Please pray for those students as well.

3. Pray that through all things on each trip, God would be glorified, and that love would be able to reach places where our actions and our limited language cannot - both to the people we are working with and the people we are working for.

4. Pray for the leaders of each team, that God would just give us an enormous amount of wisdom in directing the students, in organizing the trips, in trying to keep 120 highschoolers safe and healthy, and in reaching others. Please pray also that we would be willing to be led by the Spirit in whatever He would have us do.

I appreciate very much your support through prayer for not only me, but for our entire school body as we set out this weekend to be a blessing to the community around us!"


Something I would now like to add....
Please pray that Satan would be bound. He is certainly attacking us even now as we make preparations. There are 5 adults that are to go on this trip. Two fellow teachers, Yohanes, GT, and me. Yesterday, Yohanes woke up with a fever and I with a nasty head cold. And this afternoon, one of the other teachers was put in the hospital, possibly with kidney stones. She is the leader and organizer of this trip, but right now, it's looking like she won't be going with us. This puts me in the position of being the only female adult going, which is a little daunting. Please pray also that no matter what happens, God would work through it. And pray for the other teacher, Kim. If it's not kidney stones, there is a possibility that it could be something more serious. They'll be doing more tests tomorrow (Wednesday).