A Different Kind of Friendsgiving
Hey, Friends! A fun event we did before Thanksgiving was my roomate and I hosted a women's dinner in our apartment. We invited several women from the English class and asked them to make their favorite food from their country to share with everyone. We also had several women from a local church come and build friendships. All the women had a lot of fun sharing the food they cooked and some of them brought their kids who added a lot of humor to the evening. It was fun to think of the night as a friendsgiving even though my roommate and I didn't initially think of it that way. With the… Read more >>
Sowing Seeds
Hey, friends! A highlight from this month was I had an opportunity to share a Bible story with a Rohingya friend while we were looking at her garden. This friend moved to a house a few months ago, and one of the things she's extremely proud of is her garden. As we looked at the many vegetables and flowers she had planted, I shared with her how my mom had a garden at her house. My friend was really excited and said how her mom and grandma used to have gardens too. I then told her how gardens remind me of a story of a farmer who sowed seeds and some of the seeds fell on different types of… Read more >>
Some Good Questions
Hey friends! As you can probably see from my previous blogs, the ministry I do with GoTEN is heavily relational, and a significant part of my job is visiting refugee friends in their homes. This is the ideal place for friendships to start and especially grow. People sometimes ask me what do conversations look like during a home visit, so I’ve put together a list of common questions my teammates and I ask our refugee friends. These are questions we often ask when it’s our first time visiting a refugee friend, and many of them are good questions we go back to in future visits. Common questions… Read more >>
An Interesting Group Of People
Hey friends! One big highlight that’s happened since my last blog post was our staff and volunteers got to take some of our English students to the Grand Canyon. Many of our students already lived in Phoenix for 2-3 years, but had never seen the canyon before. So a group of 18 of us climbed into one car and one fifteen-passenger van and took a day trip. It was an incredibly fun day to travel with our students and get to know them outside of the English class. We had fun taking pictures, hiking, and enjoying the incredible views. It was special to see our students blow away by the beauty and… Read more >>