Today

INTRO...
My team has started reading The Insanity of God by Nik Ripken. I just started today. From what I've heard and read so far, I would also like to encourage you to read it! Anyways ... he was talking about how since he was a kid, his parents dropped him and his siblings off at church every Sunday. On an Easter morning, at the age of 11, he had "the first truly significant and personal spiritual experience he ever had in church." He wrote "I felt like shouting 'Hey everyone! Are you listening to this?' I had sat around some of those same folks at football games where they would yell and scream. How in the world was it that these people managed to get so excited about what happened at a high school football field on Friday nights than they did about the resurrection of Jesus at church on Easter Sunday morning? ... Maybe they had heard the story so many times before the, now, they saw it as ... just a story."

After reading that this afternoon, I prayed that I would not be numb or "used to" God's Word because I've heard / read so much, but that He would continually soften my heart and open my eyes to the truth! Tonight when I shared the Greatest Story Ever with my students, I shared in a way that I haven't shared in several months ... with such joy, excitement, awe, love ... and I didn't even notice the correlation between my prayer this afternoon and the way I shared this evening until I started writing this blog.

MY CLASSES ...
Today was the last day of class, at least as far as teaching and lessons go. All of my students who came today heard the complete Greatest Story Every (the Bible summarized in 15 minutes and a picture). They also have all 17 lessons which include both English and Khmer scriptures from the Bible. Most of the students that have made it to the end of the term (5 students at 1:30 & 16-20 students at 5:30) have attended most days. Therefore they've studied most of the lessons over the course of this term. If they missed or lost any lessons, I gave them an extra copy today and they stapled them all together with the picture as the cover.

It was exciting to see that many of them remembered what we studied. At certain places in the story I would pause and let them answer. I especially wanted to drill into them
     "...BUT God still loved them," 
     "The punishment for sin is death,"
     "Jesus took the punishment for our sins," and
     "we each must choose 1. to stay apart from God or 2. to believe in Jesus, choose to follow Him only, and have a relationship with God."

More importantly than them being able to remember these things, I pray that they begin to UNDERSTAND them and that it would lead them to faith in Jesus Christ!

Tomorrow we will have our end of the term party. Next week we will not have classes, but it will still be a somewhat busy week. Then we have registration on the 28th and 29th ... Then another new term!