February 14, 2009

In the sort of work that G and I are doing here, there are good weeks and hard weeks. This week has turned out to be a hard week, full of exciting things and draining things in our work with internationals. It's been an emotionally draining week, one of those weeks where you are hit full in the face with the reality of sin, and how our world is not the way it was meant to be. It's been one of those weeks full of hard conversations and hard prs.

I mentioned Iz, whose husband has been refusing to allow her to go to chch. We have reason to believe that actually she may have a psychiatric problem. Trying to sort out how to counsel her has been hard- we don't want her to lie to her husband or deceive him, and so we've asked her not to come along if she has to lie to do so. That doesn't honor JC, or her husband. So I don't know if she'll be back on Monday or not.

There's a guy who has been in our group since October, S, who is almost 40 (way outside the age group) but has a mild form of autism. His maturity level is about equal to a college guy's. Anyway we had an issue with him come up Wednesday where he got very angry and way out of line with one of our coleader girls, which in itself was a mess. However when G had lunch with him today he also found out that S has been looking for avenues to pursue sexual relationships with our iBASE girls, and claims that he has already been able to very inappropriately touch (likely kissing was also involved) one of the girls. G has been diligently pursuing a friendship with S, and actually S is still ok with being G's friend but now we're in situation of talking to chch staff about this, and have asked S not to return to iBASE. But discovering that a very needy guy, with social problems, whom you've been pursuing a friendship with is also a sort of sexual predator who is looking for younger more innocent girls who might sleep with him is hard to say the least. Please pr for G especially to know how to procede with S, and as he talks to staff this weekend. We pursue people who need JC's love, and S needs a relationships with JC the same we all do. But it's still quite a hard thing, and it takes time to sort through our feelings.

We are thankful that Gd is allowing these hard things in our work here, because we have a wonderful staff at StAG who are watching over us, encouraging us, and mentoring us through it. Having a safe environment to experience these hard ministry things and learn and grow through them is a blessing- if we had to deal with these things on our own unprepared in the 3rd world or something, it would be a lot harder.

Thanks for pring for us guys- we appreciate it. Do pray for S, Iz, and for our iBASE girls, in particular the unknown girl that S seems to have this inappropriate relationship with. Pr that we'll be able to decide what to do next to protect the girls in iBASE.