New Living Arrangements
At the beginning of October I moved into a tempat kos. A kos is a room and boarding house for university students. There are probably hundreds of them around the city. Luckily for me my former homestay owns one right in their backyard. Since I already knew all of the girls I felt comfortable moving in as soon as there was an empty room.
The first few weeks were a little rough. Everything I from what I ate to the way I swept my floor was considered strange or wrong. After a few weeks my “weirdness” became a normality and since then we have all been able to live together in harmony.
Since most of the girls are students they don’t have much money to buy food. So a few days a week I will buy a bunch of fish or make spaghetti and we’ll all eat together. It’s proving to be a great way to practice language and hospitality.
*Hospitality is one of the way to show people here you care about them/are a person of faith.
Language Study
My time at the language center continues to be a huge blessing. I have completed 6 out of 9 units yet I know there is still so much I need to learn. Just this week I started to learn one of the local dialects. The dialect is a lot harder to learn than I expected it to be. Since most of the girls in the kos use the local dialect I can understand a lot of it. However, when it comes to understanding the technical functions of the different words I get a little lost and start to question myself.
Even still, I praise God for my tutors every day because they are all so gracious with their students. More recently, however, some of them have become more like friends. We have inside jokes and annoy each other like long time friends.
Friends
Besides the girls in the kos and the language tutors I have a two close friends, Jasmine and Bria (names have been changed for security purposes.) Bria was my first friend here. I don’t see her too often, but she is always in my thoughts and prayers. She recently is getting involved with videography and photography. I’m planning on asking her if she can help me document my first year here (i’ve already been here for 8.5 by the way. CRAZY RIGHT?!)
My friend, Jasmine, and I meet almost everyday. I have talked about this name is a different newsletter, but since then our friendship has gotten much stronger. For the past few months we have started sharing faith with each other. A few months ago she expressed that she was interested in learning about the person of Jesus as written in her holy book and mine. Her curiosity has led us to some great conversations and even an open door to share the good news with her on more than one occasion. Even with all I have shared with her the veil over her eyes still remains.
What I’ve been learning
One of the biggest lessons I have been learning in this season is to trust in the Father’s timing. This is proving to be a constant lesson He wants to teach me, but the context is always different. With Jasmine, who has heard the good news over and over again, I feel like she should be so in love with J***s, but she has repeatedly said she can’t believe in his great sacrifice. In my prayer time I have felt the Father telling to continue to be patient. Now, the way I see it, the longer she doesn’t believe the deeper her future testimony of the Father’s pursuit of her heart becomes.