The end of our summer classes!

Wow, it's hard to believe the summer is nearing it's end! For the last five weeks, we have been teaching English as a Second Language to immigrants in our area every morning. What an amazing experience this has turned out to be! We had about 10 students show up throughout the five weeks, but only five of them remained consistent. I really believe that God wanted us to be able to deeply invest in these students. One young girl from Peru who is here on her summer vacation visiting family is still meeting with a YWAM staff for English tutoring every week. The other four students were men. Our students came from El Salvador, Honduras, Thailand, and Mexico, so it was a diverse class! Three of them came to us in situations of financial struggle, the need for job opportunities being linked with the need to learn English. We taught them so much in the jam packed weeks, including grammar, sentence structure, reading and conversational skills, resume writing, questions asked in interviews, etc. They were all so eager to learn! We are so grateful to God to tell you that two of the three that were struggling to find jobs are now employed! Our other student (we will call him "Juan") is still working on his English speaking and searching for a job. At this point, we have him signed up for ESL classes to begin in two weeks at the local community college, and he is also signed up to start a training course for construction, with the aim to begin a job in that field afterwards. Please keep Juan in your prayers, for his English skills to continue to improve as well as for his financial situation. Juan is actually a US citizen, but has had such a struggle through the years in finding jobs that pay well enough for him to be able to have stability. During our time of getting to know Juan, we've been able to pray for him and his situation. It's also exciting, because three of our ESL students will continue to come to our building for fellowship and to play pool in the afternoons! We look forward to continuing our relationship with them, in helping them with their practical needs and through friendship in sharing God's love.

Thank you for praying for us this summer. God taught us so much these last five weeks in teaching English and building relationship with our students. Jason and I both really love to teach English, and this experience helped grow that!

We are still praying and talking with our leaders about what we will be involved with in the YWAM ministries this next season. We will be updating soon on this!