Good Afternoon readers,

Welcome to the first week of Fall. It’s chilly here today in Columbus and I love it. I feel I have enough heat from Summer. I feel like I have been blessed to make friends with International students. As I mentioned in my last post, I talked with one Chinese student who was very shy but as soon as she was comfortable with us (me and David’s Bible group), she began teasing me a lot. Our friendship with her continues to get closer. Each of us openly shared our own stories, both blessings and struggles. We pray for each other. Since she started showing up to our Bible group, she is eagerly wanting to know about God. I’m so surprised that she bought her new Chinese-English Bible and studies the Word prior to the Bible discussion on Friday. I feel like God is working on His plan for her by providing many people for her: She was invited to the campus Bible group, she has been provided rides to church on Sundays, and she told us that the sermon was very helpful for her. She said to me “God know what I need and tells me what to do”. She then showed me the scripture “Philippians 4:6 : Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God”. I also had a chance to share my testimony with her too.

Besides the story of the Chinese student, some of the ISEEDers were invited by Phil, IFI’s events director to do an apple picking activities at his uncle’s orchard. For me, I’m familiar with an apple but not an apple tree at all because we have very few apple orchards in my country. They’re all in the high elevation area of northern Thailand. I’m so excited to see the apple tree and excited to pick it and eat it fresh from the tree.  Of course, it tastes wonderful and sweetly fresh. I guess I ate about six apples while picking apples!! All of the apples were put into the squeezing machine powered by our labor to crank that machine - we saved the energy and having fresh-organic apple cider, which is so tasty!! I also took some apples to make a homemade apple pie, which my Mansfield host family taught me how to make from scratch. I taught the Chinese student how to make a pie too and now she can make it on her own!! Yay!

These are two activities in this month that makes me feel happy and rejoice in the Lord God Almighty! Looking forward for his blessings for all of us through his Word!