4 Days of Winter

Winter!  What a concept!  I was in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan  (took me about 10 tries to finally get the spelling right) in January for a conference with some of our key campus directors from all over Central Asia.  The temperature was downright cold.  I had more fun packing for this trip than any other trip in distant memory.  Why?  I had to go through our garage and actually find winter clothing!  So much fun to pull out nice warm sweatshirts I haven’t worn in a while. I also threw in my suitcase a pair of Sorel boots.  I hauled them 7,000 miles across the globe just so I could hear the sound of them crunching against the snow.  Not exactly a sound I hear very often in Florida.

While I was there, I was able to talk to our people about studentstan.  This is a site in Central Asian Russian dedicated to proclaiming Christ to the students of Central Asia.  Studentstan can either mean, “the land of the students” or in another way it can mean, “students wake up”.  While both of them are great meanings, I love the idea of students’ waking up.  May the students of Central Asia wake up and realize that the deep longing in their hearts is for a relationship with Jesus.  We talked about  how to answer emails like these:

Probably I would like to receive Jesus in my life….please explain more…. 

If I believe in Jesus, will it be wrong? I am a Muslim.

We talked about how to answer these kinds of questions and many others in a training I gave in answering some of these questions thoroughly and effectively.  Pray for our brothers and sisters in Central Asia who are daily answering questions from students in Central Asia.

Central Asia is exploding in its infrastructure and especially in its internet access.  5 years ago I was in Kazakhstan and had to find out how to set my computer’s modem to “pulse” dialing and now you can get free wi-fi all over the place and most educated people have high speed internet access in their homes!  The country has literally changed overnight.  The first people group of any country to change are its university students.  We must be prepared to change with students as their world and culture changes. That is the ultimate challenge of doing university ministry.

Hopefully, I’ll be invited back next year where I can experience winter for another 4 days.  Until then, it is back to the 50 degree “cold” fronts of Florida and box living for my Sorels.