Dear Grace Church of DuPage Family,

We want to thank you for your continued generosity and support of our ministry here. We are very grateful for your partnership in the gospel. In particular, thank you for the contribution in December that was above and beyond your normal level of support. We appreciate that and will endeavor to put those extra funds to good use.

I hope that this email finds the church doing well. I imagine that it is cold there in Chicago, but it is warm and wet here! We are at the height of the rainy season, which means that we are constantly battling mold and leaks in our house. The kids have restarted in-person instruction at the international school and are participating in sports and music lessons. They are classmates with students from Indonesia, Korea, the Netherlands, Brazil, and other countries, not all of whom are believers (although it is a Christian school). I am thankful that we live in a town where this kind of education is possible. Our eldest daughter was baptized last fall and our second daughter has expressed a strong desire to be baptized this spring. We are rejoicing over God’s work in our children’s lives and praying that we will be wise and patient parents.

My wife is involved in a variety of ministries. Of course she takes care of the entire family, which is more than a full-time job here since there are not as many modern conveniences and aids as in the United States. But she also serves as the secretary for the school board, she is leading a youth Bible study and a women’s Bible Study for the international church, she supports the various members of our org team and many other expats in our town, and has been reaching out to a Korean woman. This Korean friend didn’t even know there was an Old Testament and a New Testament five years ago when she started reading the Gospel of John with her. Just a couple days ago my wife had a great conversation with her, inviting her again to confess her sin to God and ask for forgiveness based on Jesus’ finished work. Please pray with us for her salvation. It feels like she is right on the edge of the kingdom.

As far as my own ministry, I just finished teaching a doctoral intensive on the Synoptic Gospels. As a part of that course I teach my students an advanced Bible study method that I call “argument diagramming,” which I taught once at your Church. The students seemed excited about the potential for using this method for their interpretation of the Bible and preaching. My undergraduate course on the Pastoral Epistles starts in a couple weeks and I have two more doctoral courses to teach in March and May. I have also been advising on more than a dozen doctoral dissertations, which is rewarding but time-consuming. My prayer is that God would use my teaching, supervising, preaching, and writing to motivate and equip the people here to handle God’s Word faithfully and confidently. My org recently asked me to count the number of students I taught in 2021 and I was surprised that over the course of the year I had taught exactly 100 different students in all the various courses I was assigned. I wear many other hats here in Southeast Asia also, but I won’t give you an update on all of that now. 

Anyway, please allow me to say thank you again for your support of our work here. We know that we could not serve the Lord and the church here if it were not for the generous giving of ministry partners like you. We also want to say thank you for your continued support of Mr. O’s ministry. May the Lord bless your investment in the spread of the kingdom here and around the world!

With love in Christ,

Your Partners in Southeast Asia