Crosslinks MP Styles

Styles, Dawn - UK

June 2007 Prayer Letter (click here for Acrobat pdf version)

“Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in Heaven give good things to those who ask him!” - Matthew 7: 9 – 10

Dear all,

How quickly time flies. I’m so sorry I haven’t written to you earlier. The Lord has been doing exciting and encouraging things.

The English workshop is chugging along nicely. So far the majority who attend are Russian speakers, but there is now a new lady from Kosovo who comes with her little toddler. I used to teach her husband English. The other Kosovan couple continue coming along faithfully with their two little girls who play in the hall while the workshop takes place. They seem to really enjoy coming out together as a family. They were the ones living in the very dark basement flat and finally the council has given them a lovely little house. I was able to help them with some of their move. In March I gave them the Jesus video in Albanian, which they watched and enjoyed, but being so far away from knowing hardly anything about Jesus at all, they just seemed to think it was a nice film. I’m hoping to invite them to a strawberry tea party we’ll be having at church soon, please pray that they will come and that we can really start to share the gospel with them directly. I shall be going round their house soon to sign a passport form for one of them; I shall seek to share the gospel with them. The husband suffers from a type of post war syndrome and finds it very difficult to focus. Main items for prayer here:

That we can not only build good friendships with this family and with all the others who attend the workshop, but that the Lord would give gospel opportunities and that conversions would be born out of this
That I would be bold in offering to read the scriptures and/or pray with the women
That the Lord would bring a helper along for me, to entertain the children who often get very noisy and distract their mums, sometimes I have the same amount of children as I do adults.
That a few more regulars would come, but that numbers wouldn’t exceed by too much.

I continue to meet with the Serbian mother of 4 on Friday afternoons. I try to look at the scriptures with her and I mean try, because the television is kept on and the children are often coming in and out, but the Lord is working in her and gradually she is realising the true relevance of Jesus and the importance of faith. Back in February/March she came round to me and we had a wonderful time looking at the scriptures. I believe the Lord is truly speaking to her in her life and she shared about one thing that happened that week which she could only put down to Jesus. An incident happened the other day when her (very bright) 5 year old was very frightened by something at night time, she was so scared throughout the whole day and the mother was considering taking her to the doctor. The following night, she asked Jesus to ‘keep her safe and help her to not be afraid’ and after that she was very calm and ‘not afraid anymore’, her own words. This last week after looking at the Gospel of Mark with mum, her oldest daughter (who often sits in the background listening) wanted to pray afterwards, and she did! This was a very big thing for her; she was very nervous and self-conscious. She thanked the Lord for bringing me along and helping them to learn about Jesus. I was very encouraged. But as of yet mum has not been born again. I plead gently with her to read the scriptures (she has an Albanian bible, it was her mothers and extremely tattered, with tea stains on some of the pages, I have just bought her a new one in her own language as well as in English) but she never ‘has time’. I took her and her eldest daughter swimming in the school holidays. They were very grateful and had a good time.

Please pray for the conversion of the whole family (2 boys; 15, 12 and 2 girls; 10 and 5.
Please pray that the Lord would draw them to come along to church, but above all, of course, to Him!

On Thursdays I continue meeting with the very special 15-year-old girl. Your prayers have made such a difference here as, rather than play the guitar, she wants to read more and more of the Word of God and pray with me. She has been very enthusiastic although recently she’s been wobbling a bit. She’s been bringing a friend of hers along from school from a non-Christian home but very interested in Christ. Please pray for his conversion.

Please pray that the Lord would develop in her a true and deep love and longing for Him more than anything or anyone else and a deep understanding of the Gospel and its significance for her.

The Lord has brought me back in contact with a Persian who I used to teach ESOL to. He came round for help with a form. He’s Zoroastrian originally and had to flee Iran due to persecution. On his journey to England, Jesus, the King of Kings met with him on various occasions, through different street evangelists, one in Belgium, one in London and then his English teacher (una servidora). I hadn’t seen him for a while and when I did see him I would invite him along to church, but something always ‘came up’ stopping him from coming. Until we bumped into each other recently and he asked me for help with this form. So he came round, and then out of the blue as the time passed, he continued to share with me his experience of Jesus and of how he knows Jesus is in his heart, this was without any prompting from me. I took him straight round to some godly Christian men, who expounded the gospel to him more, the result of which he was very encouraged and came along to bible study. He really enjoyed it. Please pray for:

His conversion and renouncement of Zoroastrianism and Islam
The conversion of many of his Muslim friends and others
That the church would lovingly embrace and encourage him in the faith

I took my Greek re-sit this April and am still awaiting results.

The Lord graciously keeps me at the language school in the mornings despite not having the qualifications I’m supposed to have. This is why I have been working towards a language degree in order to help support the Lord’s work. I’m doing the English component now, after finishing and passing the Spanish. If I weren’t doing this, I probably wouldn’t have this little job. The Lord is SO gracious and cares for us so much. I am so privileged to be the teacher of so many special people from all around the world. I long to share the gospel with them all and see them coming to faith in our wonderful Saviour. One Korean student has been going along to church to ‘improve’ his English.

The afternoons are the only times I can do my visiting, and my heart is burdened for so many contacts I have made but it’s so difficult to fit them all in every week and I get very frustrated. I shall tell you their nationalities and a little bit about them. There’s a Polish girl, married to an English man, she has 2 children, we have met up recently and may start going swimming together. She asked me if I would come to the beach with her and her children this week. There’s the Latvian lady who used to come to the workshop but stopped as was given work by someone we know from church. I need to visit her. There’s my Turkish friend with the very talented daughter, who has received a bible in her language from me, I need to follow her up; And of course there are various English contacts (I have had opportunities to share with my colleagues at the Language school as well).

Please pray that somehow I will find the time to keep up with these people and not lose contact with any as they are all precious to our Lord.
I’m thinking of offering to help out at the Russian playgroup. Please pray for the Lord’s guidance here.

Chris and I are praying about going out on the streets on Friday or Saturday nights. We are evangelists at heart and have both done a lot of street work, but for the last 3 or 4 years the Lord hasn’t prompted us to go out, however, recently I’ve had a prompting (which I did have just before we got married) to ‘hang around’ the town centre with the night clubbers and seek opportunities to share the love of Christ with them. Please pray for this. Hastings is a very dark place at night (as most places in England are). But until Chris finds work down here we couldn’t practically do it.

Thank you for praying for Chris. The Lord is opening doors indeed. He had a meeting with the Bishop and it went very well. The Bishop would be happy to recommend him for ministry in the Anglican Church. The commuting is wearing on him and he really needs to be able to leave his job in London. He has an interview on Friday (15th June)

Final prayer points:

That Chris and I would be clothed in humility
That our walk with the Lord would deepen
That we would truly live by faith and not by sight
That the Lord would open up preaching doors of opportunity for Chris
That more of our contacts would start to take the gospel seriously, i.e. that we would see true conversions
That I would learn to forgive when other brothers and sisters hurt me and disappoint me

Please drop us a line! We would love to hear from you too! What’s your news? If you would like to know the names of these people I would be happy to write to you individually with more information.

Thank you so much for your support, you are truly valuable to us, and your prayers and interest in us is not taken for granted.

What a loving Father we have! So ready to bless us and shower his mercy and love upon us.

Dawn and Chris

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