My decision!!
Hey Everyone,
It's a Sunday afternoon in Wales right now and what encourages me so much, is that it can be the dreariest week ever, but on Sunday, God always makes it sunny! God is so faithful, you know!
Well, I am so excited to be writing this email to you all, because I have some good news to tell you! I am coming home in less than a month and a half!!! I am really looking forward to seeing my family again and to see all of your faces and finally talk with all of you in person once again! ... Some of you might have heard that I was looking into extending on the ships, and about a month ago, I was really prayerfully considering this. But, as time went on, I think it was more clear to me how much I am ready to come home. Don't get me wrong, I have loved the ships ministry so much and I don't think I realize yet how much I am going to miss it here. But, I do feel like God has given me a lot of peace to move on and I'm excited to see how I can take what I've learned on the ships and apply it to my life back home!
Some of you might wonder what my plans are for the future. Well, I don't have any major plans, but I'm going to be coming back to work and then maybe go to college next year (I'm still praying about what major I should study. You could pray that God would make that clear). .....I also know that missions has a huge place in my heart now! So, we'll see whether God opens the doors for me to do some other kind of mission when I get back, even if it's short term missions.
Well, I just want to share with you a few really neat stories of how God has brought joy to my life lately. You know, for awhile there I was really discouraged, because I wanted to share my faith with others so badly, but all of the conversations I had seemed to stay about surface level issues. A few days later, I heard a girl mention that she prayed every day for God to give her an opportunity to share her faith. And so, one week, I tried praying that God would do the same for me. Well, lets just say that God definitely heard my prayer, because in one week alone, I spoke with FOUR people about the gospel and about my faith in God. What a huge change, you know!... The first day, I was walking around the book fair, when all of the sudden, this girl asked me to help her pick out her first Bible. It was like God threw the opportunity in my lap! I asked this girl how much she knew about the Bible, and similar to my experience with the man and the chinese Bible, this girl knew nothing. So, I began telling her about the gospel and Jesus's love for us. It was so much fun, because for the first time, I was asked to tell about the stories of Noah and the ark and Daniel and the Lions Den to a twenty year old!.... Also, I had another experience with three Japanese girls who wanted to hang out so that they could improve their English. In our conversation together, me and some other girls spoke with these Japanese girls for THREE Hours about Salvation and Jesus and Christianity. It was so neat, because I thought that these girls would stop asking questions after 30 mins. But, they did just the opposite and asked question after question about Jesus Christ. The girls even remarked at the end, "I like your faith, because you follow God not because you're forced to, but because it's something you choose to do." One of the Japanese girls emailed us last week and told us that she is starting to read the Bible because she can see that Jesus is a very loving God who has a lot of power and goodness toward us. Isn't that just amazing!............ So anyways, I have been so encouraged lately to not only hear about God changing lives, but to actually see it for myself! And definitely God is so good for letting me be a part of these life changing experiences!
Well, that sums up a little bit of my experience in the past month.... I am heading to London in two days and will be staying there for three weeks. So far, I've heard that it is going to be the craziest port so far! We already have 20,000 people coming to our conferences on board and we have 2,500 tours booked so far. On top of that, we are expecting another 20,000 to walk on board from off the street. So please pray for God's strength, and that our joy in Christ can really show as well!
Thanks for all of your notes of encouragement and know that I have been so blessed to hear from you guys!... Have a wonderful weekend. I really hope that God will send someone into your lives who you can share your hope with, because I know that God is just as living and active in Ohio as He is here!
love,
Joslynn
" Do not throw away your confident trust in the Lord, no matter what happens. Remember the great reward it brings you! Patient endurance is what you need now, so you will continue to do God's will. Then you will receive all that he has promised." (Hebrews 10:35-36)
