The Lord has brought me my deepest joys through football (soccer), but also my greatest challenges. The challenges have felt particularly overwhelming.

Training with my club has been chugging along and I'm increasingly grateful for quality coaches and the friendship of the girls on the team. While the opportunity to play is probably one of the greatest gifts God has surprised me with here, it comes with challenging aspects too. I have struggled to find a balance with life outside of the team and the girls. We train six days a week together plus we spend hours talking and playing games and hanging out after training every night. Unlike most of the team, I have to wake up in the mornings for Arabic class!

Praise God for providing the most wonderful Arabic teacher for me! She has such an open heart to the good news, and I am praying for her to join the family! My teacher is a true joy to work with and I am close friends with her three daughters who are close to my age. This means that there are lots of card games and feasts that get to happen after the four hours of class are over each time, I'm at their home. The sweetest part of studying with a new teacher is that we get to read the Word together as part of our class time. There is a real difference in the countenance of my spirit when I come out of four hours in class.

I prayed with some friends that one of my soccer teammates here would ask me to read the Word with her again as we did last year. Crazily enough, the night of my birthday, we returned around midnight from soccer training, and I made ramen for us both to eat at my apartment. As we sat together and slurped noodles, she asked me if I remembered how we used to read together last year. Of course, I said yes! She explained that she has missed those times very much and was hoping we would begin reading the Word together again soon. We've since had some fun reading about Noah and the flood, the Lord calming the storm, and the women finding the empty tomb. It was honestly the very best gift from the Lord to see our prayers answered so quickly.

I also host a house group in my apartment. A couple house groups got together to celebrate Christmas in the desert. It was a blast and there were intense games of tag played among the sand dunes. A sweet praise, two teens from the group I help lead here recently chose to be baptized. What a joy!