Last time I wrote was the worst time for our city.  It was rumored that the curfew was going to be placed at 9 PM.   It turned out to be a false alarm.  For whatever reason, ever since that time the violence in our city has somewhat subsided even though the same cannot be said about Juarez and Tijuana.

This year has been different as Christy left us in late June to go to college.  Not having her here has been weird (to say the least) but seeing her do so well at UVA makes her mom and dad very happy and humbled.  Not only she seems to be doing fine academically (especially writing papers) but she is doing even better spiritually as she is involved in prayer and outreach ministries in her campus church.  We thank the Lord for that.  My wife Insil is doing well, teaching a weekly Bible study, playing piano in the worship team of our church, and providing the piano accompaniment for the high school musical to be presented this and next week.  Beginning in January, she is also scheduled to teach English at the Baptist Bible Institute twice a week.  Joshua is tall and handsome (a lot handsomer than his old man) and doing well in school; Justin is showing a lot of potentials for several things, including playing the piano.  They, along with me, still have many things to clean up, but we like the direction that they are headed (most of the times).

This year, I didn’t travel as much as previous years but I feel more tired because writing up Greek curriculum in Spanish and teaching 3 classes with it certainly have taken its toll on my body.  Many nights I find myself going to sleep around 2 AM to finish all the preparations.  I am not doing this just to teach them but to handle over the materials to certain people who can teach this and other courses after I leave here.   Someone who knows about me doing this once told me that I was going to burn out.  Well, I hope not and I think not because I love what I am doing and no matter how late I go to sleep, I am up early next morning, first to pray and then to run (3 miles, 6 times a week).   Through it all, the Lord is upholding me through his grace. (Also, little knap that I sometimes take after I come home from teaching do wonders to recoup your body.)  Nevertheless, in the coming year I hope to better manage my time so that I don’t have to be up that late.  Clearly that is not healthy.  

The last two weeks have been very hectic as, besides my regular 5 weekly classes, I spoke at 5 different events: a youth conference (11/29), the state prison (11/30), the year-end banquet for the Chihuahua Pastors Association (12/1), another banquet, this one for married couples of a large Baptist church held at a fancy restaurant (12/5), and the small church of a friend pastor (12/7).

Speaking that the banquet of the Chihuahua Pastors Association was special, not only because of all the pastors and their wives who showed up, but also the mayor of our city was in attendance.  
Everyone thought that he was going to leave the banquet after he did his obligatory greetings that lasted about 10 minutes, but he and his staff stayed on to hear my 45-minute presentation on why our city, state and nation were going through what they are currently going through.  For this, I relied heavily on Augustine’s City of God (his analysis on why God allowed the rooting of Rome by the Visigoths in 410).  I was told later that his top staff wanted to buy this book to read it for himself.  (Good luck, for this book has more than 1,400 pages—mine is a condensed version of less than 150 pages.)

But the thing that I am more exciting about now is that when I do my daily jog in the morning, I hand out gospel tracks to people whom I meet in my route. Ever since our city has been attack, I realized that people really need the Lord and perhaps they are more open than before.  So, the Lord put in my heart to hand out tracks and then slowly build relationships with these people whom I run into quite regularly in my route.  Mexican people being more open to talk strangers than the Americans, I have had some nice conversations about the Lord with some of these folks, which encourages me.   Thus far, I think I have handed up close to 100 tracks!

I know the time must be really tough for a lot of you guys.  I haven’t seen anything like this in all my life.   This is when knowing the Lord as we do should make a big difference compared to the people of the Lord.  Hang in there!  Pray and reduce your spending!  As we are somewhat affected here by what’s going up there, we have somewhat reduced our spending and thus far managing it OK, thanks to the Lord.  Remember Philip. 4:19: And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.

Thanks for all your support and having kind thoughts about us.

Ryun for the family

Celebrating Joshua’s birthday (15 now) a while back but without Christy