New friends

As some of you know, Jason and I live in an apartment in Dallas where a lot of refugees from all around the world are resettled. About 800 to 1,000 are resettled in the Vickery Meadows area of Dallas each year. We've lived here since August and we've slowly seen several Iraqi (and some SouthEast Asian) families move in around us. There are always some really loud soccer games going on outside our balcony. Its awesome...we've really come to love living here at the Biltmore.

Anyways, today on our way to doing laundry we met two Iraqi guys named Thouray and Akil. Jason and I met Thouray about a week or two ago while he was playing soccer. He was so nice and eager to make friends. He knocked on our door about a week ago looking for Jason and he wasn't here. Since then, we had been trying to keep our eye out for him since we didn't know exactly what apartment # he lived in. On our way to the laundry room we saw him and he yelled out at us. He told us that this was his apartment and he invited us in. We sat down and got to know Thouray and Akil a little bit while the laundry was in the wash. They offered us drinks and we just talked-- as much as we could. Thouray just arrived in the US two weeks ago and Akil just one week ago. Akil didn't know much English, but Thouray knows enough to carry on a conversation. It was fun to get to know these guys and here a bit about them. They really seem eager to make friends and said they haven't met many Americans yet.

Please pray for Akil and Thouray. We are excited to get to know them more and to show the love of Christ with them by serving them in any way that we can. I have been praying to encounter refugees and that God would provide creative ways to serve them here, so if you could pray that too that would be awesome! Jason and I really want to have them over for dinner to show them some good American or Tex Mex food. So will see what happens!!