I’m thirteen and I just moved to the desert in East Asia. I’ve left my friends and the comforts of home. The food tastes like something I’ve never eaten, the air is dry and it smells like spice, and it feels like March even though it’s June. In a city of two million people there are very few Americans and I am an oddity. People stare at me and take my picture. When I walk down the street I see most men wearing white hats, identifying themselves as Muslim, the Muslim women are wearing scarves to cover their heads, and some men wear colorful robes of gold and maroon identifying themselves as Tibetan Buddhists. Three mosques are within a one-mile radius of my home and I don’t see any Christian churches. Our worship isn’t in a big building of thousands of people but in a living room with five couples and their kids.

I love it here! People have very little but they don’t put much value in material things, they place their value in friends. Magu is my closest friend, she lives with her parents and her older brother in a one-room apartment without running water. They always share what little they have with us. My language is still developing. A lot of times when playing games with Magu and her neighbors, I feel like their older sister, as if it’s my responsibility to watch out for them. Once, I told my friend, Maru, to be careful. The children laughed at me, and later I realized I wasn’t saying, “be careful!” but I was in fact saying, “little star!”



I want them to know Jesus. God deserves their worship! Some people do not want us to tell them. Sometimes I’m afraid, but more often I’m amazed at what God is doing. He is drawing these people to Himself. I love being on the frontlines of the mission field. I love seeing lives transformed. I know these people will live their eternity without God if we don’t tell them. I know my parents moved our family to East Asia to share the gospel, but I don’t see this as their mission, this is my mission. When Jesus said to go to all the earth to make disciples He was talking to me, too.

Haley is currently a 10th grader and is very active in the Brook Hills Student Ministry. She and her family just returned from a Two-year Mid-Term experience, with hopes to return Long-Term to work. Her family was pivotal in the spread of the good news to many people who had never heard before. Through the generous giving of our faith family to the Global Offering, Haley and her family were able to go Mid-Term and serve in East Asia. This year we hope to be able to send more families like Haley's.