Celebrating Christmas in S. Asia

Here we are with Christmas Eve upon us and although tomorrow we plan to celebrate Christmas primarily as a family and with a few other close friends in a very American way, we wanted to share what celebrating Christmas over the last month has looked like for us in S. Asia.

Local Nepali congregation caroling

Elliot in his first Christmas dance competition 

Playing Joseph and Mary for the red light district ministry

Decorating the house for our party with neighbors

Another local church caroling

Traditional Nepali song and dance

A mix of Indian food with American sweets 

Matt telling the Christmas story to the children

Playing games

Time to get our grub on!

Elliot with his new buddy

The beautiful woman that helped make all of this possible!

Elliot opening an early gift from a friend.

To think all of the above has happened in the last two weeks and we still have a Christmas eve dinner to attend, a Christmas day dinner with two other families, and one more Christmas party. We pray that this update finds you all well as we celebrate the birth of our Savior into the world! Merry Christmas from the Boyd family!

Latin Americans Serving in S. Asia

This past week we have been extremely busy as we moved from our house into a new apartment (pictures to come soon) and we immediately hosted our first team completely by ourselves. This team was made up of five Spanish speakers that all now live in the Chicago area. It was an exciting trip as they are just now exploring how their Spanish congregation can be involved with God's greater mission around the world.

During their time here we spent two days doing evangelism out in nearby villages and saw many people come to follow Christ. This was exciting to see and we are already planning follow up as we want to see these new believers get baptized and start getting discipled.

We also were able to partner with a national to start a new church planting training set, which had over 40 people attend. We spent Sunday morning worshipping along side these brothers and sisters on a dirt floor with a tarp over our heads. Worshipping together really impacted the team as they saw how God is moving in this part of the world.

Aside from that we were also able to take a fun day up into the famous hills of Darjeeling (Queen of the hills) and see some amazing views of Mt. Kangchenjunga, the third largest mountain in the world. This allowed for a little down time as we ran hard the first few days and it also was a good place to debrief what the team had witnessed their first few days in town. This church is just now knocking on the door of internationally service, but we can already tell that God is going to use them in mighty ways.

We want to thank you all who were lifting us and this team up during their time here. We saw God move and look forward to see what he does through this group in the future. As you enter into a new week please remember us in the following ways:

• Hosting a Christmas Party for friends and neighbors 
• Our first Christmas away from family
• Decision making in regards to ministry here this upcoming year
• Upcoming travel to Taiwan for Matt's modular classes