SAFE AND FLOURISHING IN KAZAKHSTAN

How wonderfully God brings all things together in his time during a pandemic, despite political unrest!

Katy is a professional musician called to serve God in East Asia. When she could not return to the field after the COVID outbreak, Katy took up a short-term assignment in Central Asia. Loving it there, she is staying on. Little did she know Kazakhstan would hit the headlines a year later in political turmoil, nor how God would help her flourish there!

The school is understaffed and not very organized. This gave Katy freedom to build her own systems for teaching. She took initiative and found her voice to ask for what she needed, which is an important area of growth for her.

Here too, Katy began to enjoy an active social life and develop new interests. She started to cook and bake for fun, exercise, hike and sightsee with friends on the weekends—a big step forward for her.

Katy can relate to many of her students who are third culture kids because that was her own childhood experience. She understands their cultural disorientation and the pressure to perform, conform, and achieve. She applied what she learned in Spiritual Formation during the pandemic to help them. She incorporated role plays, YouTubes, journaling, meditation, memory verses, Bible discussion and various projects to draw them out and cultivate in them a reflective habit to life and learning.

Trained as a classical musician and expected to do everything perfectly, Katy is accustomed to demanding perfection of herself. By being willing to take risks and try new things, she has a growing ease and joy, a lightness of soul that is refreshing to behold. It has been an unexpectedly transformative year for Katy in Kazakhstan.

In the middle of bad news and disruption, her school is safe, sheltering in place. Good things continue to happen in unexpected places for many are God’s thoughts and plans toward us (Psalm 40:5). Pray for Kazakhstan, its church and its people. God is always at work. What He does to bring flourishing for one person, He can also do for a nation. 

The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. (John 10:10) And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. (Romans 12:28)