Unending Love, Amazing Grace

Elephant School News:

Well this is it! We start our second semester at the Elephant English School tomorrow morning. I have personally tested every student, and after many many meetings and discussions with Lewis and the other school staff, we have finally ironed everything out. We now have all the classes rearranged, as well as students moving up, down, and sideways. Change change change will be the atmosphere of this next week, but I'm excited to see what will come of it. There are many things we are doing differently this time around. We do what we can to learn from our mistakes as well as others, and most of all we try to stay flexible and creative. God has really brought us some great students, and our goal is to serve them with professionalism and excellence, all while pointing them to Jesus. It's not easy, but God has had his hand all over the school since before it opened. There's no doubt in my mind that God has chosen the Elephant English School to have an impact on this city for Jesus Christ. God has shown all to clearly that he was present at the beginning, that He is moving in this season, and that He desires to carry this school because Christ will be glorified. It has been an honor to be a part of something this Christ centered in a place that is so dark.

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Elephant School News:

This has been exam week at the Elephant English School. I have spent the past week calling students out of class one by one to test them. Many of the students dreaded me calling their name, but when all was said and done, I think our students as a whole did very well. There are a few students couldn't speak three words of English when they came through our doors, and I have been following their progress from afar as a measuring stick to judge our teaching methods by. Two of those three students passed with flying colors, and the other scored much higher than I expected. Unfortunately not all of our students will be promoted to the next level of classes. There is a responsibility on the students shoulders to put effort into study and practice, and it is important to us hold a standard for the school. If we were to graduate both the students who put forth the effort to learn and those who just show up for a diploma, we would soon lose respect in the city as a reputable school to study at. And it is our aim to provide these people not only with the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, but also with a quality learning environment and academic credit system. Where we stand, I think we are making some good first steps. There is plenty of room for the school and us as teachers to grow and learn as we seek to glorify God through teaching English in Kampot, Cambodia.

Elephant School News:

Another week of classes have flown by. I teach the three Level 1 classes at the school. Level 1 is our most advanced class we are offering this semester, and the students in our Level 1 classes are FULL of questions. They have memorized almost all the hundreds of grammatical "rules" of the English language. To have the grasp that these students have on the English language takes hours and hours of study and lots of hard work. Now, it is my job to teach them that there is no such thing as "rules" in English but "guidelines" instead. Exceptions are not very common in their language, so the many silent letters, irregular verbs, and the countless grammatical exceptions we think nothing about do nothing but confuse the students. My classes have been good sports about it though. They actually think its funny that we would even make grammar rules in the first place if we wont stick to them, and I think they have a good point!

The student Mony, who I shared about last week, will be out of town for the next week of classes. But there are plenty of other students who will be present and who have shown a genuine curiosity in the Gospel of grace and truth. Please continue to lift up the students of the Elephant English School in prayer. Many of them come from small rice-field villages that are hours away from the small town of Kampot. These students have never heard the Gospel before, and neither has anyone from their villages. We have set out to bring the message of Jesus Christ to the surrounding villages THROUGH the students that come to learn from us every weekday. Your prayers are appreciated!

If you would like to be added or removed from this mailing list please email me at: JRTrentham@gmail.com and I will make the appropriate changes.

Elephant School News:

Well, the Elephant English School has been up and running for three and a half months now. There have been many changes since we first began, but I feel we have finally hit a sweet spot and things have begun to smooth out. All the hard work we put into construction, lesson plan development, and countless meetings to give feedback to one another and to discuss new ideas has finally started to show fruit. I am so thankful for my dear brothers and sisters, both here and back home, that have poured themselves out in prayer and also did the needed footwork to help bring this school to where it stands today. God gave the vision for this school to Lighthouse Ministries knowing all the roadblocks and devastations that laid in the way. But our God is greater than any trail that the Enemy would put before us. Through the hand of our almighty God, the road was cleared before us as we pressed toward the goal God had set us towards. That being said, I would ask you all to continue to lift us up in prayer. Our school has many obstacles that still lay before us.

Just this last week, we had hard rain pour down for three days and three nights. Needless to say, the school flooded. I'm sure it was a funny site to see all of us teachers scooping water out of the foyer in water up to our ankles. Thankfully, none of the water made it into the classrooms, but three days of rain is nothing compared to what is coming. We are also starting to see a curiosity about the Gospel. Just this last week I got to share the Gospel for an entire hour. I talked about creation, all the way to Jesus dying on the cross. I was trying to get back to my english lesson I had prepared for the day, but my students just kept asking questions about sin, holiness, the power of God, and most of all, about the need for Jesus to have died. Needless to say, I was just fine to skip the lesson and answer these questions! After that class, one of my students, named Mony, who had remained quiet for most of the class came up to me and told me he had had a dream about meeting Jesus. Mony said that he had never felt at such peace before in his life. Mony said he felt a little ashamed, but not to the point that he dint feel very good about having met Jesus. Mony said he woke up in the middle of the night. Thought about how real that dream had been, and then went back to sleep. Once he was back asleep, he said the dream continued exactly where he had left off. There have been other dreams and visions that he has had as well, and God keeps using me to be able to confirm many of the Words that the Lord has given this man. Mony is one of many students at our school that God has been revealing himself to. Others fight it and dont talk about it, but it is still encouraging to see God at work. Please continue to pray for the students of the Elephant English School, and for us as we seek to minister and bring Christ to those that God has brought to us.

Recent Happenings:

Well, the past few weeks have held a lot of change in them. So now things are starting to settle down. The Turner's with their six kids have moved into the dorm. Things are going very well with the transition.

This past weekend, all of the Elephant English School faculty, and families made a trip down to Kep and out to Rabbit Island for a time of rest and fellowship. We had a nice relaxing boat ride out to the island followed by hours to play on the beach and in the water. Only when we were ready to leave did the waves kick up. Our wore our wooden river boats about didnt make it. Each of the three boats we took to and from the island almost capsized on numerous occasions. So I think it is safe to say we all got our daily dose of prayer in for the day! We ended up safely back on the mainland, having only lost a few cans of pringles chips and a flipflop (which happened to be found later by another boat and returned to us). As we walked back to the truck to pack up and head home, we saw that the truck had a flat tire...in Kep, which is a city no tire shop. We flagged down a man who called a friend who knew a guy who could come and look at the tire for us. We had conveniently taken the spare out of the truck before we left so we could all fit in. After a long wait (long enough for someone to find a flipflop in the ocean and then find us to return it), the mechanic (and that term is used loosely) showed up, after much assessing and thinking, he finally took the tire away to patch it. After another long wait, the man returned with the tire. We put it on and made our way back home, successfully sunburnt and wore out.

Prayer Points:

• Visions and dreams to increase among the people of Kampot (Visions and dreams mean a great deal to the Cambodian people, God has used them to stir a curiosity for the Gospel in numerous parts of S.E. Asia)
• Student Mony's curiosity to be satisfied only by the Word of God and for his hunger to spread to his classmates
• Spiritual Gifts to arise and increase among the Lighthouse Team
• Eyes of the Christians in this city to be opened to the many ministry opportunities that are available.
• Health and good rest for the Lighthouse Team. (This is a spiritually and physically intense part of the world. Rest and protection from God are needed to maintain our stamina and strength both spiritually and physically)

In Christ,

Jonathan Trentham

Romans 12:1-2