New Faces

This week, we have had a visiting music ministry team staying with us. They are performing concerts and going to classes at Chiayi Girl's School and sharing the love of Christ with the girls there. For many of these girls, it is the first time they had heard about Jesus. In addition to the ministry at the Girl's School, the guys are also telling people about our church and our work. On Friday night, for our Bible study, we had over 100 people in attendance. Our normal attendance is between 60-80 so this was a big blessing.



The most exciting thing though was our Saturday Youth Group. Youth Group is my joy for the week. We have a very small group of kids who come for singing and Bible study in Chinese. We get to talk about deeper faith questions and teach the Bible in the kids' native language. On an average Saturday we have between 5-10 kids come. Because the guys from the music team were here, we had more then 50 girls there this week. It was amazing to see them sing and learn about God.

The best part of the day was during our Bible study. We broke into groups of about 15, each group had a foreign missionary and a national to translate. We talked about the 10 commandments. We talked about the laws God gave us and how we cannot keep them no matter how hard we try. The girls accepted this easily. In their religion, they are taught they do bad things all the time and the gods punish them for them. After we talked about the law, I got to share the Gospel. I told them that our God is different. Our God loves us and is gracious to us. He sent His son to take our punishment for us. Jesus came and died so that we can have eternal peace with him.

After the lesson, the girls talked about what they had learned, what was new to them. One of the girls said, "I didn't know God loved me too. I just thought He was for good people." Another said, "God is not mad at us. God will not punish us. That is so good!" These girls had never heard of our God who loves them deeply and wants them to be his children.

We gave every girl a Bible and a Christian music CD. They were excited about the CD but surprisingly it was the Bible that had them fascinated. "You mean I can have it. I don't know about this. I have never seen a Bible before. I want to learn more."

Please keep them girls in your prayers. They came because of the music team but they were abel to hear the Gospel and the Holy Spirit is working on their hearts. Pray that they continue to come to our church and hear about Christ.