Faith of a Child

Many of you have heard stories about one of our students, Amy. She is in E4 this year. Amy has become a part of our mission family because Petrea (an amazing member of our team) has built a strong relationship with her and her family. Amy has begun to come to church with us and she spends a lot of time with the team; always asking questions and learning about Christ.

In her E4 writing class, her teacher this year Anna (another amazing team member) assigned the students to write a letter. This is Amy's letter:

Dear Teachers (she named each of us individually, I will spare you),

How are you? Do you know that all of us believe in God and Jesus? Do you know that we are a part of God's familes? I hope that we can go to church every Sunday and be together. Sometimes I really enjoy that we eat lunch together. Do you all pray to God every day?

Do you read the Bible every day? Do you enjoy it? Maybe someday, we can tell people to believe in Jesus and we can also tell them to go to church because church is such a beautiful place!

Your Family Member, Amy

Amy has been such a blessing to us at CELA and to our entire team. She has embraced her faith with such enthusiasm. She tells her family and friends about God and invites them to church. Amy gives us smiles and encouragement every time she sees us. Our little missionary!

Praise God for the students like Amy. Please continue to pray for Amy and for all of our students at CELA as they learn about Christ's love for them. Please pray that all of our students would embrace God's love as passionately as Amy has.

Its That Easy?!?

Tonight was out first Friday Night Bible Study of the year. It was exciting to see everyone again and get to catch up on how everyone's summer went. After our singing time, we had a lot of time for fellowship.

Another missionary and I were talking and she asked me why Erin (one of my Youth Group students) wasn't a Christian yet. I told her I didn't know. She suggested we ask her. Amy, you see, is a genius, and always uses the most direct methods.

So, Amy and I asked Erin why she wasn't a Christian. Here is a dialogue of the conversation:

Amy: So, Erin, why aren't you a Christian?
Erin: Oh, well, what do you have to do to be a Christian?
Beka: Do you believe that Jesus is God?
Erin: Yes, of course.
Beka: Do you believe that Jesus is the only God?
Erin: Yes, I think there are no other gods except Jesus.
Amy: Well, then you ARE a Christian.
Erin: Oh, well, then what do I do.
Beka: You should be baptized.
Erin: How do I get baptized?
Beka: Let's go talk to Pastor Alex.
Erin: Ok.


Erin talked to Pastor Alex and she will begin baptismal classes next week with the hope that she can be baptized later this year.

As we were talking, I kept thinking of Paul and Silas:
He then brought them out and asked, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" They replied, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household." Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his family were baptized. Acts 16: 30-33



Sometimes it is scary when you work so hard to befriend and gain trust with someone, especially one of your students, to ask the simple questions.

Praise God that sometimes they come to you and ask the important questions for themselves. This experience has taught me that the simplest of times, the quickest of conversations, can open the doors to faith.

Please pray for Erin and her new faith.

Typhoons

This weekend has been an adventure for team Taiwan. Please keep our people in your prayers.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090809/wl_asia_afp/taiwanweathertyphoon_20090809051426

Back for Year 2

After spending a few weeks in American catching up with family, supporting churches, and friends I am now back in Taiwan for year 2. I am excited about the work we are doing here and I am looking forward to seeing how we are able to expand and grow our ministries. This year, everyone on the team has decided to come back again and although we still need two more missionaries, it does not seem that anyone will be coming. So... we press on.

For the next three weeks (and last week), I will be teaching at our CELA Summer Program. We teach english classes in the morning and have camp-like activities in the afternoon. The highlight of the camp for us, is the VBS program we will have every Monday morning. CELA has never had a VBS before so this is a new experience for everyone; one we hope will help the students know and understand Jesus more.

Because of our relaxed and shorter summer schedule, the few team Taiwan members who are here have been able to spent a lot of time in fellowship together. We have long dinners, watch movies, and go swimming at the local pool. There are only five of us here now but starting this week, more and more will be arriving.

Please keep Taiwan in your prayers. Ask God to bring our students to faith. Also pray for the administration at both CELA and CMS as many changes are being made this year that will add stress to everyone's days.

I will try to post a new story as often as possible, so keep reading!!!

Bao Líng Chiu

This weekend, we took the youth group bowling. For those of us with an American perspective on life, this is a normal youth group activity, but for the students who meet with us every week this was a brand new experience. We took 20 + kids ranging in age from E6-Senior 2 (11 years old-17) to the local bowling alley. When we arrives, we quickly learned that about half the kids had never been bowling before and the other half had been maybe once or twice. We were in for an interesting evening.

After teaching to kids how to get shoes and balls and organizing them into lanes, we started bowling. Most of the kids kind of dropped their balls down the lane. We had quite a few falls and dozens of gutter balls, but were they those kids having fun. Every pin that got knocked down was applauded and high fived. Every time one of the students walked up to the lane, we held our breath in anticipation. As they got the hang of it, some of them started getting S, /, and X (splits, spares, and strikes).

In Taiwan, kids spend 97% of their time studying, at school, and in cram schools. They don't get a whole lot of time to be kids. They don't play around with their peers and they don't go out with their families. Academics rule their lives. Seeing the light in the kids' faces when they were allowed to just be kids was amazing. What a blessing to witness and what an answer to our prayers. New students came bowling with their friends and students we hadn't seen in months re-emerged.

Please pray that bao ling chiu opens the doors of our church to more kids as they find a place to relax and learn together about a God who doesn't care what schore they got on the JEPP but loves them without restraint.

Retreat

Two times a year the missionary team going on a retreat, somewhere away from our ministry area, so we can relax and enjoy Christian fellowship and God's creation. This semester our trip took us to Kenting. Kenting is located on the southern most tip of Taiwan and is about a three hour drive from Chiayi. It is a big tourist destination so there are western resteraunts for us to enjoy as well as white beaches, blue water, shopping, a night market, and beautiful scenic spots.

During our trip, we were able to spend a lot of time in the Word and grow in the Spirit and as a team. We always have a lot of fun together and sometimes its nice just to be us, a team and a family. During Bible study we focused on building a firm foundation of faith. In our ministry, we talk a lot about planting seeds and this is a great analogy for us because we only see our work produce fruit on rare occassions. But this time, we talked about the other parts of farming we sometimes neglect. As the Bible says, "I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow." Most of the time we focus on being Paul in this verse and "planting the seed" but God also calls us to be Apollos.

Our team has been in place for a long time. The people of Chiayi have been talking to us and getting to know Jesus through LCMS World Mission for a long time. There are many people who already have a seed. So, sometimes, we need to remember to look in on those seeds and water them. Our ministry isn't all about meeting new people and getting new people to come to church. We also need to strengthen relationships from the past and bring them to the waters of baptism.

But, we also need to be reminded of the last part of the verse. It is God who makes the seed grow. No matter how much time we spend with a person or how much of the Word we teach them, their salvation is in God's hands. We cannot make anyone believe. Turning our Taiwanese friends over to God is hard because we want them to be with us in heaven someday but only God can give them the gift of faith.

So we will continue to plant new seeds and water the old ones. We will pray for the faith of our friends and ask God to bring them to faith. Please join us in these prayers.

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.