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.

Joyful Noise

In the past few weeks, the students at CELA have been practicing for the Easter Pageant they will present to their friends and family on April 11th. Each class will be acting out a part of the Passion week story as well as singing songs about Jesus. My class will be singing three songs: "I'm in Love with the King," "I Have Been Chosen," and "He Hung Upon a Cross." They really enjoy singing all the songs but their favorite is "I Have Been Chosen." They like the song because they get to scream some of the words and as they are children, they love any excuse to scream. It is such a blessing to me to hear them singing about the love of Jesus in such enthustiastic voices.

Last Friday, we had our first all school practice. All the students from E3-E6 went to the gym and sang the songs together. I hope heaven sounds like this day. Voices lifted up in praise to Jesus. People from "every tribe, every tongue, every nation" laying claim to the promises of God:

I have been chosen. I am a child of God,
A royal priesthood, selected by the Lord
To proclaim the excellenct of Him who made me.
And called me from the darkness to the light.

Please continue to pray with me that my students not only sing the words of these songs but they may come to believe them and hear the truth in the words. They are chosen children of God, chosen to love and to be loved by our Savior. Pray they become what they sing, "children of God."

Little Bears and Evil Fish

This weekend, I went on a trip to my student/friend, Angel's, house. It was a unique experience for a number of reasons. First, Angel's family does not speak English .She has two sisters, a brother, and parents. One of her sister's speaks English and another understands it, but they were all to shy to actually talk to me. Secondly, Angel lives on the coast, in a very small community. The neighborhood is very Taiwanese and the older people do not even speak Chinese. The children in the community had never seen a white person before. They stared at me and whispered about how I looked, ate, walked, and talked. This is something that, surprisingly, you get used to with time.

Angel was very excited to have me visit and wanted to make me everywhere. We went to her schools, her parks, and her temples. She introduced me to her family (she seemed to be related to everyone!). We went fishing and walked along the harbor. Her sisters and I baked cookies together and her family had a barbecue on Saturday night.

I loved talking to her family and getting to know them. Because they did not speak English, Angel spent a lot of time translating. Her younger brother was particularly interested in me. He is twelve and loves American baseball. He asked so many questions. Once, while we were fishing, he started to ask me the "real" names of the teams. He knew their Chinese names but wanted to know their English names. Some of my favorite were the Chicago Cubs which are the "Little Bears" and the Florida Marlins which were the "Evil Fish."

The whole weekend, I was feeling like a bad missionary. I never found a time when it would be appropriate to talk about God or ask about their beliefs. I was so discouraged because even with friends, I was struggling to talk about the Gospel. I didn't want to be awkward or rude, so I just continued to pray.

The best part of the weekend, by far, was my last hour. While Angel's mom was making lunch we were all in the kitchen talking. Out of the blue, Angel says "My mom said that now we will all be Christians now!" I was overjoyed! Praise God. The Holy Spirit works in such amazing way! Here I was struggling, thinking I was failing Angel and her family, when in truth, God was working through me despite me.