Nov
7
It’s about 85 degrees and sunny here in Taiwan… in November!
Oct
30
Eric taught at a Bible Study at a church on Tuesday night on chapters 5 and 6 of Ephesians. While he was teaching, our friend Dan, who was teaching with him, whispered to me saying, “one year ago did you ever think you would be living in Taiwan watching Eric teach a Bible study?” Man, God is so good!
It was such a blessing to escape the heavy work load of Isaiah and enjoy seeing Eric light up as he shared what it looked like to live out the love of Jesus right where we’re at. While the gospel has been in Taiwan over 100 years it is still less than 3% Chrisitan. The main reason: non-believers can’t tell the difference between them and Chrisitans; this challenge to live out radical, sacrificial love really strikes a chord in this culture.
While Eric’s main heart is for discipleship he has grown a passion for teaching. It has been such a privilege to see the gifts and talents God has given Eric birthed, refined and walked out in the past 10 months. We’re excited to venture down the next path God has us on to further develop ways to live our lives, in every way, to simply love God and love others.
Oct
22
So… here’s to writing more! Just wanted to share some more with you guys. =)
One of our friends — Brian (Taiwanese) — got saved this week! He’s been meeting with us before the Rock to pray and has been going to Bible study and checking out Jesus. Well, the pull of God was strong on his heart and he decided to give his life to Jesus! So did his sister! Praise the Lord!!
We started the Prophets and just finished Amos. It was so encouraging to read, ironic, right!? But really, the words were spoken by Amos for the Northern Kingdom, Israel, but written for the Southern Kingdom, Judah. Even in Israel’s sin God was saying he is still with them. At this point, exile was imminent for Israel, but Judah still had a chance to turn. They would have seen that everything Israel was going to go into exile for were things they too were doing.
God was giving them a chance to escape judgment through the example of another… saying “hey, see these guys over here… they are screwing up. Guess what, you are to now stop it! Turn to me and love me!” (my own words of course!) They truly were without excuse. God is so merciful. I don’t think I would be able to deal with giving someone so much grace. I pray I would…
Live out love… give grace where it’s not deserved and love those who others have deemed unlovable!
Oct
19
Just finished up an all-night prayer time last night with a bunch of people from class and it was so refreshing.
The Spirit was so heavy and evident. At one point when we were worshiping I just started crying and couldn’t stop — His presence was so real and so intimate. He is so worth my time, my sleep, my life. I’m always so perplexed when often times I make such selfish decisions with my time when his presence is where I was created to be in…
Oct
18
Praise the Lord!
Just wanted to share something with everyone. Last letter I sent out I asked you all to be praying for some of my Taiwanese friends I met during ministry at the Rock. Well, I just got a message from one of them on facebook that two of the girls accepted Jesus as their Savior last night!!
One of their stories was pretty sweet! She said that she went out to dinner and saw something written in a restaurant and when she went to a friend’s house who has been witnessing with her and she saw the same words in the Bible that she saw in the restaurant! This is really random since there are not many if any Christian restaurants in our town. Her and another friend who have been searching and wondering about who this Jesus is decided it was time and they wanted to follow Jesus! Thank you for praying! Thank you for caring!
Please continue to pray for their desire to read the Word to grow and that God would help them get plugged in to a local church!
Oct
8
Our website for Awaken is chapter29.net (you should go there!) and for a long time I didn’t know what it meant. Well, I found out!
The Awaken message is bring the reality that the God of the Bible is the same God we serve today. If God is the same yesterday, today and forever, He is still moving in the same ways He did in Acts… right?! He didn’t change. Our lives, if they were to be recorded would be in the book of Acts chapter 29. If you read Acts chapter 28 you will see there is no real ending… God is waiting for us to fill the pages!
Our heart is to see people living out the reality of God’s power and passion in their every day life. Everyone is called to be a missionary, right where they’re at! (We just happen to be in Taiwan!)
Let’s fill those pages, shall we!?
Oct
8
We’re just starting to get into the Wisdom Literature and the past few days we have been going through Proverbs. The founder of SBS is actually at our school for the next two weeks and him and his wife are teaching all of the wisdom literature — so his lectures have been stellar.
One of the main things I’ve been challenged through it has been the need for continual pursuit of wisdom — that it becomes a lifelong goal. Within that I need to be purposeful in surrounding myself with men of wisdom in all walks of life as well as to be willing to spend money and time to be seeking after this Godly wisdom that I so desire.
The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight (Pro 4:7)
Sep
29
It was such a blessing to go back to AMERICA! What a difference it was to be in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado instead of the city of Dan Shui. The fresh air, the blue skies… beautiful!
Anyway, we spend 10 days with a group of about 30 people whose lives scream that God is alive. They were both inspiring and challenging.
What did we do?
We prayed a lot — spent time with God asking him to refine the vision of Awaken, ways to encourage one another and guidance for our week.
We fellowshipped a lot — it was so encouraging to be with people whose heart really is to see people awaken to the reality that the God of the Bible is the same God we serve today and that we are supposed to be actively serving an active God in our world. We had the blessing of going to the YWAM Denver, Eagle Rock base, up in the mountains and spend two days there just enjoying God’s beautiful creation and really seeking God.
We spoke — throughout the week we had opportunities to speak at churches, college groups and youth groups. We shared stories of how big and how real God is and how much he desires to use his people to impact his world. We taught youth groups how to hear God’s voice and were super blown away by some churches who were already practicing hearing God’s voice in intercession and stepping out on some pretty radical things!
There was one girl in a youth group who prayed one day in intercession and God gave her a picture of a peach. As they were walking in prayer she saw the same peach on a sign as the one she got in prayer. As they entered the store she saw a vision of a girl who was being hit and she was crying. When she got in, she saw the girl. She ended up asking her to pray for her and the woman received some much needed prayer. The girl who stepped out in this big way was only 14!
My mom got to come out to Colorado for a few days which was a supper blessing! It was so nice and refreshing to see her. God had spoken to me about her coming and what it would mean and everything he said was right on, so that was pretty amazing! She is going to be sharing at First Baptist Church of Metuchen on October 19th, about the Awaken message.
So… that’s pretty much what went down. I’ll write again with a little more.
Aug
30
Through the generous gifts and pledges that you have all given we have met 100% of our financial needs which will cover us through the Titus Project which goes through the end of March 2009. After the first quarter, I (Amy) had a minor freak out because hospital and visa bills brought us far over budget.
God has graciously shown his providing hand through it all, covering not just what we budgeted, but the unexpected costs of traveling overseas. So, thank you for your generosity and for being obedient to God in being such an integral part in our ministry over in Taiwan.
Aug
10
So typically our Saturdays consist of 10 hours of work, which is fun, believe you me. This Saturday, however, was even more fun! We had SBS fun day, mandatory fun, which is always nice to have time that you literally have to take away from working. We went up to some mountain and got to play all morning and early afternoon- we played dodge ball, football (McCall and I did anyway!), and ultimate frisbee.
It was such a nice time to be out in God’s beautiful creation and spend time with our classmates outside of the silent classroom where all you can hear is the clicking of laptop keys. The more time I spend with the people in our class the more I am blessed by each person. Seriously, God could not have put together a more amazing group of people — both students and staff. There is such a balance of fun and seriousness it’s unbelievable!
Each person truly has a desire to know God more and change the world through what they learn about him. Hear that? Change the world. I go to school with a group of world changers and I am SO excited to see where God leads each and every one of them. Its amazing how each person can act so silly and goofy one minute and then get some amazing revelation from God and start preaching up a storm.
It is so cool to see how God uses so many different types of people and personalities from all over the world to bless me! Ha ha, I know that’s obviously not each person’s purpose there, but sometimes it feels like it. I wish you all could meet them. I’ll have to do a short bio on each person, so you can just get a glimpse of each person… they’re amazing! (did I already say that?!)
After our SBS fun day a group of us went to the beach for the afternoon, about 15 minutes away and RELAXED! God gave me and my beautiful friend Hannah a pretty sweet revelation of how big he is and how big his love is for us through the horizon and the sky. MAN! After that we came back to our house and made a massive Mexican meal for 11 people, and sat out on our roof listening to Spanish Salsa music… only in Taiwan!
Then we went over the guys staff house and played games, you know spoons, well here in Taiwan we play “chopsticks”, you work with what you’ve got, right? =) What an amazing time of fellowship with wonderful friends. It really made me with all our friends, all of you were here with us to share this wonderful adventure God has taken us on.
There’s still a chance! While we’re half way done with school this week (so crazy!) we still have half to go, if anyone is in the mood to come to Taiwan, let us know, we’d LOVE to have you! =)
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