SQJ Taipei

I know that the 3 of you who read this are probably going crazy since I haven’t posted in a while…..
We are moving… and preparing for Home Service…… and hosting a group of college students…… and…….going out to eat a lot……….
This post might be a bit long… I’m going to ask you to click MORE to read the rest of the post…..

First….. Home Service…
We’ll be leaving Taiwan on April 3rd for a 6 month stay in the USA. Our schedule is jam packed and although it is highlighted by times with family, supporters, conferences, missions training, and lots of swimming… when I look at our schedule… I basically see one thing… TRAVEL. We are getting ready for all that we can anticipate.

Second… Moving…
After living in the same apartment for almost 6 1/2 years… and working at the same church for all that time… we are ready to move on…. actually… we are WAY BEYOND ready to move on. Nearly every day I notice more and more proof that the roots of this group of people have grown DEEP. In other words, their faith is DEEPLY ROOTED… in the word of God. While other missionaries may still be of use to them… I have found myself “floundering” for a while now. It is always somewhat crazy that we should compare ourselves with the Apostle Paul… but here I go… I think my gifts and aptitudes are more suitable to the kind of work Paul talks about himself doing in 1 Corinthians 3 & 4. In that passage, he is contrasting the focus of his work with the work of Apollos. Paul saw his focus more as going to new areas and “planting” churches. Apollos apparently came after Paul and helped the church grow. This approach actually led to some divisions in the Corinthian church, but Paul defends his actions powerfully. Lord willing… when we return from the USA in September 2006 we will move directly to the city of Xindian (and specifically an area called Ankeng) to work with at least 5 Taiwanese Christians and a Kiwi who is married to one of those Taiwanese Christians to start a “daughter church”. The church here in Yung Ho is very supportive and also very curious. Their DEEP ROOTS are now growing OUTWARD… BROADENING their influence and ministry. We thank God we have been called to join this new and very exciting church plant. As far as I know, it is the first church plant involving Taiwanese co-workers within our mission. It is a hybrid of missionaries and locals, but it is a step toward the Indigenous Church Planting Movement that we are praying for and giving our blood, sweat and tears for. So… in addition to packing and preparing for Home Service, we are also packing up ALL OUR OTHER STUFF and moving it to storage and we’ll retreive it if the Lord brings us back here safely in September.

Third… College Students…
We absolutely LOVE it when groups of college students come over. I’ll admit that I sometimes think about how much money it involves and compare it to how few days they are here… and wonder if it is worth it… but once the group is here I can hardly think of anything other than being with the students. In this case, we had originally planned our Home Service to begin in early March, but once we found out about this group coming, we put it off for about 3 weeks until they leave on April 2nd. This group is from Central Christian College of the Bible in Moberly, MO. Our friend Mike Worstell teaches there and has done an AMAZING job of building the missions program in just 3 years. This year there are about 10 different groups of students out all over the world for spring break. Mike is here with the group. Right now they are out of Taipei… some to Taichung (Atkins) and some to Lotung (Skiles & Fletcher). They’ll be back here Thursday night and we’ll get to be with them for a couple more days before they leave on Sunday. One of the coolest things on our schedule is that we’ll be going to CCCB in April and so we’ll get to spend time with these kids again soon. I’m so glad as this is a great group and many are considering Taiwan and the Lord is moving in an ever more clear and powerful way here in Taiwan. We need workers. The % of Christians is far smaller in Taiwan than in China, but China seems to be getting most of the attention these days.

Fourth… going out to eat…
If you’ve been here… you know that curbing hunger is about the least important part of meals here… it is about the relationships… the friends… the fellowship… the smells…. the presentation… the traditions… the habits… the excitement… etc. Whenever one of the missionary families is about to start Home Service… their friends all begin a series of phone calls trying to line up a time to take them out to eat. Fortunately, we’ve already gone out for quite a few of these meals already… and we have another one tonight. We love this part of the culture and we are always grateful for these outings… especially this time as we are packing up our stuff and these last few days, we literally can’t make food at our house! Tonight is Frank and Hannah and their daughters Angel and Annie.

I’ll try to keep posting through all this… but the phone/ADSL has to be shut off at some point…….. but I can probably latch on to a wireless connection somewhere nearby…… we’ll see.
SQJ