SQJ Taipei

This is a post I’ve been putting off… because it will take forever to write if I really try to be thorough… so I’ve decided to NOT be thorough and just write the post.

We just spent 3 weeks in Colorado… nice huh?

Thanks to the generous gifts of our supporting churches and individuals, we were given the opportunity to do something we probably should have done sooner… attend SPLICE training at Mission Training International in Palmer Lake, Colorado.

From the MTI website (linked above)… What is SPLICE?

SPLICE focuses on your skill and character development in six vital areas:
Spiritual
Personal
Lifestyle
Interpersonal
Cultural
Endure/Enjoy

It is primarily for those who have not yet gone to the mission field… so… why did we want to go? 2 reasons…

1. We continue to hear about how helpful SPLICE training was from our colleagues in Taiwan… some of whom have been on the field for nearly 10 years now.
2. If God leads others to join our church planting ministry in Taiwan, they will most likely attend SPLICE and this will put us all on the same page.

What we expected… but didn’t know for sure to what degree… was that we’d also meet some lifelong friends at SPLICE. I think this happened… but of course time will tell. I know I met several brothers that I believe we’d be good friends if we lived near one another… and I know that I’d have taken any of our fellow SPLICE-ers as teammates on the mission field.

I think we were able to offer some added perspective to the sessions at MTI and many of our new friends thanked us for our input. Thank you for thanking us! We struggled at times to know when to share and what to share… because we knew that part of the learning process is discovery and if we jumped in all the time… it would be counter-productive.

But the fact is this: we paid the tuition fee like everyone else and we did so because we still have much to learn ourselves. Sure… some of the material was not new to us… but with the perspective of the last 7 years in Taiwan ALL of the material was EXCELLENT and USEFUL to Mrs SQJ and me.

If you are interested in cross-cultural ministry… go to SPLICE if at all possible.

I’d like to use this post to share a few links to websites/blogs maintained by some people who attended SPLICE with us. You’ll find the links below the pics… and if you click on the pics you’ll get a larger version. We had fun… as you can see! Angie was one of the 4 finalists for “craziest face” in the group picture.