Category: Updates

Twice a week we go to ‘The Rock’ (YWAM’s free coffee bar) to teach English and get to know the local students of the area. This has been so much fun, the Taiwanese are very friendly and kind. One thing (out of many) that has been a shock to us is the amount of questions we get about our faith in Jesus. Back in Canada religion is a taboo subject most of the time, but here people are very open and want to talk about it. They have many great questions like, "How is it fair that God forgives anyone no matter what they have done if they ask and believe that Jesus is the Son of God?" Another guy asked me once about a part of 1 Thessalonians where it says that when Jesus comes back it will be as a thief in the night. He couldn’t understand the fact that it was a figure of speech to imply it will be a surprise at an unknown time. He just thought, "Jesus is good and a thief is bad, so how can this be?" It really emphasized for Ben and I the importance of helping people understand even simple figures of speech in the bible.

In other news, we are super excited because we will be going to the Philippines in a few weeks to teach the pastors of a church and the students in the church’s bible school for a week. It is quite last minute but we prayed and felt it was the right thing to do, so we have two weeks to prepare what we will be teaching, arrange flights etc. If you think about it please pray for us!    

We’ll start with the packages – we’ve already received two, one from Mom K and one from Kevin & Tanya for Angela’s birthday – what a pleasure it has been to see a few familiar things! Thank you!

And we finally put up some prayer requests – feel free to take a moment to bring them before God. We really desire to make an impact here and we know that our prayers make a difference. So we’ll try to keep one updated each time we update the blog.

We are healthy and well taken care of, thank you for your prayers and support which have been well used in the last month.

On that note: you know that from Canada we have to dig all the way through the earth to get to China (remember that from your childhood?) – so it turns out that all the places and times over here are opposite. Yesterday is really in front of me (we would say the future was in front of us) and tomorrow is behind me (which naturally seems like it should already be history) – yeah, figure that one out :). Actually, we have excellent teachers who explained it very well! Kudos to Crystal & Will (their English names).

"I thing the biggest highlight for me was when one of the senior pastors came up to me and asked to speak to me in private. He started telling me that he had been to five years of bible college and had been a pastor for many years but he said, ‘I have never experienced anything as powerful as this training.’"

 

This week must be characterized by the word ‘new’. New temperatures, foods, languages (yes, multiple), events, people, places, sights, prayers, smells, experiences, the list goes on… I’ll highlight two for you, one pleasant, one putrid.
 
Let’s begin with the smell first. It occurs along the busier streets and until you learn what restaurant and where that type of restaurant is, there is no predicting when it will hit. One, such as you or I, might be walking along enjoying the evening sounds and people, the incredible number of stalls hawking their soup and squids, their shoes and starfruit (yes, it is a fruit and it is a star shape when you slice it like a cucumber, google images have some great pictures of it). Back to your pleasant walk. Yumm, you smell some chicken noodle soup or maybe some sweet asian desserts. Suddenly, your nose is assaulted by this powerful, overwhelming smell. You bend over double (not ready to ralph … sorry if anyone named ralph is reading this) but just because it is so completely overpowering. A moment later it is gone as a gust of wind whooshes by and you think, maybe I imagined it, nothing could be that strong. You continue along and within a couple steps double over again. No, you realize you weren’t imagining it. Across the street you see a nice little man looking at you over his grill (‘those foreigners, always doing things differently’ he might be thinking) and there on the grill sit the innocent culprits. A pile of tofu, the outsides turned a brown. Stinky tofu – world-reknowned, terrified by some and delighted in by others. *
 
You continue on your walk and continue to pass shop after shop and stall after stall. You come across a little sign that reads ‘The Rock’ and a little door that leads to a second floor room. You enter through a clear glass door to find a simple coffee shop filled with a number of tables. Your ears are filled with many sounds, something like chinese from your right (that is probably Taiwanese, but you can’t actually tell the difference), some more chinese (ah, you hear the words ‘how ba how’ signifying you are correct – evidently your kind little translater – that’s me – tells you it means ‘good, no good’, similar to what young people now say ‘what-ever’). Finally, a familiar voice says hello and you begin to feel at ease. This is a free coffee shop run to encourage the surrounding university student population to engage with us, they learn some english, we learn some chinese and important friendships are cultivated which through time and persistence leads to freedom and new life for many.

* Nobody should get the idea that all food here is like this – there is a wonderful variety and most of it is very enjoyable, just not so entertaining to read about.