Back from Taiwan

Hi, this Ben here. Thanks to all those who prayed for our Taiwan mission trip! Man, where do I start? (Frankly, I hate to write, much less blog, but here goes!) Well, our 10 Taiwan missionaries there (hereafter called "the Taiwan team"), including our very own Allen Chen, were really really glad to see us. They're doing alright there, but imagine going from having hundreds of people in your church to having just ten, it's just, well, different. Like Kevan wrote about, we spent a lot of time trying to meet students: in the DCs there (some of them have really good meals for $1.75, to boot!), at English Clubs, playing sports... A quick note about the sports culture there: each department has a team for each sport--basketball, volleyball, soccer, tennis, etc--and they have interdepartmental competitions. (I think it's worth noting that the CS dept puts out the best basketball team on campus... find that ironic? ha.) And it seems that everyone is out at night playing till the lights go off at 11pm. It's at one of these sports times that Justin and I met the Physics tennis team and a senior named Lenny, the subject of Justin's Life at Gracepoint entry...

Christmas Celebration (our mini-GLive) was awesome--I'll post the pictures once I get them--it's a good thing we brought over the 100 extra chairs, because each of them was filled with Taiwanese students for whom this was the first time they got full explanations of Christianity and the true origins of Christmas. Almost all of us had some kind of "really good" conversation with the students, and overall they expressed such openness to relationship and surprising amount of spiritual hunger.

The most meaningful part of this trip for me, however, was when we were back at our living quarters spending time with the Taiwan team there. We ate fresh yo-tyao with warm soy milk together, we shared stories about how Dan Hoang almost ate two whole banana splits at Fenton's, they told stories about how they get penalized if they use Gracepoint-specific lingo ("hurting," "devastating," "butter," "solid"), we played king-kong shower w/ street fighter moves, we had devotion sharing times with them, and finally, we had extended times of prayer for them. I came away with such a burden to pray for our team, given the spiritually hungry climate on the Taiwanese campuses, and the kind of impact that they will make in that country if they are truly "the church" displaying God's love. It's tough for them out there but w/ a clear sense of mission and our prayers they can be really effective in reaching the emerging leaders of that country...