Sunday, November 22, 2009

Hello!!

Sorry for the long absence. I'm not so great at keeping this thing going. Things have been going well here in Taiwan. We have been here for a little over 4 months now and have about 5 more weeks in the country.

Taiwan is hard soil for the gospel. People are comfortable with their lives and are focused upon material gain. They have religion with idol and ancestor worship. It is a spiritually dark place. We have tried to be faithful in sharing the good news of Jesus with people. We have learned how beneficial it is to have relationships with people. We have been building relationships with students at a local college. Please continue to pray for us and the people we have met.

With the holiday season approaching, we have many opportunities in place to share Jesus with people. We have a Thanksgiving party for our college friends this Friday. We will eat American Thanksgiving food, do some typical Thanksgiving craft things, and share the gospel. We have more opportunities to play bluegrass music coming up, and we are going to start learning some Christmas songs today. We will have a Christmas party on Christmas for our college friends, and that will be a great opportunity to share.

Below are some pictures with some highlights of the last few months. There's a little bit of information below each picture. Enjoy!!

This past weekend we went to the Eastern part of the country. It is an incredibly beautiful place! We went with a friend we met at the college. Her name is Way, and this picture is with her and her family that hung out with us on Sunday and took us around Taroko Gorge.
On Saturday, we drove down the Eastern coast. We stopped at various places, and here we are at the ocean. The picture is Paul, Sarah, Way, Jeff, Matt, and Cameron.
These are two friends we have made: Amy and Gayo. They are great! They came over to my apartment and cooked lunch for the 5 of us. It was lots of fun.
Here is the lunch! Yummy!
Here we are at the Halloween party that we had for our college friends. Janice made some snacks for everyone, the students went trick-or-treating to the rooms in the apartment, Cameron carved a jack-0-lantern while Jeff shared the gospel with them. We also played some games. It was a lot of fun!
This is also at the Halloween party.
Here we are in Tainan, a city in southern Taiwan. We went there to play at a fundraising banquet for Ray of Hope, a home for unwed mothers and a crisis pregnancy center. This is the couple whose house we stayed at. They were great hosts and also showed us around Tainan.
This is a temple in Taipei. It was during a festival, so many people were there.
Here we are with some students in Taichung, a city in southern Taiwan. We went there for a few days to work with an IMB missionary there. This is at the PE University, where we played some bluegrass music and talked with students afterwards. Interestingly enough, the girl in the front in a black and white shirt is the daughter of the people we ended up staying with in Tainan.


God has given us some great opportunities while we have been here....to meet people, share, play music, and grow closer to Him. Thanks for being a part of this with us!