Hey everybody! I’m so sorry that I haven’t updated you in a while I’m going to try to get out some more updates in the next few days just recapping everything that has taken place in the past couple months and some cool things that our Father has been showing me. So let’s get in there!
I left off as we were heading into Taiwan. For the first couple weeks we stayed in Taipei, the capital, right outside of a night market. So we went from the quietest city I’ve ever been in to probably the loudest city I’ve been in. A night market starts up around six in the evening and lasts until about two in the morning and there’s street food, clothes, etc. All this was actually right outside my window. It was actually very refreshing heading into this new city with the outlook of new opportunity to experience Father’s love in a new way. I have been able to feel a difference in the atmosphere in different places that we’ve been to and I just felt a huge openness for people that are just lost and searching for something. Those are thoughts on the first night arriving at the airport and heading to the place we were staying.
The next day we headed into debrief which is a time where we get together as a squad with all of our leaders just to talk through everything that we’ve been through and dig in deeper to some of the things we’ve been learning both as a team and individually as well. Also finding what was challenging and what we did well the prior months. This time of praying into those things and looking introspectively at the month and seeing what places of growth we’ve come from and where we can continue seeking God for guidance is so necessary.
We did a great deal of training during this time as well which was exponentially helpful in continuing into countries that we probably wouldn’t have a host and in dealing with spiritual attacks from the enemy. I’ve always felt like I was in a losing battle that I could not win but that also was a lie from the enemy to keep me down. Note: More about this in a blog coming soon. We learned about connecting with people from all different religions, cultures, and experiences and even got to practice doing this in scenarios with our leaders. That was debrief in a nutshell!
Right after debrief we left from being in our whole squad and finally split into our individual teams and Wabi-Sabi was off! We went to a city in the south of Taiwan and there were incredible experiences we got to have with the people there. We had a few service projects while we were there as well. There was a church’s new location for their children’s ministry they just bought so we had the privilege of helping move old things out, clean out the rooms, and paint some too! We got to pray over this new place as well and just lay a foundation of prayer and worship there before anyone even enters that building.
We found a Christian Church there in the city we were living in and got the awesome opportunity to visit! The worship was all in Chinese and I absolutely LOVED every part of that. That’s not a place to disconnect, you get the chance to worship in the Spirit! Worship always comes from your spirit so honestly it doesn’t matter if you understand the words or not. They even translated the sermon for us which they’ve never done before and that’s just one testament to their love for us even though they didn’t even know us. Beyond that we met a young lady there that was so passionate about the Gospel that when we went five hours away to a new city she wanted to come with us! This was such a huge blessing for us too because she was a native Chinese speaker and was able to help translate as we were speaking to people. So we just assimilated her into our team for those couple weeks and it was just beautiful having the chance to encourage her as someone that is remaining there in Taiwan and to keep on being that light there in that country.
We had some sweet moments out in the community too. My two favorite moments were getting to chat with a lady that I met on the train to our new city and then worshipping in the park and just letting the light inside of us shine. Such sweet moments of loving on people and letting Christ be exemplified through our actions and conversations with these sweet people in Taiwan.
So in a nutshell Taiwan was an incredible country to have the chance to visit and just love the people there. There were so many places of growth and equipping for the next place God would take us.
I’ve been choosing a word over each country of what I feel like God is teaching me. So Japan was exploration, and I feel like Taiwan was the country of preparation. And boy oh boy have I needed that preparation! Stay posted because I’m going to shoot out another blog tonight! I want to get you all caught up so I can share some more cool things going down! Love you all and I cannot thank you enough for bearing with my lack of getting these blogs out there!
