"Celebrate, Jesus Celebrate!"

I am sure we have all heard the song, " Celebrate, Jesus Celebrate!". If you haven't, it tells me if you did or didn't grow up in church:) For all of us who grew up in church we have heard this song played a dozen times in a dozen ways with a dozen motions or actions. So when I heard that our Language team would be doing an English camp and that we would be teaching them this song, I thought to myself, "Wow, of course this would be the song we would teach them." Here we go teaching these kids a cheesy song with some cheesy actions...Man was I wrong. We had an opportunity to help out a church in Tianmu( a very foreigner(that's us) populated area near Taipei), do an English camp. We had a meeting and decided that we would teach them one drama and one song. In order to teach the kids these two things, we ourselves had to perform the drama and the song in front of the elders of the church:) Coming into this whole thing I was a little bit frustrated. I thought that this was just another thing to fill up my week. But God of course knew better. He knew what I needed, even if I needed a cheesy song, and drama. I am so thankful that our language team was able to create the drama and the motions to the song. We have a great group of guys who really did a wonderful job at making the drama and the song understandable and simple enough for these small children to enjoy and take part in. The camp lasted 3 days. Each day we had about and hour to an hour and a half with the kids, and during this time we would teach them the drama and song. The first 2 days were, teaching and practicing, and the last day was a performance in front of church members and parents. I wish I could put into words what my heart felt as I got to know these kids. I have never really seen "kid's ministry" as a priority. In my mind it went, adults-youth-kids, in that order. This was the first time that I realized that kids are just as much a priority as us adults are. In my mind my wife was always the one who had a heart for children, but I was called for a "higher" purpose: to preach and to pastor. This thinking is flawed in many ways that I don't need to go into right now. I am sure most of you can pick out many reasons why that thinking is wrong. The pictures above are just small windows into the lives of these kids. Granted, the area that the church is in is a very rich area, but when we had the performance, a small amount of parents were there. I could see how these kids wanted to hang all over you and have you hold their hand, play with them, teach them, laugh with them, and be their "big" friend.

A small boy in particular, the little boy in the picture above(yellow shirt, in the picture with just me and him) really touched my heart. In our drama, whatever character we played, we would need to teach the children who were going to play that part. My part in our drama happened to be the part of playing a little boy(go figure) who was a part of 3 children whom Jesus calls to be His disciples. I had the privilege of teaching 3 small children(the 3 photoed together above). These kids were awesome! The one in the yellow shirt, his name is 保羅 which is Paul in English. The other little boy's English name was 比得, which is Peter in English, and the other girls name in English was Tin-tin(?). They all have chinese names but Paul wanted me to call him bao-luo(how you would pronounce Paul in chinese). When the children came to me in order for me to teach them they were a bit shy. I think they were all 6 or 7 years old. In just a few minutes they began to feel my beard, touch my nose, wrinkle my ears, and pull my glasses off my face. It was great. After I got done teaching them the part, the two other kdis ran off to play while Paul stayed at my side. In his little 7 year old voice he came to me and said, "Hao, wo yao kao ni". Which means "I want to test you." I started laughing because this little boy was wanting to test me. So I said "Ok. Test me." He then began to tell me every joke he knew and wanted me to answer them. Most of the jokes I didn't understand completely so I just asked, "Why?" and he would tell me the answer. Then he asked one joke and I understood all of the chinese and answered right! He was surprised and loved it. It's amazing at how much even the littlest of chinese can create relationship. It was my turn next. I started asking him jokes and pulling tricks on him that I haven't used since grade school! We were laughing and talking and then he asked me,"Why is your nose so long?" "Why does you breath stink?" "Why didn't you shave your beard this morning?" "Guess how many brothers and sisters I have." I was laughing my head off at this moment. This little boy who, at first glance, would seem very shy and timid, was asking me all kinds of questions! He asked me my blood type, told me he could run very fast, and told me I needed to shave my beard. It's so hard to communicate through writing the expressions of his face and my face at this time. Those faces would share more than all of the words I could write.

The final day came and I was so happy that Hannah and Allison came with me! As soon as Allison and Hannah walked into the church it was as if they were superstars:) Every person was walking up to Allison and Hannah wanting to talk to them and of course hold Hannah. At one point we both looked around and noticed that neither one of us was holding Hannah and saw that one of the elders of the church was holding her. It was a great way to connect with the church. When one person would see Hannah, they would call all of their friends then all of them would come and want to hold Hannah and ask my wife a million questions. Being famous is a hard job;) God's gift to us through Hannah opens so many doors for us to have relationship with the Taiwanese. Over all we had a great time and I pray that the kids would come to know Jesus in a real,soul -saving way, if they haven't already.

Pray for us for the church has asked us to be a part of a project that they are doing to reach the kids of the neighborhood weekly. By doing this we would need to commit to this church and become members. This is a big decision, and requires us to make a "long-term" commitment. We need to pray and give an answer soon. Would you pray for us? We love you all! Enjoy this video below:)

Lessons we're learning along the way...

Hello Everyone,
Right now we are enjoying this wonderful typhoon weather of Taiwan. It feels nice to have a day of rest with your family; not needing to go out and run errands or go to class, but just to rest and be with your beautiful wife and precious daughter. I really like days like this. In Dan Shui it's almost as if the whole town shuts down. If the typhoon is really strong most things are closed and people are scarcely on the streets. It's nice....it's like the whole city takes a break. Praise God for days like this. Allison asked me to update our blog on anything I've been processing or thinking about lately, so that's the main point of this post.

Recently I had an incredible/ horrible experience. You know those times when something happens that is much needed, but man it hurts when it happens? It's like the proverb that says, " Blows that wound cleanse away evil; strokes make clean the innermost parts. " Blows and strokes; they hurt but they do refine. A couple of weeks ago a loving friend spoke very loving words that at first, in my opinion, were incredibly UNloving to me. I hope that makes sense. This friend spoke some very hard words to me, that I believe God wanted me to hear. Those words are never easy to swallow. I will give a picture of what it was like without going into much detail.

We were having a conversation and something I said was TOTALLY misunderstood(which later the friend admitted that they misunderstood), but that got the ball rolling. This friend proceeded to tell me basically what they thought of me, and how much PRIDE I have. I think the phrase was this, " You are the most prideful person I have ever met." Ouch. I sat their having an out-of-body experience thinking the whole time,"They are right. Absolutely right" I have known for a long time, as some of you who know me may know as well, that I have an issue with pride. It seems that I often forget the gifts and blessings that God gives to me are His and not mine. Why I do act as though all I have I didn't receive? As the conversation came to a close I couldn't say anything. I had no defense because I knew what this person said was true; and more than that I knew that God was speaking to me as well.

Over the next few days I thought about this whole experience. Trying to pick out the parts that were truth and the parts that were maybe built on emotion and exaggeration. As I was praying you can imagine the guilt and shame that I felt towards God. It's funny because for awhile I have been praying that God would humble me, but I was not expecting Him to do it this way. The whole time I was thinking of what a horrible sinner,friend, missionary I was. At the same time I knew that my pride most likely wasn't only affecting my friend but also my wife and my daughter.

This whole post comes down to this point: In the midst of all the emotion, and understanding how much I lack of Jesus' character in my life, I realized more of who God was and His grace, love, and patience towards me. It was as if God wanted to reveal Himself to me during this time so I could understand how great His love is towards me, a sinner. It's funny how God reveals himself to me in a time when I understand the depravity of my heart and how prone I am to sin. It's usually NEVER when I am thinking how great of a person I am and how I've got it all down. I understand more of God's grace when I understand how much I need His grace. So I'm ok with being a man who is not perfect at all, but has issues that God is dealing with. Since I understand that God does not have this expectation on me to attain perfection overnight, or EVER, I shouldn't have that expectation on myself. There is so much more that God has to say in this. The proverbs say over and over that "humility comes before honor..." . Let's seek humility. There is a really popular amazing promise in Lamentations that most of you know Lam. 3:22-23," The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, His mercies NEVER come to an end, they are new every morning great is your faithfulness." What an awesome promise, but if we read the whole chapter, which I encourage you to do so, and even the whole book, this promise is in the midst of Jeremiah telling us about God's hatred of sin, Israel's wickedness, and God's hand of discipline on Jeremiah. Amazing that Jeremiah could say in the midst of these things, "YOUR LOVER NEVER CEASES! EVERY MORNING YOUR MERCY IS HERE!"

So I hope that we all can praise God for times of discipline and correction, and see the purposes of our loving,merciful, patient Father.