Happy New Year!

We hope everyone is enjoying the new year! We recently celebrated 2 years in Taiwan! We can’t believe we have already been here for that long. These last two years have definitely been a huge learning experience, as much about ourselves and our family as the Taiwanese culture. God has done so much and we are so grateful. We have built many relationships here, we have had many opportunities to share the gospel with people, andeven been given the honor of having a church in our home. These people have truly become some of our closest friends. Please keep praying for these people to know Jesus!

We are also expecting baby #2! We are so excited about this and we know that children are truly a gift from the Lord. Allison is doing well and she is trying to rest as much as she can to keep up with Hannah, who is SUPER active. Hannah is growing so fast and LOVES to talk. Half the time we don’t know what she is saying, but we just pretend like we do. Hannah must take after her Daddy because she loves to sing and dance while listening to music. Every time she hears music she will stop what she is doing and start dancing. She has some pretty sweet moves. It is so cute!

Collin’s Chinese study is also coming to an end. He will be graduating from the laage learning program at theend of this month! We are so proud of Him! He has worked so hard. We know all his hard work will pay off. We have actually already begun to see the fruit of his labor. He has been able to preach and share the gospel with so many people in Chinese! That is such a huge accomplishment and we thank the Lord for giving Collin the ability and the gift to learn this language!

So with that said some of you might be thinking what is our next step. Well, we are so excited to say that we will be staffing the School of Biblical Studies (SBS). Collin actually did this school here in Taiwan in 2007. The SBS is a 9 month course where you learn to study the Bible inductively. Collin will be teaching different books of the Bible, translating, and discipling students, and Allison thinks that she gets to do the most fun part.. which is hanging out with the students and watching God transform their lives through His word! We are super excited about this next step and we know that we are going to learn so much! We will be giving more details as we move forward in this next step.

Thank you all for your love and support. We couldn’t be doing this with out each and every one of you. May God bless you all!

Jesus came into the world not to Give bread, but to BE bread...

Recently I got the opportunity to listen to message with the title being the same as this blog title. This message struck me in many ways. If you think about the title, "Jesus came not to give bread(mainly), but to BE bread", what are some of this first impressions that you get? For me when I "stumbled" upon this message, it was during a time of some struggling in my heart. In our church we want to be very intentional with reaching out to the poor and needy. As we continue to pray for strategy and ways to do this, we have only had a "few" opportunities to really go and do some outreach. Because of this, in my heart, I have been saying ,"this isn't enough". Even though on Sundays people are hearing the Word of God preached, and joining in worship, I still had this frustration in my heart that we weren't doing enough. When I looked at the title of this message something broke inside of me. I had been placing more emphasis on the giving of physical bread, than on the teaching of Jesus BEING the ONLY bread we need. As I listened to this message God began to convict my heart in different ways. I began to see that ev I was looking to other things to satisfy my "hunger" than Jesus. Was He my bread? In a consumeristic culture that wants to use everything to fit "our needs" Jesus calls us not to use Him to just fit our "needs", BUT to BE EVERYTHING we need. HE didn't come to just "give bread", help us, give us a better life, BUT to BE our bread, to BE our Life, to be everything. Jesus says this is John 6, a few chapters before in John 4 Jesus say's He's the water. Again He shows us that in Him, is all that we need, and ever will need. If we are "thirsty" the problem isn't with the water, but it's in our hearts. Let Jesus be our bread, and water. Jesus tells us not to labor for food that perishes but for food that endures for eternity. Jesus goes on to say that how we "work" for that eternal food, is just to believe in Him. That's it. So we have two choices: we can labor for food that perishes, OR we can believe and receive eternal lasting food. God began to remind me again, that's it's when our bellies are full that we forget Him, not when we are hungry. In the OT God says it was when the Israelites were full and blessed that they began to forget God and take pride in their own strength. My prayer is that God would keep us NEEDY! Again that Jesus would be our only bread, and that we wouldn't get distracted by all the other things that are crying out for our attention and affection. I would encourage all of us to begin this week, to ask God to be our Bread. Begin to look at your life and ask, what things, events, ministries, etc am I using to satisfy my need for Jesus? Are we looking at the gifts more than the Giver? God gives us gifts so we can focus our worship on the Giver, not on the gifts. These are just a few questions that can lead our hearts to begin to treasure Jesus as our Bread, and our water.

Here's the message if you want to listen to it:

http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/conference-messages/jesus-came-not-to-give-bread-but-to-be-bread

baketball ministry

Untitled from Amy Marie Borchers on Vimeo.

Hey guys this is a ministry that we're involved in here in Taiwan. We've been doing this for about 4 months. We go every Tuesday and Friday night to the courts for about 4 hours to be with these guys. Every Tuesday night we have a time of sharing where we will buy drinks for whoever will come and listen. This is what you are seeing in this video. Out of this ministry we have seen guys come to our church and taken an interest in the gospel. Also, as Brent mentioned, are going to do a series on true manhood vs. false manhood. Pray for us!

Random Pictures!

We have received a lot of requests for pictures so we are posting some below. Sorry it has taken us so long to do this. Our camera battery has been dead for quite awhile now and we couldn't find the charger until yesterday! So we will catch you all up from the last couple of months. Enjoy!!

Father's Day:

Random pictures:

Church BBQ:

Hannah being silly:

Celebrating 2 yrs. of marriage:

More random pictures:

Celebrating Hannah's birthday:

Video Update #2

Video Update

Hannah's Birthday Party!

We can’t believe that Hannah is one year old! Time has flown by. We had a fun time reflecting on this past year and the day that Hannah was born. She has grown so fast. We were planning on celebrating Hannah’s birthday at the park but it was raining so we had to go with plan B...McDonalds. It actually turned out to be a great place to celebrate because they have a “play place” there. Hannah loved climbing on everything and sliding down the slides. We had a great time hanging out with our friends and having cupcakes. Hannah loved her chocolate cupcake too! She definitely takes after her Mom! Thank you all who sent us cards and gifts. Hannah really enjoyed opening her cards. She was so funny! She would open them and close them and open them and close them over and over again. They turned out to be some of her favorite toys. Sometimes she actually looked like she was reading them. It was so cute! She loved opening her presents too and playing with the wrapping paper of course. Hope you guys enjoy these pictures and the video!