The month of December was a busy one for us. We recently have been preparing to visit the States, Collin turned 24, Collin shared his testimony and the gospel in Chinese at our church, and we also celebrated our first Christmas here. Christmas here was a new experience for our family. The Taiwanese don't really celebrate Christmas, unless they are Christians(which is actually a good thing, because only those who would truly celebrate the birth of our Savior would be Christians...). The percentage of Christianity in Taiwan is 2.5%. Most people relate Christmas to Santa Clause, presents, and a "fun" season, but they don't know the true meaning of Christmas. When Collin asked his English students what Christmas was about, they all unanimously said, "Santa....?" . Their next guesses were presents, family, etc... It's sad that this is the way that Christmas has been portrayed here in Taiwan and for that matter all throughout the world. December 25th is a normal working day here. People are working, shops are open, Post Offices are open, kids go to school, everything is operating as normal. Here in Taiwan YWAM has a local Coffee Shop called the Rock, which we have spoken about before. At the Rock we held many different Christmas activities to engage the students and hopefully spark their curiosity about why Christmas is celebrated. They had card making, cookie making, dramas, and a kid's program. Some people from our organization also went caroling in the neighborhood and passed out cards and cookies. As for our family Christmas Eve we spent the night at our friend's house. We ate dinner, played games, watched some movies, and went to bed too late:) Christmas morning we got up had a big breakfast exchanged some gifts and then we went back to our house and had our family time. Christmas night Collin and the language team went down to a hospital in Taipei, and did an outreach to Children Cancer Patients. It was an eye-opening time and also a time where these kids hopefully could take a break from their painful everyday routine and have some fun and really enjoy their childhood. Most of these kids were so young, so being cooped up in a hospital and stuck on an I.V. isn't much of a childhood. We were blessed to see them making balloon animals, playing with play-dough, and even enjoying a Christmas movie that we had brought. They heard the gospel, many of them even prayed, so we trust that God will complete His good purposes in their little hearts. At least they got to have some fun, and so did we! We feel honored to be able to spend Christmas here in Taiwan. Spending a major "holiday" like this here allows us to settle in a little more. Now we feel more as if Taiwan is our home. Continue to pray for us that we would understand how to engage this culture with the glory of God, and the gospel of His Son Jesus, in ways that will be relevant and understandable to their "Eastern Cultural Lenses". There is so much we need to learn about the culture, but we know that love is something that speaks across languages, so pray that we would love the Taiwanese even more.

Thanksgiving

We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! The whole YWAM base here got together and celebrated. We had a blast! Our day started with pumpkin muffins and chai tea(thanks to Collin's Mom:) Around 9 a.m. we started to make our first turkey, which weighed 19 lbs! We had a lot of pressure on us because the turkey we were making wasn't just for us. It was 1 of the 9 turkeys that was going to be eaten by 160 people. So when I say pressure, I mean PRESSURE! By the way does anyone know what giblets are?? Anyone?....we had to figure that one out! So we researched and asked around how to make this wonderful turkey and everyone said something different so we decided to just try what we thought would work. We didn't have a pan large enough for the turkey so we had to squeeze the turkey it in. We learned that to keep the turkey moist you need to gather the juice that drips off the turkey and frequently glaze it over the turkey while it's cooking. Nothing we had was actually small enough to fit between the turkey and the pan, so we thought it would be brillant to use Hannah's medicine syringes (they were clean of course). 4 1/2 hours later our turkey was done and it looked and smelled delicious. Of course we needed to taste the turkey first, just to make sure that it was good enough to be eaten:) It was delicious.

We had a great time of fellowship at the get together. The food was marvelous and we had so much entertainment. It was so neat. We had a time of worship, talking about what we were thankful for, a talent show, and someone shared about the Thanksgiving story. The Thanksgiving story was very informative. There was so many things about the meaning of Thanksgiving that we had forgotten or didn't remember. Also our base is very diverse, with so many different cultures, most of whom didn't grow up celebrating Thanksgiving. We're sure they were excited to hear the story behind the "holiday with lots of good food".

The next day all the guys got together and had a "Turkey Bowl"; a flag football game. Collin's team lost, but he thinks it's because they ate too much the night before;)

We have many memories from this special day. We will never forget making our first turkey! It was defintiely an experience! We are so thankful for our family and freinds in the states! God has blessed us with such supportive and loving friends. We are so grateful! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Hannah's Eating Experience

Hey Everyone,
We wanted you to get an idea of what it's like feeding Hannah.....enjoy!

The past few weeks...

OUR FIRST VISITORS

Hey Everyone,
Sorry it's been such a long time since we last posted. So much has been going on and we've been pretty busy lately. Allison's grandparents came to see us for about two weeks. They arrived at the beginning of October and just left this past week. We had such a blast. A real encouraging and refreshing time. Here are a few funny quotes from our time with them:

-"Do they have Taiwanese dogs here?"
-"Is that the ice cream truck?" (ask us later)
-"I think Collin is half-Taiwanese."
-"Is Hannah speaking Chinese?"
-"Can we have slumber parties?"
-"How did we end up in the bus lane?"
-"Is this a one way street?" Grandad asked, Collin replied,"Yes both ways"

We were very grateful that they came all the way here to see us and to understand our new life and new home. WE hope to have many more visitors in the future:)

HANNAH GRACE
Hannah is growing up so fast, we can't believe it. She loves to laugh and smile....just like her mommy:) She especially loves to talk. Well not really talk, but to her it's talking. Right now she is super-active and her little personality is really coming out. She is so adventurous, diligent, determined, and curious. She is scooting all around the floor and doing more push-ups than daddy, because she wants to crawl so bad. She will lift her self up then "BOOOM!" fall flat on her face. Sometimes she looks like she's doing the "Worm". I'm sure all of you know what the "worm" is. We love her so much. Here's a video of Hannah's new language:





OUR NEW CHURCH
We found a new church. Or should we say, God has given us a church to go to. HE found it we didn't. Today was our 4th week to go and every time we are blown away by what God is doing in this church body. The pastor is a young 31 yr old man from Macau (near Hong Kong) who speaks Chinese, Cantonese, and English. Obviously the church is in Chinese but most of the people there can speak some English. The pastor's wife actually got saved through YWAM'S coffee bar ministry, THE ROCK 10 years ago! We have enjoyed worshiping and fellowshipping with this body of believers. They have asked us to start an English corner in the church. This will specifically target people who are not church members as a tool for evangelism. We started this yesterday. So every week on Saturday afternoons the whole family piles up and drives down to our church and gets to teach English and make friends with students of all different ages. The age range is this: 7 yrs old to 60 something. We have 17 students and we will cover a variety of topics including a week on religion. This will be a great opportunity for us to share the gospel with them and for them to see how it is radically different then all forms of religion. All the people but one student had never stepped foot into a church until yesterday and some of them stayed for the church's youth fellowship that immediately follows our class! We are really excited about this opportunity to share our lives with these students. Please pray that so much more than English lessons will take place!

We love you all and hope to hear from you soon!

The Seitz

"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.

Like a Child

People used to tell me that everything changes when you become a parent. We are now seeing that they are right! Our lives have changed in so many ways (for the better of course). When you become a parent you take on so many new responsibilities...like providing for and taking care of someone else. We have realized that it can be overwhelming when you try to do this on your own and with your own strength. We definitely need the Lord's help. We listened to a sermon recently about coming to God like a child. Luke 15:17 says "Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a CHILD shall not enter it." We started talking about what it's like to be a child. We were thinking about how Hannah Grace can't do ANYTHING on her own. She depends on us for EVERYTHING! She depends on us for food, shelter, love and care. She needs us to change her diaper, and wipe her face when she spits up. She needs us to bathe her when she is dirty. she needs us to comfort her when she is upset. And the list goes on and on...She is FULLY dependent on us and God wants us to come to Him like that as well. It is a hard concept to grasp because we are adults and it is difficult to get into the mindset of a child. We think we know how to take care of ourselves. We think we know what is best for us, but we really don't. So we prayed for God to show us how to come to Him like a child...needy, helpless, and fully dependent. And God answered our prayers, but not like I thought He was going to.

A couple of days later, I was checking our bank account and I saw that we had a very small amount. And I started freaking out! All these questions came to my mind like...How are we going to eat? How are we going to pay rent? How are we going to buy diapers for our daughter? And after some time of worrying Philippians 4:19 came to my mind. It says, "And my God will supply EVERY need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus." And then my thinking began to change(which is what usually happens when we go to the word of God). I remembered that God is our ultimate provider and that I can trust Him and He will take care of us.

A few days later, we got an email from my Grandpa(who is our wonderful accountant) saying that He deposited a lot of money into our account from different people!! We were SOOOOO excited!! God had provided for us again!! As I began to process all of this I remembered the sermon that we listened to.."Like a Child." And I thought, God, you are teaching me to come to you like a child. You are teaching me to depend on you for finances, food, shelter, etc. You are teaching me to be dependent on you for ALL things! God is our ultimate provider!! He is so good. He has blessed us with a precious daughter who has taught us so much. She has made us realize that it's ok to ask for help. And she will continue to show us how to be a child!