Rock-buzz

I really love people. I love getting to know their stories, to hear about their lives and to share mine. I love it when two people start to connect on a heart level and we get into the real "meat" of life...the raw, open honest things of the human experience.

Thursday evenings you can find me at this place above...The Rock Coffee Bar in the city I live in. This place is the center of a lot of our work and ministry here. It's an English speaking coffee house where people can come in, get a free cup of coffee and have conversation. The goal is to have a place where you can have conversation about Jesus without having to brave walking through the door of a church, which many people would never even consider.

Most Thursday evenings I come home with a "Rock-buzz"....I love the fellowship, the challenge and the excitement of what these evenings bring. I never really know who will show up, what we'll talk about and what the response will be.

This evening was one of my favorite kind of evenings...I got to see familiar faces and invest in relationships that are continuing to go deeper. I also got to meet new friends and see friends that I hadn't seen for awhile. There's talk of times to get together, times to study the Bible together, and times to just have fun together. And Jesus is the passion that I am able to speak of openly. This ministry is such a blessing and I love seeing how God uses it to reach people where they are at, challenge them to consider and follow him, and a place where people can talk about "real stuff." It's one of those evenings where I just take a moment and realize, I love what I do. I'm so blessed that this is the life I get to live. And I was just so excited I wanted to share my moment of excitement with you. May God continue to reveal himself more and more to the people of Taiwan.

Meet the team!

The last few weeks have been spent sitting in a classroom, talking about things like learning styles, team dynamics, reaching oral communicators, how to prepare a lesson, teaching through a translator and listening to many different practice teachings from those who are in the training time. The five of us (pictured from L to R: Julien, Becca, Danika, Aimy, Timmy) have had a number of team meetings to plan our teaching times, better understand one another and to learn more together about the nations we will be connecting with.

It has been two years since I have really interacted with the A people and my heart misses them. I'm excited to take a group of people to be able to pour into and build up these people, equipping them to live lives for God that give him glory and strengthen their faith.

As we prepare to leave, I'd invite you into our preparation process. Would you please commit to praying for us, for the teaching that we will be giving, for the people we will be serving, the contacts we will be working with, and just that in the middle of all of it, we would enjoy God and grow in him and together in relationship. Please also pray that the rest of my ground fees would come in. I'm still in need of (on top of my regular monthly support) another $500USD. My team's finances are mostly in as long as their monthly supporters also continue to give as they have committed. Praise God for how he's opened the door for this trip financially, with the contacts we'll be working with, and all the details that have come together.

Just to rave about this team a bit....each one of them will be returning here to Taiwan to staff and teach. They are all incredibly mature and each uniquely gifted. We have people from France, Egypt and USA and all of us have been involved in ministry to some degree in the past. I'm seeing we all really enjoy spending time together and are very relational with the people around us so I hope that continues to be the trend as we will have lots of time together and meeting with people over the next two months.

Teaching on Cross-Cultural Ministry

Culture....
Something we may not deliberately think about, but it affects us every single day.

Culture is a normal part of my life.

I live in Taiwan. The last 6.5 years of my life I've been primarily in Asia. I know how to say hello and thank you in countless languages. I have friends on and from every single continent of the world and I feel like nearly any country I go to I would at least know someone who knows someone from that place. I have had the privilege to experience the joys and challenges of working in cross-cultural work for nearly 10 years now. I've made cultural blunders, and also known the feeling of learning something in a culture and because of it, connecting to the heart of another person. I love it.

Yesterday I got to teach on Ministering Cross-Culturally in our Titus Project class. And as I prepared and yesterday as I taught, I'm just so thankful. I'm so thankful for the variety of people that God created. For the nationalities and cultural beauty that he used to paint the canvas of the world. How very boring and ordinary the world would be if we all looked, acted, talked, and thought the same. God is definitely a God who loves diversity, creativity, variety and beauty.

And to my friends who live all over the world, speak any number of languages, have customs so very different from my own, I truly appreciate you and what you have contributed to my life. I feel I have become a richer person because of it.

Teaching on High and Low Power Distance in all our different cultures

Titus Project Begins

 Wednesday morning, 28 participants and 9 staff members started meeting together to learn what it means to be a teacher, how to be a more effective teacher and how do we all take our 9 months of Bible training and put it into a format that others can benefit from and utilize themselves.

This is a great group of students. Many of them have long-term vision to work here in Taiwan and in many other places around the world.

At the end of our three week training time, outreach teams will be headed all over the world to train and equip churches and church leaders all over Asia. This year we have teams in Mongolia, Japan, Taiwan, Bangladesh, India, and in two other locations that can't be listed here due to security. If you are reading this, please take a few minutes to pray for these teams as well as the believers in these locations that they will be blessed and built up and better equipped to minister to others.

My team has been meeting together and our teaching time is slowly unfolding. One prayer request is that in one of our locations, there is a great movement of new believers and young leaders being trained up. We want to work with this group but due to security we have been unable to find a place to actually meet and do teaching together. Please pray that a place will open up that we could help equip these guys as they are standing for truth in a place where Christianity is not welcome.

Also, we purchased our tickets to our first location in India! What has been just a far off thought and plan is slowly becoming a reality.

For more information on Titus Project you can check out the website