Wednesday - Day 3

Today was an incredible day. We left the apartments to try out a new prayer walking guide the missionaries have put together for volunteer teams. The guide has helps in it that allow you to the whole walk from beginning to end without any help. So we called our own taxi's and went to the Beituen church where we will be working next week to begin our prayer walk. When we arrived at the church, the pastor and his wife were there and we were able to spend some time talking to them about themselves, their family and the church and then pray over them and for them as a group. We then split up into two teams and prayer walked through their neighborhood for about 2 hours. We experienced up close the daily life of so many people. We also were able to go into several temples and pray that the Lord would shut them down and release the people from this incredible bondage in which they are caught.

After we finished with the prayer walk, we returned to the church to meet and eat lunch (on our own), but as it turns out, the pastor was able to go with us and helped us order our food. And he gave us a wonderful blessing by purchasing our lunch for us. (Don't worry, we're going to find a way to bless his family next week while we are there at the church.)

After we caught taxi's back to our apartments, we had a breif rest and then headed over to the college where we joined up with the Judo class of about 40. They had us join right in with their warm ups and practice and then several of their team took our group and gave us some private lessons in the art of Judo. After that, we got a great sideline show Judo demonstration match between all the team members. Then the fun really started when they invited us to try Sumo!! Yup, Sumo. They put belts on us and into the ring we went. Well, you'll have to see the pictures. Afterwards, we got to sit and and talk, share pictures and our testimonies with them and some of them went to eat with us.

After dinner, we went back to the campus to join an English class where we were the special guests. For about 1 1/2 hours we rotated through the group of 24 students so that all of our students spent time talking personally with all of the Taiwanese students. They were so eager to talk to our students and so excited to get to know them. Again, our students took every opportunity to share their testimonies and invite the students to the events we are hosting over the next couple of weeks. While all this was going on, I was in the back of the room praying for our students and what they were doing and the girl who was introducing everyone, Eve, came back to me and told me that I was boring - she was trying to say that I looked bored. But I realized that she wasn't really talking to any of our students, so I started talking to her about her family and then her faith and she shared her traditional beliefs with me (ancestor and temple worship). I asked her what she thought would happen to her when she died, and she said that people went to either heaven or hell. So I asked her how she would be able to go to heaven. She said she would try to do more good than bad. What happened next was so beautiful. She got to hear for the first time in her life the Gospel - from beginning to end. How God created her for a purpose, how He loved her and how she could never be good enough - but there is One who was.

She had some questions and thankfully Sara Jeng, one of our longtime friends was with me to help translate a few difficult words and concepts, she said she thought she had a friend who was believed some of the things I did, so she was going to call him and invite him to come and talk to me with her tomorrow.

Please pray for Eve - that the Holy Spirit will start to pry the scales loose from her eyes and that she and her whole family will be saved!!!

From the far side of the world.