Preparation Day 2 - 5/23/18

Hey Everyone!

It's really great to be getting back into writing these blog posts; I've really missed the opportunities for reflection and feeling of connection with you all that it provides! Our preparation for this year's Taichung mission trip continues apace, and we're so happy with the progress we've made as a team.

With all of our busy schedules and with various vacations coming up over the next few weeks, we planned out a meeting for this past Wednesday at my house and discussed the curriculum and its place in our mission overall. Unfortunately, Josh wasn't able to make it, as he was having a blast experiencing the gospel at work, especially the first half of Mark, with many brothers and sisters at camp. Still, his planning at our last meeting and constant commitment to the mission meant that his influence was felt throughout our meeting.

We began our discussion with a focus, as I mentioned before, on the curriculum. After we quickly distributed topics amongst the members (Adam - Vacation spots, Amy - Cities, Emily - Money, Jeremy - Sports teams, Jon - Education, Josh - Spiritual leadership), we spent some time thinking of ways to link the gospel and God's greater story into each of our lessons so that we could avoid the critical mistake of over-emphasizing the English and American culture, a trap we fell into last year. The themes of God's majesty and beauty, nourishing our God-given talents, and giving back to the God and his body turned out to fit quite well into the various topics this year.

From there, we continued our new tradition of reading an article on short-term, global missions by focusing in on "The Hard Question of Missions" (https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-hard-question-of-missions). In past years, we have often set sometimes unreasonable and often unbiblical goals and expectations for ourselves, leading to breakdowns when we perceived ourselves to be failing to meet those high bars. This year, however, I wanted to preclude that possibility, so after talking with Pastor David Chang, I wanted to ensure that we established healthy goals for ourselves this year. Part of that is recognizing what this article considers one of the most difficult questions in short-term ministry: whether we are harming or helping the people there through our work.

In essence, our job is there quite simple. We want to share the truth of the gospel to children who have never heard it before and build warm relationships with those kids so that they might associate Christianity with that warmth. The difficult work of convincing the children and opening their hearts lies with God, so we shouldn't force that burden upon ourselves. Rather than beating ourselves up for failing to sway a child or even hold his/her attention, we should be glad that they had the chance to listen and keep talking with that child, reminding them always of the gospel so that God may work in their hearts. And as for the curriculum, we should work hard on it because it is the vessel by which we can begin to introduce the gospel to the children, but we have to remember that it is just that: a vessel, an empty object of second or third priority to our true goal.

So we should remember this line from the article:

"it's not about [us] doing something for them. It's about us working with each other, to bring glory to God"

and we should remember Galatians 5:2-6, which tell us that "neither circumcision nor uncircumcision [nor any action we take] has any value [alone]. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love."

With this wisdom in mind, we can now devote ourselves to working on our curricula, but we MUST always keep in consideration the purpose of the curriculum in the context of the mission, and once we actually arrive there, we have to keep that greater picture in our thoughts as well. Our prayer for this week revolves around this idea, that we may work hard on the logistics and components of our mission, but that they never take precedence over the gospel.

Before we split up back to our daily lives, Adam, Amy, and Jon brought up a point that I think is particularly pertinent: how exactly can we introduce the gospel to children who have never heard of it before in a proper manner. Emily and I were able to share some of experiences on this matter, suggesting that building relationships, waiting for and answering questions brought up after a large group lesson in a truthful manner, and using the Wordless Book are some particularly effective ways of doing so, but if you, our readers and supporters, have any additional advice, please share it with us in the comments below. Thank you all so much for reading, and please keep us all in your prayers!

Prayer Requests:

• Thank God continually for the wonderful mentors he has given us, from Pastors David Liu and David Chang to Mr. and Mrs. Song to Hwa-chi and Pauline, and to sister Amy, who has continued to coordinate with us from Taichung
• Pray that we may work fruitfully on the curriculum by ourselves as our schedules take us away from one another
• But pray that we always remember that the curriculum should not become our sole focus
• Please pray that our meetings continue to be beneficial, focused, and Godly so that our mission may not harm but help the children and Christian Assembly in Taichung.