Day 9 - 7/8/2018 - Hearts Afloat in God's Sea

    "But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyous assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new convenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel."'

                                                               - Hebrews 12:22-24

    Each time we come to Taiwan, I feel as if we come close to Mount Zion, closer to God than is the "Mountain of Fear". Hopefully, we can all strive to ensure both ourselves and the kids understand and not only now, but into the future. 

    As everyone's been saying, this year's VBS flew by faster than ever before. Days passed as we served God, and the intensity of our work stripped away our sense of time so that an hour might feel like a minute and a minute like a second. Entire days might pass by without a moment for true reflection so that details might be forgotten until dredged up again later. But when we can spare the time to settle down and genuinely consider the events of the day, there appears surprising breadth and depth of activity.

    For example, this morning, at first thought, seems to be a wild blitz of excitement and action, but upon closer examination resolves into a set of very meaningful and fruitful activities. Because we woke up late, there was no time for our usual morning devotion, though some of us did quickly skim the epistles in search of something good to read. Instead, we took advantage of the fact that we arrived early to church despite our late wake-up to do our devotions in God's designated home: the church. We ended up reading Hebrews 12 with Kevin, spawning a discussion that spanned topics ranging from conviction/guilt to casting aside stumbling blocks to the role of hardships in our lives. Ultimately, we seemed to agree that we should feel a greater sense of conviction in general because of the "cloud of witnesses" (Elijah, Abel, et al mentioned in Hebrews 11), that we should always reserve some purely alone time with God each day no matter the state of our schedules, and that we can look at hardships in a new light as God's disciplines, which will make us more righteous and peaceful as a people. 

    From there we attended the baptism of Mr. Henry, a Korean whose girlfriend lives here in Taiwan. It truly was quite amazing to see God somehow bringing people from all across the world to such a small and relatively young church in a medium-sized Taiwanese city. Even more impressive was the way in which he came to publicly proclaim his faith. Despite being a Catholic by birth and a student of one of Korea's best Christian universities, he never witnessed God until he entered the army and began to struggle with one of his senior officers. From there, events cascaded and brought him into the arms of the church, mending his relationship with his senior as well. We thank the LORD for bringing another lost sheep back into the fold and pray that the passion He has stirred up in Henry's heart will last well into the future.

    Building on these spiritually fulfilling activities, we transitioned to a period of sharing amongst the youth with respect to the summer camp. Joseph's mom designed a well thought-out game that encouraged maximum possible participation by everyone. And thanks to both God's grace in giving us courage, as well as Joseph's mom's planning, we gathered many intriguing insights from the group as a whole. Topics brought up included a sense of fading urgency, the necessity of teamwork, gratefulness for growth we've experienced, a need for more spiritual preparation of our hearts prior to content work, and general thankfulness to mentors, behind-the-scenes workers, and everyone else. Though we spoke of too much to accurately describe here, I just wanted to express my personal gratitude to any of the youth who are reading the blog; your insight is and will always be of value to the entire American team.

    Finally, we came back down from our youth meeting to rejoin the main congregation in worship. And after worship, Sister Amy called the youth volunteers up to thank them for their work and give them some small gifts. The leaders all took this time to thank the church as well for their support (thank you Taichung Christian Assembly for your passion and constant support!) and to share briefly how God worked in their groups to increase Him and His glory.

    As always, tears were shed as people slowly took in the fact that most of us won't see each other for an entire year despite our current closeness, and some of us may never even get the chance to meet one another again due to extenuating circumstances and other unfortunate occurrences that can drag a person away from the VBS opportunity. Of course, there's nothing at all wrong with that from a spiritual standpoint, but it's simply saddening that we may not have the chance to keep building our relationships with these wonderful, thoughtful, and ever-passionate youth.

    I'd like to thank the Chungke Christian Assembly again on behalf of the American team for being absolutely amazing hosts and incredible role models for passion. And above all, I praise the LORD with the rest of our team and the Taiwanese youth, as he's just been able to share so much of himself and his glory through the unique successes and hardships that we encountered before, during, and after the course of the VBS.

    After all these acts of generosity by Chungke Christian Assembly, the youth gathered together on the upper floor to give each other different gifts in a reflection of God's and the churches' spirit of giving. We also taught the Taiwanese youth a couple of our favorite card games, such as deutsche and kemps. Soon, however, our time there to bind came to an end, and we started to prepare to leave for the Gaomei Wetlands. Unlike in past years, however, our main activity at Gaomei was not to traverse the lengthy pier but simply to dig up as many clams as we could. I honestly can't understand why it is that I found the act of gathering clams so enjoyable, but either way it ended up being Harvard who lost the race and Duke who won with the rest of us picking up maybe ~100 small clams per group with some crabs and other marine life as well.

    Doing nothing but dig for clams can be gradually become boring as well, however, as do so many other things. So once we wrapped up our clam-hunt we wrestled about in the water and took dozens of beautiful photos, immersing our souls in God's glory and our friends' company even as our bodies were immersed in the ocean of His creation. No matter how many times we visit Gaomei, its beauty is always fresh and renewed; it never grows stale. I hope and pray that we can have the same feeling in our relationship with God, that as we believe and passionately trust in Him, we may constantly carry those feelings with us no matter the circumstances. 

Please pray for us:

• Thank Him for His never-ending grace and love
• Thank Him for showing more and more of his will to us in recent days through our devotions
• Thank Him for producing such a successful VBS and helping us establish strong relationships with the youth and the kids
• Pray that this passion we've developed now can last with us in the long-term
• Pray for the Taiwanese church and its development and sustainability
• Pray for the Taiwanese youth's difficulties in the future and that we might stay in touch
• Pray that our hearts will find joy in every interaction with Him