Hey there people. And happy new year! Thursday we finished our first camp and Wednesday we are leaving for central Taiwan for our second one.

Camp was totally awesome. One of the best I've ever had. I taught team E (the highest level group) and we had a hoot together. I had 15 kids from 3rd to 6th grade. I had one 3rd grader from Taipei...dude, one of these days I'm going to have to spend a week in a school there or something...how on earth do they teach them that much English? (Guess it probably has something to do with the fact that kids here only get two 40 minute English classes a week...not really enough to actually learn anything).

---Pray for Lucy, our hair stylist friend. She's making some difficult decisions and really needs Christ at this point.

---My Mom is coming to visit me in March! I'm so happy I could explode! Pray that her preparations for the trip go well.

---Pray for the upcoming camp. Pray that the kids and TA's would see God's light shining through us.

---Pray for Hans, a college student at the local college and one of our TA's. He's been showing a lot of interest in spiritual things and has been ready "Mere Christianity" lately.

That's all for today. Love you guys!

Hey there people! The semester is over and camps are starting tomorrow. I can't believe how fast things have flow past. In only 4 days I will have been here in Taiwan for a year. So I guess it would be good to use this post as a chance to look back on what God has done in my first year in Taiwan.

---Jack came to the Lord. Jack was TA at winter camps last year. Although I didn't get to know him all that well during winter camps, we all prayed for the TA's a lot during those camps. I didn't hear anything about Jack for about 5 months. Then, when it came time for summer camps, Jack was my TA. He had been saved for about 2 months at the time and was truly on fire for God. The Bible tells us that by their fruits we shall know them and I could certainly see the fruit in Jack's life.

---Douglas came to the Lord. Douglas was a high school student who hung out with our team a lot last semester. Jack actually had a lot of impact on Douglas as well: during summer camps me and Douglas and Jack roomed together and Douglas was very impressed with how real Jack's walk was. When we came back to Kinmen for the fall semester, Douglas told us that he had trusted Christ during summer camps, but had been too afraid to tell everybody about it. God has done an amazing work in his life since then. He's actively witnessing to his friends and has a huge hunger for the knowledge of God.

---God put me in elem. school. This one is hard to list as a praise. I really would much rather be teaching Jr. High. But God has taught me a lot of things by taking me out of my comfort zone.

---My Dad was able to come out and help in the ministry. His visit was a really blessing to our team, because rather than just coming to look at the sites, see us, and then leave, Dad came and did everything he could to help as we fight for people's souls. Dad was able to help Douglas answer several questions he had about our faith.

---God gave us the ministry at 秀才 Jr. High. This was something totally unexpected. Just before thanksgiving the three KingCar teams went to Taow Ywen (how do you spell that in Pinyin, anyway?) to do a few days of teaching in the schools there. While there, we were hosted in a dorm at 秀才. 秀才 is a school for students who come from broken families and, as Sandy put it, "They like to start the fight or use the knife to cut self." In just the few days that we stayed there God really open these kids hearts to use. Over new years the Kinmen and Nantou teams went back and spent a day with them. Right now I'm trying to plan another trip to Taiwan to visit them again. (BTW, Mom, I've told them I'll be taking you to visit them when you get here).

---God has brought new people to the English Bible study. Last semester our Bible study was almost entirely high school seniors, so of course they are now gone and at college. I kinda wondered if anybody would come to Bible study....but God has brought some really neat new friends.

---God has blessed my Chinese. I've asked you guys a lot of times to pray for my Chinese. And while I still have a long (a VERY LONG) way to go, looking back over this past year, I can see that God really has blessed my learning. Last night some of my 9th grade friends from 秀才 called me and we carried on an entire conversation in Chinese, all over the phone. Cool, no?

---God just continues to be amazing. This past year I have seen his faithfulness over and over again. He is our rock: he is always there. Even when I turn from him, he does not move. He is always there to run to, he is always there to help, he is always there to comfort and his love never ceases. And when I cry over the bondage my friends are in, I know his tears are greater. When I rejoice over a new brother in Christ, I know his shouts are louder.

Do you ever just feel great for no reason? Today has been like that. I have every reason to be running around like a chicken with my head cut off, but I just can't get worried enough to panic. Tomorrow I'll probably realize that I've got 80,000,000 things to do in the next few days, but for now I'm content to listen to Alabama on my ipod and grin a stupid grin.

Wow! I just realized that I forgot to include two very cool things in the last post.

Ok, on the 29th I was teaching at Jing Who. Kiwi (the teacher) had asked me to teach a typical prayer that Amarican children might pray around Christmas time. I was really excited about it, but I was also a little at a loss as for what to teach until Lucas suggested teaching the 3rd verse from Away in a Manger. I taught it in 5 classes that day and in two of them the students were very interested. In one 6th grade I spent 10 minutes answering questions about prayer. They kept asking questions about all the actions involved in praying: do you have to bow your head? Do you have to make the sign of the cross? What if you don't say amen at the end? What if you don't pray? I was able to explain to them that prayer is simply talking to God: it's simply a conversation with a friend and you don't have to follow some sort of form in order to get your prayer accepted. They asked me if God had answered any of my prayers and I told them about the time God healed my sister Naomi.

All in all, it was really cool. I was standing in front of the class listening to their questions and just saying "Wow! God, this is cool!" I've never had a chance to share that much in a class.

The other cool thing involves our trip to Shoew Szteye. At first it was supposed to just be us visiting our friends on our own time. But then somebody at KingCar decided it would make a great chance to get us in the newspaper (something they are always trying to do!) and so asked some reporters to come. We were all very upset with that idea and let Sandy know we didn't want reporters. She said she'd see what she could do, but there is NO WAY that KingCar would ever turn away a chance to get media attention. The cool thing was, the reporters never showed up! We had a really great time with the kids (see my jjf blog for pictures). Although I kinda wonder...did the 8th grade boys really have to wear bikini tops and fake boobs?

On to this weeks requests...

---Keep praying for my Sunday school class. Pray esp. that God would help with my translating...most of the time I don't have a translator and Sarah (a 6th grader with really good English) will almost never help with translating. Mostly I manage to get my point across (and give the kids their weekly dose of really poor Chinese) but just pray that God would give me the right words to speak.

---Pray for Jennifer, a cram school teacher here. She's been working with Ginger a lot lately (Ginger is doing an English/Chinese exchange with her) and has been asking Ginger some questions about God and Christianity.

---Also pray for Jean. Jean is a good friend of Jennifer and her two kids are my students (her daughter, btw, is the cutest thing in Kinmen). I'm going to be doing an Chinese/English exchange with her next semester. When Dr. and Mrs. Henning were here she spent a lot of time with them and just about worships the ground they walked on. Pray that God will give me chance to water the seeds that they planted.

---And of course, keep praying for my Chinese. In a few weeks I will have been learning Chinese for one year. And although I've come a very long way from sitting in the computer lab in Nantou learning how to say "Ni how ma?", I'm starting to realize just how much I don't know. It really does make a difference when you guys pray for my Chinese, so please keep it up!

Ok, if you look down there *points at posts below* you can see something that's had me chuckling all day. Take a look at the comments. I looked at this blogger earlier today and found that. But that's not even the funny part. If you take a look at the site of one of the guys who replied (Click here) you will see some links on the left side of the page. Take a look at who is listed under "Creepy". ROFLOL! Yea, only 20 years old and already made it to "Creepy"! I also love the comment that mentions my "Eurocentric-outdated-inane existence." I think I'll put that in my blog description...that's just priceless. *evil laugh* Mwahahaha! And I haven't even revealed half of my horrible, heartless plans yet! By the time I'm done, all of Taiwan will be enslaved and held tightly in my iron fist!

*Ahem* Seriously though, their comments are very interesting. Most are not worth really bothering with, but I found this one to be worthy of saying something about:

"ung...it's unimaginably disheartening to see that you missionaries continue to infect cultures around the world. "

I find the word "infect" to be really interesting. Where did we get this idea that a culture cannot be wrong? A theory can be wrong. A math problem can be wrong (1+1=3). A witness can be wrong. A computer can be put together wrong.

But a culture cannot. Apparently if it has been made part of a culture, then it can't be wrong.

Not only that, but something that works to change a culture is "infecting" it.

Number one, a culture can be wrong. In Rome is was part of the culture to watch people kill people for entertainment. That was part of the culture. And it was wrong. In some South Amarican cultures it was ok to perform human sacrifice. And that was wrong. I could go on forever.

The culture here in Taiwan is one that encourages cutting yourself open with knives and parading around the streets with needles stuck in your face. That's wrong.

As for the idea that new things are "infecting" a culture. Give me a break. Cultures are forever changing. Have you ever thought about the fact that Buddhism came from India?

By the way, Doug, if you want to post comments feel free to do so. But please refrain from blasphamy.

Hey there. Long time no post.

God is so aweseme. The last two weeks I've kinda forced to lean on his strength rather than my own. It's so cool to see how God will hold us up when we ask him for strength. It also gives you such amazing freedom...when you are doing something in God's strength, then you can also be pretty sure you are in God's will...he wouldn't give you strength for something he doesn't want you to do.

Next week is the last of the semester. It's amazing how fast it's gone by. Winter camps are starting the 22nd. We'll be doing a week here in Kinmen, then we have a week break and then we'll be headed out to Taiwan for one more week of camps.

---Pray for all the stuff I'm doing get try and get ready for college. I called the college last night and talked to the admission office. Things are looking pretty good. Also pray that things work out with KingCar allowing me to actually get back to the States in time to start college.

---Keep praying for Riddick. We've recently been worried about what seems to be some demonic influences in his life. We've prayed over him a lot and things do seem to be much better. One good sign is that he's not so depressed anymore and actually shows some interest in trying to find a better solution to life.

---Pray for Johnson, another dorm kid. A few weeks ago he went to visit his mother in Xiamin. He left home to come back to the dorm and but instead he spent a couple days hanging out with his friends in Xiamin. He didn't tell anybody what he was doing and his mother and us here at the dorm were worried sick over him. After a few days he did come back to the dorm. Just keep him and his whole family situation in your prayers.

---Next school year Megan, Drew, Lucas and Rebekah will be coming back to work with KingCar for another year. Me and Ginger won't be. Pray for Ginger as she is going through all the paper work to go to college here in Taiwan.

---Pray for James, our former translator. He's taking a big English test this week. He might also have found a job in central Taiwan.

Ok, this post has kinda been an entire day in the writing. I started it at about 8 o'clock this morning and it's now 3:15.

This morning my bus driver didn't come. So I had Terry call the school, but he had some trouble getting ahold of them. So I went back to my room thinking that because it so near the end of the semester, they were having test and forgot to tell me that I didn't need to go to school. I started to write this post. I wrote about how God's strength is enough when we don't have the strength to do it.

And then my bus driver came. I had totally relaxed and gotten used to the idea of taking a nap this morning: instead I had to go teach. The English teacher at this school doesn't really speak English (today she told me "See you tomorrow year"), so I am never able to actually lesson plan with her. And I simply didn't feel like I had the energy to go to school and try and figure out what to teach and how to do it all without translation.

So I'm sitting in the bus wondering what on earth I'm going to do and I just felt God say to me "Well, looks like you get to practice what you just wrote about." It seemed almost like he was sitting back in his chair and just grinning at the prospect of getting me through the school day when I knew I couldn't do it.

I looked down on the floor and (mentally) mumbled something about "ok, that's sure what it looks like." It's so much easier to write about something that God taught you yesterday: it's a lot harder to actually say "Yea, I don't know what I'm doing today and I have no energy and if God doesn't do this for me then class is going to be a total failure today." It leaves you feeling so helpless. Really, we're in better hands when we trust God to do it for us, but still that act of looking to him with no back-up plan leaves you feeling very vulnerible.

And God came through. Class went awesome. And then just as a final "I love you", God cancled Chinese class and gave me the afternoon off.

Dude, our God rocks.