Lost sheep without a Shepherd

This past Saturday at Lu Ti Park, the restaurant owner closed his shop because of the New Year.  The restaurant is adjacent to the park, and the gate was closed down about a third of the way.  These days, the darkness settles in early in the evening, and with the rain quickly approaching, we could only make out faint shadows of the kids in and surrounding the restaurant.  Upon closer examination, we saw about a dozen or so little boys, mainly in 6^th and 7^th grade.  They were smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol.  Shocked, a few of us went into the restaurant.  Veronika approached the restaurant owner and found out that he had bought a huge box of alcohol for the kids.  His logic is that the kids will inevitably find some other place to do these things, so he would rather them do so under his supervision.  Growing up with a very similar background as many of the kids in Wanhua (drinking starting from the age of 9, being part of a gang in the past), he wishes to be a ‘father figure’ to the boys.  He says that he understands the challenges that these kids face and wants to help them.  Obviously, giving them alcohol is not the right way to help them, but what can we do?

We felt helpless.  What can we offer to these kids?  How can we help them?  They were drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, sprawled on the ground, stumbling, struggling to walk straight, fighting with each other, crying from getting hurt, throwing fire crackers; it was complete chaos.  Seeing those boys broke my heart.   We know, though, that God is in control.  We thank God for opening our eyes to the needs here, and we pray that God would continue to guide us in how to pray for the people here.  Our Almighty God has the power to change hearts, to change lives.  In Him, there is no darkness.  In Him, there is hope.  So we are driven to our knees in prayer, trusting and depending on God because He reigns.

Autumn

Written by OMF missionary, Tera Van Twillert:

As a small girl Autumn was taken to church by a friend. She loved it. Her mother didn’t approve, but didn’t stop her either. With 8 more girls to care for she had enough at hand. Church made a deep impression on Autumn and when she felt misunderstood or mistreated she would go to her room, close the door, kneel and pray to God.

We met Autumn when she was 48 and her life had made a turn for the worse. As a young girl she was introduced to the wrong places to earn easy money. Life was glamorous, she earned heaps of money and sent some home, which silenced her parent’s questions. They didn’t know was that Autumn started using drugs and was involved in prostitution.

Autumn responded to our concern when we visited and one day confided that she was a drug addict. She was willing to receive help, but before we could arrange for her to enter a Christian Rehab center she was notified that she needed to go to prison (her 5^th prison sentence for drug abuse).

We encouraged her to check in herself rather then wait to be caught, which would increase her punishment. And she did so for the first time in her life. Later she told us that at the same time the evil one came with another suggestion. Her drug dealer encouraged her to start selling drugs, that way she wouldn’t have to work so hard and could provid for her own habit. (How thoughtful!) Praise the Lord He helped her to make the right decision otherwise her prison term would have been much longer.

We sent her off, gave her a Bible and some money and visited her regularly in prison. When it came to the time of her release we realized she had no place to go and the only option would be a return to her old life. However she had become a Christian. We offered her to live with me, to provide some time to find her feet and start a new life. In my inexperience I thought 2 or 3 months would be enough. She promised me to come. Her fellow inmates laughed when she said she would stay out of trouble this time. They said goodbye, with a ‘See you again in prison’.

When Autumn came to me she had already spent some of her money buying drugs for a friend in need. Her promise to stay with me kept her from buying for herself. When she arrived her only belongings were a plastic bag with some clothes. Within a few days I realized that a few months wouldn’t be enough for her to face the outside world and survive.

She is learning many things like living in the daylight rather then at night. When we read Genesis she learned that God created night and day, that we are to work during the day and sleep at night. It was an eye opener for her to realize that her whole life she had been living against God’s natural law. Autumn has also been a great eye opener for me. If we hope for these ladies to leave their old life, we need to provide an environment where they can experience healing and recovery and grow strong in the Lord, before facing the challenge of finding a normal job in the outside world.

Reading for Reflection

Gabriel Marcel distinguished between approaching life as a problem and entering it as a mystery. If we deal with life as a problem, we reduce it to what we can do something about; we are concerned with figuring out and fixing. And, while there is an important place for figuring things out and fixing them, if that is all that we do we become myopic, mangers and mechanics of what is immediately before us, with no peripheral vision and no horizons. We miss most of life. But if we approach life as a mystery, we are forever coming upon meanings that exceed our definitions, energy and resources unguessed in our calculations. “Mystery is not the absence of meaning, but the presence of more meaning that we can comprehend.”

Eugene Peterson in The Unnecessary Pastor, page 69

I feel more and more convinced that only a spirituality which thus puts the whole emphasis on the Reality of God, perpetually turning to Him, losing itself in Him, refusing to allow even the most pressing work or practical problems, even sin and failure, to distract from God- only this is a safe foundation for spiritual work. This alone is able to keep alive the awed, adoring sense of the mysteries among which we move, and of the tiny bit which at the best we ourselves can apprehend of them- and yet, considering that immensity and our tininess, the marvel of what we do know and feel.

Evelyn Underhill, Concerning the Inner Life, Page 26

“Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life: gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness, it should be rather an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God. Immediately we abandon to God, and do the duty that lies nearest, He packs our life with surprises all the time.”

Oswald Chambers “My Utmost for His Highest”

Shopworkers Evangelism

I attended the Shopworkers Church last Sunday to witness my friend’s baptism.  Her testimony really touched my heart; it was a joy to be there.

What’s the Shopworkers Church?  Click and find out

http://www.omf.org/omf/taiwan/ministry_in_taiwan/our_ministries/shopworkers_evangelism

Catch them if you can!

The wild children at the park absolutely love playing games.  We play a wide array of games involving running, sitting, tagging, jumping.  Some favorites we play over and over, and they never seem to get tired.  They also love to play Uno, as well as a bunch of other table games that we bring each week.  As much as they love playing the games, they eschew Bible stories.  The moment we announce that it’s story time, they slip away faster than we can blink, with only a select few remaining to hear the story each week.  Apparently the children think that the stories are “boring”.  We want to think of interactive, creative ways to tell the stories in a way that they can understand and relate to.  We want for them to stay and hear about our awesome God.  We want to capture their attention, to catch them before they all run away.

“Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.”

At the park

Gently tugging at my arm, she whispered, “My mom hit me.”

Standing in the middle of the park with kids scattered, running around, I don’t think my mind was fully registering the words, barely audible, coming from the little girl’s mouth.  I bent down, trying to understand exactly what she meant.  She continued, lifting her shorts, revealing the line of bruises down her leg.  She said there were also bruises on her bottom, and that it hurt to sit down.  She was about to show me those bruises, but I stopped her, asking what exactly happened.

“My mom hit me, again and again, screaming that she was going to beat me until I bled.”

When I asked her why her mom hit her, she said it was because she didn’t go to her tutoring class and stayed at home instead.  I can imagine that her mom must have had a difficult time controlling her temper after finding out that her daughter had not gone to classes that she paid for with hard-earned money.  At the same time, I cannot imagine my mother hitting me until I bruised.

Talking with the counselor at the school, asking him what the school does in situations like these, we realized the difficulty in really helping this child.  The counselor explained the protocol, saying that the steps that the school usually takes include first talking with the child to find out the story from the child’s perspective.  If severe enough, the teachers call the parent(s) in for a meeting talk with them.  In cases which the abuse continues, the teachers then call child services.  However, the situation is trickier with younger kids, because their memory is sometimes distorted and sometimes can’t grasp the whole picture of what occurred.

Please pray for wisdom in dealing with this matter.  If the little girl is indeed being abused, who will speak out for her?

This little girl comes also has a brother who comes to the park.  He never plays with us, and from the things we have heard about him, he is definitely heading down the wrong path.  As the little girl hid behind me, she told her brother not to hit her.  I didn’t actually see him hit her, but he said to her, “It’s okay to hit you.”  I told him very firmly that it was NOT okay.  He smiled and walked away.  Whether he was joking or not, I couldn’t tell.  Let us pray for God’s special protection over this little girl.

On “Calling”

“I love to look at this picture of the world and the location of the laborers and then ask people, “Is this the way that God wants it?  Is this His doing?  Because in the back of the minds of most believers is the idea that we are excused from the responsibility to act until God has “called” us to go somewhere specifically. If that is the case, it passes the blame on to God for the 10/40 Window, as if He is at fault for the millions of unreached…It is the result of believers who are meant to live for the journey that pass on “go”, assuming that world missions is for an elite group of super saints.  The default is then a life lived for themselves and their agendas—a life of exemption which, for some reason, doesn’t require a special calling.”

- p. 124, Live Life on Purpose, Hickman, Claude

I think it’s about seeing God’s heart, loving the things He loves, seeing the world through His eyes.  And after seeing a need…how then do we respond?

Visiting Judy

We walked into the house with a table filled with food: noodles, dou fu gan (tofu of some sort), seaweed, and a variety of meat.  Both of Judy’s parents were there.  We had another long, long conversation with Judy’s parents about religion.  (Well, Veronika talked with them, while I listened to Judy tell me the story of the entire Harry Potter series.)  Judy’s parents seem to enjoy sharing about their beliefs and don’t mind hearing about our Faith as well.  However, the roots of tradition and idol worship run deep into their hearts like cracked earth— dry and barren.  I realized that we could talk for hours, even days, but I’m sure that nothing we say is going to change their minds.  We can share with them, spend time with them, but the biggest thing we can do is to pray for Judy and her family.  Only through the power of the Holy Spirit will their hearts be transformed…it’s really the Holy Spirit.

“I sent you to reap what you have no worked for.  Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”  -John 4:38

Three simple words

Judy ran up to us and gave us each a huge hug and a smile.  Her eyes shone with excitement as we stepped nervously into her house, leaving our shoes at the doorway.  Judy’s mom graciously motioned for us to have a seat, as drinks and snacks appeared swiftly before us.  Comfortably sitting in the living room, Alysha, Judy, Judy’s mom and I entered into the beginning of what was to be a three-hour conversation…

“Judy makes people around her happy.”  As we began telling Judy’s mom about her daughter, she seemed surprised, yet delighted.  Judy’s mom had never heard Judy’s teachers say any positive things about her daughter.  Apparently, Judy’s previous teachers only pointed out Judy’s temper problems, and Judy’s mom herself dwells on the negatives, often comparing Judy to her older siblings.

As we asked questions about the family, somehow, the conversation navigated towards religion.   Judy’s mom was eager to tell us about her beliefs.  She told us that she grew up without a religion but experienced Matsu’s help and now regularly serves at the temple down the street.  The temple down the street marks the core of Judy’s dad’s childhood.  Judy’s dad grew up in the temple, devoutly participating in the temple activities.  Judy’s mom told us more about their religion and walked us over to the next room, eagerly displaying their idol shelf.  Excited, Judy retrieved a stick of incense and holding the incense between her hands, bowed before the idols, and then turned back to us, pleased and proud to demonstrate to us how to worship the idols.  My heart hurt.

As we sat back down, Judy’s mom asked us more about why we were teaching at the elementary school.  “Because of Jesus,” we said.  Alysha and I had the opportunity to share a bit about our faith, and we learned that Judy’s mom had heard about Christianity in her earlier days.  Judy’s mom explained to us that converting people to Christianity in Wanhua, especially the adults, is an impossible task.  She said, though, that the younger generation is the way to go.  She does not force Judy into in any religion, which gave Alysha and me a glimpse of hope.

Alysha read a note that she had written to Judy, telling her that the same God who created the heavens and the earth also created Judy, unique and special.  As I translated the English to Chinese, Judy and her mom listened intently and smiled.

Two weeks before, Judy had been in my small group during the English Camp held at the Dali Elementary School.  Our group discussions centered on friendship, which was the theme of the camp.  Judy mentioned several times that her classmates call her fat, but claimed that she didn’t care.  On the last day of the camp, Judy broke down crying after her turn in the relay race.  She had run her little heart out, but her friend had kept telling her to run faster.  “I ran as fast as I could!” Judy yelled in between her sobs.  She went on to say that she really dislikes that friend, and that her friend even calls her fat.  Attempting to calm her down, we told Judy that sometimes, friends may say things that hurt.  Looking me in the eye, Judy asked, “But what if your own mom, your own family, always calls you fat?”  As the tears streaked down her face, the hurt she carried revealed itself in a spew of words. We put our arms around Judy and the crying subsided.  Later, Alysha, unable to speak or understand Chinese, though she had no clue why Judy was crying, said just three simple words in English as Judy was leaving:  “you are beautiful.”  And these three words made all the difference.

Last Kids Club of Spring 2009