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