The weeks are rocketing by here in Kinmen! We just have so many opportunities to minister; it can be overwhelming when I stop to think about it. We would appreciate any prayers for guidance as we each have to choose which opportunities to invest in.
One opportunity that has come our way this weekend is a visit by two young women from Taipei. I believe their father is some sort of doctor, and they’re involved with some sort of association called IBLP or some such strange name. I’m afraid we’re not really going to able to help them, though, and we’ll probably just have to send them back to Taipei on Monday. You can pray that God will bring someone else across their path over there. ;-P
Okay, just to clarify, the previous paragraph was a joke -- we are having a lovely and encouraging visit from Karen and Faith Chen this weekend! :-D They’ve been able to visit with an English teacher, two college students, and a salon owner that they’ve had previous opportunities to witness to, (Ted, Tammy, Emily, and Lucy, respectively). Our team has regular contact with all four of these people, and we would love to see them saved! I believe Emily is already saved, but please pray for each of them.
For a little more than the past week, we’ve also had kids playing cards with us to rather late hours whenever there’s no school the next day. It’s mostly Jr. High students, but also a few elementary and Sr. High students, living here at the dorm. We’re all in the same boat – living away from our families – so it’s nice to do things together in the evenings. There are a couple big differences in our boats, though: first, we’re a lot older, and second, we have our Heavenly Father right here with us. We’re praying that we’ll be channels of His love to them.
There are also some students, almost all Jr. High, from local families that have been joining us in the evenings. Most of their parents will eventually call them to come home, but it’s sad that some of them don’t seem to have any kind of curfew. Please pray for little Allen. He was in one of Lucas’ 3rd grade classes last semester, and now he’s in one of Megan’s 4th grades. He’ll come over all by himself and hang around ‘til we finally have to tell him that he needs to go home and sleep. Every time we ask if his parents know that he’s here or what time he’s supposed to be home, and he just says that they don’t care. It seems to be true…they never come looking for him. Last night at 11:30, Lucas finally walked him downstairs and helped him get his little bike over the fence (the school gates were already locked). :-( It sure makes me grateful for my parents.
This past Monday, we started doing a class with 8 potential drop-outs that attend this Jr. High. We’ll be working with them on English for two hours every Monday evening, and they have other classes the other weeknights and activities on the weekend. It’s a new program that’s just started, and I believe it’s mostly taught by their homeroom teacher and volunteer college students. They had a meeting last week to start things off, and all the students’ parents were supposed to come with them, but only one mother came. As soon as they saw a chance during the meeting, the boys ran outside to smoke. We therefore only gave them a 5-min. bathroom break during our class on Monday, but that was still plenty of time for them to run out and smoke. We’re working on a better plan of action for keeping them from doing that. :-) One of the boys at the meeting had what looked like a huge cat-claw scratch on his neck, and he told Rebekah that he got in a fight with his older brother. A couple days later, Lucas thought he saw one of the boys hiding by a tree near our dorm during class-time, doing something with a knife to his arm. Sure enough, on Monday, the boy had slice marks all down his forearm. We haven’t met all of the students yet, but I think there are two girls and six boys. Praise God, our first class went well, and we were able to break the ice with the five students that came. One of them was our old friend Bill/Jerry, (his English name was Bill last semester, but now it’s Jerry). For a while last semester, he came over to the dorm almost every day. It’s good for us to have a chance to work with him again. Please keep the class, students, and teachers in your prayers.
May God bless each of you, and know that we’re praying for all of you, too!
~BJ, for the Kinmen Team
