Well, light2taiwan I’m glad to say is back and better than ever. You’ll notice that lots of things still need to be updated and fixed for the new school year. Thanks to the untold laziness of the administrators (Daniel and Josh bow…ok mostly Daniel) it may be a few weeks before it’s all updated and done. We’ll see how it goes. The one thing I am going to be working towards as fast as I can is getting all the new team addresses up so you can send our lovely team members luscious boxes of cookies, wonderful “I’m thinking of you” cards, butterfinger candy bars (for the Nantou team), and anything else you want to send. It’s really nice to know that there’s people back home praying for us.
This website is an extension of that. We feel like this is our way of doing a little “payback” for all the praying you do in the states on our behalf. You have the right to know how God is working here in Taiwan though our program and so if all goes well we’ll have an update every week from each team. Also, look in the photo gallery for images of your friends and family as they teach their way through the year. We’ve had some pretty crazy things happen over here and a thousands words just won’t cut it at times. Sometimes you just need to see it to believe it.
Look around the site if you will, you’ll find blogs, photos, personal profiles of all the teams members, images and location info for each team, e-mail addresses for some of our team members, as well as the weekly updates from our lives. Please e-mail the admins if you think of something you’d like to see on the site. We’re also very interested in knowing if something doesn’t work. You can contact us by clicking on any of the “contact us” links found around the site.
As a basic update on what’s happening this year we’ve 4 teams serving around the island of Tawian.
One team in Nantou County which is on the main island pretty much right in the middle. Nantou is a mountainous area with many little villages near by. Although the villages are often less than 500 people Nantou city itself is around 300,000. Our (I’m part of the Nantou team) teaching involves mostly smaller schools though there are one or two fairly large ones. We have an after school program in the afternoon, Jr. Highschool every other Friday, and a special “English day” program where we travel to small mountain schools to teach on the Friday we don’t have Jr. High. Nantou County is considered the religious capitol of Taiwan and boasts more temples than any other county. You can imagine that we deal a lot with spiritual warfare here. The Nantou team members are Joel Feig, Zack Feig, Daniel Neu, Kristen Richmond, Mai Lewis, and Nicole Simpson.
Another team is in Chia Yi. Chia Yi is the County on the south border of Nantou. Chia Yi is home to one of the most beautiful national parks in Taiwan, the Ali San Nantional Park. The teaching area around Chia Yi is very similer to that of Nantou. Both smaller and larger schools. This is a new location for our program and so I really don’t know a whole lot about daily life in Chia Yi. I’ll let the team tell you about it in future updates. The Chia Yi team members are Christy Langemann, Jessica Lindley, Sarah Lindley, Lauren Little, and Ruth Hug.
Yet another team can be found in Hualian. This beautiful county can be found on the east coast of Taiwan. It’s perhaps the most remote of the teaching locations in the fact that it’s not near any large city areas. It’s also known for having a large amount of indigenous aboriginal people. In both Hualian and Nantou counties it’s easy to find the aboriginal people. I’ve been told by the teachers in Hualian that they mainly have the Amei tribe but also the Bunong people as you also find in Nantou. The Hualian team members are Jocelyn Krauter, John-Eric Hope, Adam O’Conner, Ruth Strickler, Regina Lehman, Catherine Leskowat, and Naomi Leskowat.
Lastly we have the Kinmen team (pronounced Jean Men…don’t ask me why it’s spelled with a “K”) Kinmen is a small island west of Taiwan that is actually closer to China than the Taiwan mainland. On a clear day it is possible to see the mountains of mainland China right across the strait. As you would imagine being on a small island tends not to lend itself to traveling very much. This doesn’t bother our teachers in Kinmen. They’ve taken it as an opportunity to build strong relationships with several of the people they know and see every day. They get to teach every single school on the island and so because of this they know nearly every child. Kinmen is known as being a close knit world where not only are our teachers workers on the island, they’re also friends to a large part of the island. The Kinmen teachers are Andrew Stewart, Lucas Stewart, Megan Jefferies, Rebekah Gilley, Dominique Coffing, Jarita Kulp, Lauren Cyrus, Jane Turner, and Rachel Grindall.
I hope this helps you understand what you’ll be reading over the next several months. We’re real people doing real work for a real God. We need real people back in America to really pray for real miracles every day.
God Bless and I hope you’ll stick with us through all of our updates.
Daniel Neu
Nantou, Taiwan
Light2taiwan.com Administrator
