Administrator: October 2004 Archives

Most of the schools here in Hualien are built so that you can see the Mountains from some point and two of my three schools are nestled right at the base of the Mountains. It is still awesome for me to look out the window at the shear wall of the mountain rising right before you eyes. I cannot help but think on the words of the psalmist in Psalm 121, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.”

Lord willing, most of us here in Hualien are in Taroko National Park today hiking up one of those mountains. This is a unique opportunity that God has opened up for us and we are excited to see what He has to teach us through it. There is something about being still before God surrounded by the wonder of all that He has made that is both refreshing and revitalizing after challenging week. It is so easy to get distracted by all the business of day to day living with most of your time taken up with either teaching or planning the lessons for the next day, that it is important to take some time to step back and do a priority check. Is the Lord the one to whom I am lifting up my eyes and in whom I find my all?

Christina Furrow
Singchen, Hualien County

Hi! Welcome to the only inland county in all of Taiwan. It is interesting to see what you can learn about where you live by teaching it. Tomorrow I will be helping teach thirty students from three different schools how to introduce the county of Nantou to Americans who come to visit, or to students in America they will converse with through some sort of e-pals program. We found out about it last week, and I hope whatever we will be teaching will be easy to learn, and also be beneficial to the students. I hope it will be fun, because it is only one of three classes I have to teach tomorrow. In the morning, Chase, Isaac, and I will be teaching the Character English class, and then at 7PM I help teach an English class for students and their parents. Needless to say, my life here is very busy. Sometimes when I am not teaching, which is... um.... ah..... well...almost never (and even then, I am helping my teachers with vocabulary or pronunciation if they ask me to), I am able to go out with various teachers and Chinese friends, or spend time with Chase, Mai, Christina, and Isaac, my God-given blessing of a team, and other team members when the opportunity arises. Please pray that these opportunities will bring occasion to share the love and hope of Christ.
Next Wednesday our team in Ying Pan will be teaching another extra class to the teachers at this school. We are teaching them how to incorporate character education into their teaching. Pray that we will be able to present our information in a clear manner, and that the class would be beneficial to the teachers and their students. Also we have an upcoming teachers conference (where is time going???) and then we get a break! For one week, all 22 of the American English teachers will be staying here at Ying Pan. Yes! I am so looking forward to it. It will give us an opportunity to meet everyone and have a great time together. Please pray that everything would go well with the teachers conference, and that our time with the whole team would be uplifting.
Thank you all for your prayers and encouragement. Often we can very clearly see the hand of God working in an impossible situation and know that it is because of your prayers. We serve the powerful God. Praise the Lord for His great love. Without the strength of Jesus, there would be no team here in Taiwan.
God be with you,
~Joel
Romans 12

This past weekend we had the opportunity to go and see different places relating to the culture of the area. We went many places, and saw many different things, and ate even more different things. One of the places that we stopped was at a wood carver’s house/ workshop. It not only happened to be a stop on our itinerary, but it also happened to be one of my students’ houses.

They were, of course, thrilled to see me visiting their home unexpectedly. I was equally surprised to see them. I had no idea that we would be visiting their home! It was a sobering reminder to me to see the difference between how they live and how we live. I knew that they probably didn’t have as much stuff as we did, but I didn’t realize how little they did have.

It gave me a new perspective on why I complain because I don’t have something that I want. I complain because I am being ungrateful for what God has given me. I have stopped looking at what I do have, and am only looking at what I think that I need or want. And on top of that, I’m going to fuss about it until I get exactly what I want. Ok, maybe I don’t go that far, but sometimes I sure do feel like doing that!

However, that not the solution that God would have me to reach! That is my own natural solution. Meaning, it’s a very wrong and bad solution! The right solution is for me just to simply be very grateful for what God has already given to me or done for me. As long as I keep looking at those items, I can never be the complainer that God didn’t intend for me to be.

Till next time!
Gracia Engle

Where do I begin with updating you all to the things that have been going on over here in Taiwan? This week in Hualien we took part in a first ever teachers conference. A conference designed to help give the teachers new perspectives on teaching English in the classroom. To be honest I don’t know why we did it or the purpose behind the whole thing but it seemed to work out well in the end.

I guess my biggest burden right now is to let you know some of the things that go on over here in Taiwan. Six months ago I would have never cared if I heard about it after all its sad but it doesn’t affect me. Having now the chance to see it for myself changes things.

I teach at Jing Mai Primary school on Tuesday. It’s the first out of the two days of having 5th and 6th graders back to back for two periods each. Something I’ve been noticing over the last number of weeks is how hungry these children are. They devour the food like the end of the world is upon them. After talking with Shirley (the English teacher that I work with at that school) and finding out that 75 % of the students only eat one meal a day because either there parents have no money or they spend it all on alcohol and cigarettes. As if that wasn’t bad enough the only clothes that a bunch of the children can wear are designed, or have logos by companies that profit from immorality. The other amazing thing is learning that most of these families have no money even to afford running water… so what do they do… they tap into the water supply that runs down from the mountain and along a trench that flows through the school. They run these long water hoses to there home’s to bring in some water to drink and cook with. Then you take the school not having running water most times to flush the toilets and that Jing Mai

Every time I go to that school I have this sadness and yet wishing for some way I might be able to reach out to children. In spite of all this the children are happy they are excited and I really pray that I can really be a light that God truly intended me to be for these kids.

Friday I took a trip into Hualien. The last two weeks I’ve been going in to watch on of the teachers conduct English classes at a school that has over 2000 students. I was going to meet up with Darcy for lunch and then to watch some more of her classes but first I decided to take a stroll. The first thing I noticed is the how open the selling of pornography is. It’s something that Dr. Chen told us about here in Taiwan… and yes literally it’s everywhere. If you think of all us guys over here please pray for pure eyes and a clean heart. Then if that wasn’t bad enough I pass by a store to hear music that is just absolutely disgraceful and most times I never have a problem with music just walking by but it really bothered me.

No less then half an hour later as I’m walking down the street I come upon a man reaching into a car with a screaming women as he beats her and continues to pull her in and out of the car slapping, screaming, and punching her the whole time. I wish I would have done something but this guy was crazy. Looking for some means to call the police or have someone help me stop this animal was just not to be found. Instead people just watched as it all happened.

These are just a few of the things that we see on a day to day basis. It really is different over here and extremely sad and grieves my heart to see what goes on. I’ve been so sheltered by a good life at home. Yes I grew up in some rough areas of town but never had to face just the poverty and the lives people live here.

As we were meeting as a team on Thursday evening here in Hualien we were all talking about the fact of how blessed we are and even the resources we have here at our finger tips. To make it plain in simple we live in the upper class of Hualien we have so many benefits and blessings that so many people never see and yet we find ways to say complain when were late in getting paid.

I guess in all of this I still have so many lessons to learn and I have so much more that I can be doing to reach this county and country for Christ.

Please pray for each of us over here. Pray that God would work in our lives and make us the clean and pure vessels so that He might flow through us to reach these people.

Pray that God would strengthen each of physically and that He would give us the grace to surrender our wants, desires, and selfishness for the sake of the people and the team here in Taiwan.

Also pray that God would give me new insights for teaching my classes and that He would work especially in the lives of my teachers. (Darcy, Jessica, Alice, Sonia, Shirley, and Pong)

But Jesus said to him, "No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." Luke 9:62

Joshua Smith
Hualien

P.S. I was going to write about our adventure as a team today. It was great we toured around and ate a ton of food. Everything from flying squirrel or flying mouse to Bamboo rice and live shrimp… yes still squirming and jumping.

Have you ever sat down in front of your laptop and suddenly felt very, very tired? I didn't realize how very tired I was until I sat down just now. It's been a crazy day and tomorrow looks promising, too! This morning my whole team had a character English class for 1st and 2nd graders here at the school at 7:50 am. It was a little difficult to drag myself out of bed at that hour, but once we got some coffee in the system it was fun. Those little kids are so cute.

After class I grabbed my bike and sparkly blue helmet and set off for Nantou city to do some shopping. I got a couple of Christmas presents (you can never start too early!) and some miscellaneous groceries. Then I headed up to the food court for some good ol' Tappenyaki. YUM! My favorite. :-) While I was there it suddenly struck me how many friends I have here in Taiwan. I look forward to seeing the Tappenyaki chef that compliments me on my Chinese, the drink girl that grins from ear to ear when I walk up, the steak lady that always greets me even though I rarely stop to buy a steak from her.

A smile can do SO much guys, because really that's all I've ever done. God just brings these people into my life to encourage me and remind me that He is in charge of every little detail of who I am and why I'm here. The other day I was planning to ride my bike as soon as I got home from school but little things kept going "wrong" and I was delayed over an hour. A little ticked off, I set off at long last, got halfway to town and realized I'd forgotten my money. A VERY ticked off Tina turned her bike around and went back to get her money. As I sat at a stoplight for the second time that day with my money in hand, I turned around and was shocked to see behind me on their bikes a couple of American girls! I struck up a conversation with them and discovered they were headed into Nantou, too. When I asked their names, they introduced themselves as "Sister" whatever, confirming my suspicions that they were Mormon (I mean, who else in Taiwan would wear a skirt to ride their bike? Oh, yeah! that's right- me!). We talked the whole way into Nantou (about 20 minutes) and as we parted they asked if they could meet with me and share their "message" with me. Heh heh. Of COURSE you can share your message with me! As long as you don't mind hearing MY message in return... So they're coming over tomorrow- PRAY for me, okay? I have friends that know exactly what to say to Mormons, but I'm not one of those people, so it's going to have to be all God! I rode home later just amazed at all God had to do to get me to meet those Sisters! Trouble with my phone first, and when I was gonna head off too early anyway, I forgot my money! Our God is so amazing! I love being here in Taiwan to see the Lord work and today one thing after another was just reminding me how I need to keep giving and giving and loving- I get SO much love in return! Thank you so much for your prayers- you are so special in God's eyes. God Bless you all!

Tina Moody
Ying Pan Team

The other day one of the teachers I work with said, “You have so much courage to come to Taiwan. You didn’t know where you would live. You didn’t know the other Americans. You don’t even know how to speak Chinese.” I felt like laughing because at that moment I certainly didn’t feel very courageous! In fact my first thought was that maybe it was more of a stupid thing that I had done than a courageous thing. My next thought was, “Katrina, on your own you aren’t courageous. The only reason you are here is because of the courage and the strength the Lord gives you.” And so instead of laughing and explaining away what she saw as courage in my life I was able to share with her why I’m in Taiwan. I shared with her that because God wants me here I can ask Him to give me His grace, wisdom, and strength, to make it through the difficult times when I feel alone, confused, frustrated or scared.

And so when I’ve planned my teaching schedule for the day and one period’s plan gets thoroughly changed half a dozen times before the period is over I don’t need to become frustrated because the Lord’s grace is sufficient. When I have no idea how to motivate a class of sixth graders to learn I can ask the Lord for wisdom and He has promised to supply it liberally. When I’m not feeling well and am physically weak and tired I can claim the promise that the Lord’s strength is made perfect in my weakness.

During the past months I’ve been learning a lot about God’s grace. I’ve had many of the things that I placed my security in removed or taken away from me. I’m beginning to see that there are a lot of things that I held on to and looked to for my strength that when things got tough simply didn’t cut it. Today as I was thinking about the past few weeks the chorus to a song came to mind: “You can hold on to sorrow, hold on to pain. You can hold on to anger but there is nothing to be gained. You can hold to a thread at the end of a rope. But if you hold on to Jesus you are holding on to hope.”

For me right now, that’s where it’s at – holding on to Jesus and the grace that He offers me for every situation. And that my friends, is the only reason why I can face each day with courage.

Katrina Nisly
Hualien

“I will sing of your great love forever. With my mouth will I make known your faithfulness to all generations.” This definitely was the week for singing. At the beginning of the week part of our team overheard a group children walking in our court yard singing very happily to themselves, “I love Ben, we love Ben!” The Chinese celebrated the annual Moon Festival this week as well. In order to try and blend the English language and Chinese culture I wrote a little song about this Chinese festival. The song quickly became a favorite at the two schools where I teach. Finally, the week ended with a request to travel to Taipei (a three hour train ride north) for a TV interview. (The company that sponsors our team is always looking for ways to promote the work) During the twenty minute interview I was able to give a short gospel presentation, smile, and sing three songs; a Chinese love song (in Chinese of course), my Moon Festival Song, and our Character First obedience song!

What a week for SONGS! The last song which impacted me was “My Faith has Found a Resting Place. ”I need no other argument, I need no other plea, it is enough that Jesus died and that he died for me.” This week has been a time of intense spiritual warfare in which I have seen the powerful effects of your prayers. God continues to amaze me with His plan and grace as I am challenged daily with seemingly hopeless situations followed by a humanly impossible tasks. Your prayers are making a difference.

As a team we are studying through the book of Colossians. One thing that has stood out from me is the love Paul had for a group of people he had never seen. Recently I wrote to my family telling them if they could experience what I was experiencing that they would pray more.

“I wish each you could come and see the work here. I wish you could eat lunch with my students, and have 35 kids give you high 5's at the end of each lesson. I wish you could chat with my teachers on the way from school and hear how lonely they are, without friends or direction or meaning in life. I wish you could stand on the roof of my dorm and face the hideous Toa temple filled with grotesque carvings looming with hateful menace. Maybe if you could see it you would understand that the five minutes you spend praying for us and for the Taiwanese people are not wasted. The prayer of a righteous man availith much!”

Since I wrote that I have realized how shallow it is. If you read Colossians chapter one you will see the intensity at which Paul labored in prayer for men and woman he had never seen.

I know I struggle to pray for those who I have not seen, but God will give us a heart if we ask him. Consider asking God to give you a heart for the people of Taiwan and maybe you can join with Paul in saying “We give thanks to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you.”

Benjamin Jacob

I love living here in Taiwan! The people, the beauty, I am even getting used to not being able to communicate with most people (you just smile and say “Wo ting bu dong!”). It is hard to believe how far way home I am over here...well, except when I'm trying to call my family without waking everyone up in the middle of their night! God has been so good in creating a home away from home for us here and while there are things that come up, He is the process of uniting us as a team to module the body of Christ to the Taiwanese.

Our days here are beginning to fall into a pattern as we get up have devotions, breakfast, team prayer and head off to our various schools, sometimes by train and sometimes getting a ride with another teacher from our school. I am teaching at three different schools, four days a week and am starting to get to know some of the teachers. Keeping the kids straight is another story as I teach seventeen different classes (a couple of those I have twice a week) and each class has an average of 20-25 kids so that equals...a lot of kids. I am taking pictures and starting to collect lists of names for the different classes and hope that I will be able to get a better handle on who's who and which school I know them from when I meet them in the night market. Two of my schools are country schools near by and are mostly aboriginal (Taroko) children and the third is a small school in Hualien City. One thing that really surprised me at first was the amount of variety in the kids because they are not just Chinese. I have some that look very Chinese, a lot that look more like American Indians than Chinese, and a few that could pass for Caucasian with countless variables in between. Some of my kids have auburn/red-ish hair, some are freckled, some are tiny, some are big, the list could go on and on. The one thing that is the same with all the kids at all my schools though, is that they are so eager to be close to me or talk with me. It’s “mob the teacher time” for a group hug when the bell rings that class is over, but I love interacting with them in-between classes.

I plan the lessons and all the teaching for 2/3rds of my classes, which has been a learning experience for me as well as the kids, some classes go really well and others, well, a few of them bombed. As God places me out of my comfort zone in some of the schools were the teachers English level is lower, it has been Awesome to see His’s faithfulness. Especially as I gain confidence in my ability to teach, God has been reminding me of how much I still need to depend on Him. My responsibility is to do the preparation and plan my lessons to the best of my ability, but it is God who makes a class successful and prayer a big difference.

Christina Furrow
Hualien County

It has been quite an adjustment for me over the past few weeks. Going from calmly being at home, doing what I know how to do; to teaching 20 lessons a week, that I’m not sure that I know how to do. It wasn’t enough for me to go half way across the world, I also had to change occupations!

I teach at three different schools. On Monday and Wednesday, I teach at Huping Elementary School. On Tuesday, I teach at San Jhan Elementary School. On Thursday, I teach at Shuei Yuan Elementary School. All of the students at all of the schools seem to be very eager to learn English. Or at the least, they still haven’t gotten over the newness of their English teacher!  They are still surprised at how “white” my skin is, and how light my hair is. For most of them, I’m the first person that they’ve seen that doesn’t look like an Asian person at all.

The students have a lot of fun trying to get me to say something in Chinese. My extremely limited Chinese vocabulary is quickly exhausted any time that I try to talk to them. Then they laugh at my attempts to pronounce something in Chinese. Sometimes I wonder if I’m saying something else instead of what I’m supposed to be saying! They think that it is great though when I understand what they are saying, even if they are only talking in Chinese. I may not be able to answer them in Chinese, but I understand what they are saying in Chinese. That doesn’t happen very often, usually only when we are both using a lot of “body language!” We have a lot of fun learning from each other, that’s for sure!

Signing off until next time,
Gracia Engle