Taiwan

Today, I have really started thinking about how sad I will be to leave here. It's not that I'm not ready to come home (because I really do miss everyone), but it's more that there is so much left to do here. I wish that I could stay and share the Word with more people and help disciple the new Christians here because they are all so thirsty to learn more. Tomorrow I will be speaking at the church, and I hope that God will speak through me so that the people might get more out of my talk than I could ever offer alone.

This trip has really shown me how much I still have to learn. Most of my life, I have thought that I was so smart and there wasn't much for me to learn, but God has shown me that I will face many questions in my life that I might not be prepared to answer unless I am open to being taught. I need to learn so much more about the Bible, especially if I want to continue in ministry. Also I really need to learn Chinese if I want to be a minister to East Asia. There is so much that is lost in translation and sometimes I'm not even sure if what I say is really what gets translated so it can be a real hindrance to my ministry.

Lastly, I ask that you would pray for me and that God would reveal his plan to me so that I can know that what I am doing is what God wants for me. More importantly, I ask that you pray for Taiwan, and all places like it that are so spiritually lost. Sometimes from our homes in American we forget that there are so many less fortunate people. Not just less fortunate in material wealth, but also spiritual blindness.

Sorry to my few readers for being MIA these last few days. Time has flown by and now I only have eight days left! I've got mixed feelings about coming home... I am very excited to see family and friends at home (and get some good American food), but I will definitely miss everybody here! Its been so great getting to know the people here and seeing how much the people in this church love God. They are such wonderful witnesses to the other people here.

The last few days we have been continuing with our prison ministry and English classes. The prison ministry has been amazing. I gave my testimony to several different groups of prisoners a few weeks ago and since then I have been giving short messages along with Pastor Peter. Everyone there is so sweet that its hard to believe that they are criminals. I can definitely see that God is working in their lives and some are ready to give up their old ways and follow God once they leave prison. The Pastor has a great testimony for prisoners because fifteen years ago he was a drug addict who was in prison for stabbing someone and fighting the police, but in prison he accepted Christ and has since been giving his whole life to the ministry. He also hopes to set up a place for former prisoners to live after prison that can help them get started on the right path.

On a funnier note, today at lunch we ate at a place that had a very famous speciality: goat's head. Fortunately, its very expensive so we stuck with other food! Also, I added a lot more pictures to my other site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tbradley/

I'll start by first explaining the title to this entry. A few days ago we stopped to get some ice cream (they said the three things that always make Americans happy are: ice cream, McDonald's, and Starbucks). I went with plain old chocolate, but the people with me both got vanilla... topped with red beans. I thought it sounded pretty crazy, but I didn't try it so I can't say if it was good or bad. There is a picture at the link that I gave in the earlier blog.
Sorry, I am a few days behind on my updates. I have been going here and there and everywhere the last few days with barely enough time to think! Thursday morning, I went to a nearby village to A Kernel of Wheat. It is a place where older people from the Amei aboriginal tribe come to spend time together, get some exercise, learn about some hygiene and health issues, and also do some crafts. Luckily, I got there in time for the exercise! It wasn't anything too strenuous. Then we all went in and I shared my testimony with them, and then they learned about some health issues, like diabetes and how to treat it. Most of the time I didn't know what was going on because they were speaking Amei and my translator couldn't understand it. After that, they all did crafts. It was a lot of fun, and its really an amazing ministry because the Amei and other tribes are very lost people, they have extremely high rates of alcoholism, domestic abuse, and various other bad habits. I saw this a lot my first year here because we were working with the Truku tribe, which has many of the same problems.
After that, I went with the Pastor and my translator Mei Chin to go to a kind of boys ranch for troubled youth. We have similar things in Oklahoma and Texas I think, but its basically a place for kids who have come from abuse, have runaway, or maybe even committed a crime. Instead of going to jail, they get a second chance to come here and they got to school and have lots of other activities. Most of the children have very low self-esteem and have very little education. So they start by teaching them things like how to play the guitar or ride a unicycle so that they can feel better about themselves. It was a lot of fun. We also went to see a minimum-security prison. It didn't have walls and the people worked in the fields around it all day (except for their afternoon nap). It was more like a hotel though, they had basketball courts, tennis courts, a swimming pool, and even a vip cottage for the best prisoners!
Friday, I head to Taipei, which is where I am now. I took the train with Mei Chin and my first stop was McDonald's! Haha! Big Macs taste a lot better after you've been eating things like pig skin and chicken feet! We spent most of yesterday in the very rich district of Taipei, home of the Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world! The Taipei 101 has a mall in the first 5 stories, and so Mei Chin said it would remind me of the malls in Oklahoma. In reality, it was much nicer than any mall in Oklahoma. It was full of stores like Cartier, Louis Vuitton, and pretty much every other high dollar store you can think of. We went to the top of the 101, well, not quite only as far as they let people go. You take the world's fastest elevator up. It went up 89 floors in less than 30 seconds. The view was quite amazing. It is very different than the Empire State Building because New York has a very high skyline, but Taipei has a very low skyline most buildings less than 10 stories, so the 101 gives you a view for miles.
After checking out the 101, I went to Pastor Tony and his wife Esther's house. They used to live in Norman, but have moved to Taipei to be full-time missionaries. Tony is in China right now, and so Esther picked me up at the subway station. They had an adult small group meeting at their house which I had the privilege of being a part of. A lot of the people were OU alumni so we had a good time talking about OU.
Finally, that brings us to this morning, where I was able to sleep in till 9 am! I was very excited because most days I have been getting up before 7!
Another thing that you can pray about is that the church in Hualien (a nearby city) is having some very great doctrinal problems, which I witnessed on Thursday, and so they need our prayers! I hope that myself and the team coming can help them find their ways back to sound doctrine.

Here are a few pictures of my trip so far: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tbradley/

Monday, my day started bright and early, around 6 am I headed out to a farm to have some tea with a lot of people. My friend, Yichia, and his parents invited me to go there and meet there friends. It was a lot of fun to spend time with them and talk to the older people. If you don't know, Chinese culture revolves around making a guest feel welcome and most of the time this manifests itself through giving the guest food. So, my host family made me breakfast before I left, Yichia and his parents brought breakfast for me to eat, and when I got to the farm they had food for me as well. Needless to say, I was stuffed and couldn't eat very much, so they sent me home with a bag full of freshly picked corn. Later, I went to the watermelon festival and to a Hakka culture museum to learn more about the history of east Taiwan.

That night was my first English class. It was women that were 60+ years old. It was a lot of fun. They didn't know any English so we started with the basics: numbers 1-10 and a few short songs. It seems that six, seven, and eight are very hard to say if you didn't grow up speaking English.

Today I went to the Hualien County Prison. It was very different than what I expected. The prison housed men and women of all ages for any crimes. There were 12 year old kids who ran away from home in with adults on death row. The kids and adults, and men and women were kept separate most of the time with a little interaction in the yard and stuff. Also, the security seemed very lax. I didn't see a single gun, in some places I could see over the walls, and we didn't even have to pass through a metal detector. I went with the pastor from the church in Fenglin, and three women that are involved in the ministry here. We talked to the women prisoners today about Jesus and we shared our testimony and we are going back the next few weeks. The pastor goes to the prison every week to work with the people there. It was a lot of fun and we got to have a little celebration because it is almost time for the Dragon Festival here so we ate some traditional food.

And now, I am getting ready to head out for my next English class, this time with Junior High kids so it should be very interesting!

Yesterday was a lot of fun. My host family and friend Yichia didn't want me to start working yet because they were afraid that I would be too tired because of jet lag, and so they decided to just show me around this area of Taiwan.

First, we went to Taroko National Park. It is definitely the most beautiful place I have ever been. Its a canyon that is in the central mountain range in Taiwan. I've been the to the Grand Canyon before, and simply put it wasn't nearly as amazing as Taroko National Park. The canyon it made almost completely of marble with a huge river running through it and many waterfalls, some had to be at least 1000 feet tall. It was so awesome, but I am afraid my words can't do it justice.

Next, we went to the beach. It was one of Taiwan's famous pebble beaches. There is no sand, just rocks, so it is very unique. You can't swim in the water though because the depth a few feet off the shore is more than 1000 feet so the current can easy take you away from the shore and you wouldn't be able to get back.

Then we went to a fresh water lake, and they were having an Ironman competition. So we saw a lot of the runners. It was very beautiful and it was almost completely surrounded by mountains. When we got back I went to play basketball and we had to ride bikes. So I successfully rode a bike for the first time in my life. Thats right, I have never learned to ride a bike... It was kind difficult at first to keep in a straight line, but I had it done pretty well by the end of the night. Not to mention, I even won a game of basketball. It wasn't any skill just my height.

After that, we went to the night market and I saw some of the kids that I had met last year, and we looked around a lot, but I didnt buy anything.

Well, I made it to Taiwan without any big problems, I had a little trouble on the planes. One didn't submit the correct manifest with the FFA so we had to wait around 40 minutes to figure things out before we could take off. In Los Angelos, I met a team of missionaries going to India that were on the same flight as me. They are going alone, so remember to keep them in your prayers!

I got into Taipei yesterday at 6:15 in the morning and we arrived in Fenglin around 1 pm. I ate lunch with a few people that I knew from last year and the family who I am staying with. It was some very amazing food. Around 3 pm I made it to the house and went to take a nap, but I didnt wake up until sunrise this morning! Hopefully, I am completely through with my jet lag and won't be sleeping an entire day again!

Right now, I am in the house that I will be staying in while I am here. I am with a family who were saved while we were here last summer and they were all baptized and they now attend the church here. They are very hospitable. I am in the living room watching the Pink Panther with the kids. It has been a lot of fun, especially since none of the people I am staying with speak English and I don't speak very much Chinese. So far I think that we have been able to communicate with each other, but I always wonder if we are even talking about the same thing!

Here are some things you could pray for:

For the team going to India
That God will provide many people who are hungering for His Word
For Health, I don't want to spend my whole trip sick!
For God to provide me strength, both spiritual and physical

I hope that you're all having a wonderful day! God Bless!