Pray for the Nations. Pray for Taiwan.

Reflection: Sharon Lin-STM

After five days of camp I’ve definitely learned a lot about God’s movement in His people, through His people.

The first few days I was going crazy-my kids were wild and completely out of control. Every class was a battle. The kids made fun of each other, and all the teachers. I went to into each class excited to teach and was defeated within minutes of stepping into the classroom by the kids’ vicious words. So many times I felt like I wanted to give up; But each time God provided a TA, STM, SGL, or co-worker to help me. As I hit brick walls, God crumbled them for me. Through this, I began to understand the truth behind Matthew 6:33, But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. When I chose to serve Him, the Lord provided. Furthermore I was able to truly experience 1 Peter 5:7, “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”

Through something as basic as learning the camp dances, God also worked to increase my faith in Him and my understanding of his love. Let me start with a fact; I cannot dance and I have terrible memory for choreography. Through this, however,God used my weaknesses to reveal Himself to me. It was through my weakness that I was able to see His great strength overcome my humanity. I had joyfully thought that God provided for my weakness when I assumed I had song 8 (flag dance, no dancing) in the beginning of camp, but after we reselected songs I was ironically stuck with song 7, which was rumored to be the most difficult dance out of all the songs. I was in despair. I knew that on my own I’d never be able to learn the dance before I had to teach my students. However, God knew what I needed better was better than what I thought I needed. By giving me the hardest song, God humbled me and then proceeded to show me love beyond anything I’ve ever experienced in a church body before. My teaching group patiently worked with me for hours for the two remaining days, and showed me 1 Corinthians 13 love. What humbled me the most was that my team consisted of sisters and a brother that was younger than me. In my mind, I should have been the one taking care of and showing love to them, but instead they cared for me and showed me what love from God truly looked like. He humbled me to allow my group to really bond and create a better teaching team for the students that He would transform. Aside from my teaching team, I was also extremely humbled by the unconditional and unending love from the other STMs, co-workers, worship team, and DV team. It was encouraging to see everyone working to be the hands and feet of Christ, loving our students, the TAs, and each other.

The heart and passion for worship and praise to the Lord in each person overflowed into the camp and was infectious. Seeing the passion that the Christians in Taiwan have for evangelism and the gospel leaves me with great hope that Taiwan is beginning to see a revolution for Christ. As AEF continues, year after year, to plant seeds in the hearts of more and more youth in Taiwan, I am eager to see the fruit that is bore when the youth step up and lead, and through leadership, bring about the next generation. Looking at AEF from previous years and seeing the leadership in AEF now, it is evident that God word has really been moving through AEF, and it’scrazy exciting!!

Reflection: Tiffany Tam-STM

How I’ve changed at AEF camp? I have been reassured of God’s presence during this camp. I went into this missions trip not really knowing what to expect at all and I was especially nervous since my Mandarin skills are very much less than proficient. The strange thing is that when it came time for meeting the other Taiwanese peoples and campers, everything just felt right.

I realized that when you rely on God, like really depend and lift everything up to Him…He will provide and He’s got our back. He provided a group with more than helpful TAs, and supportive helpers that comforted me and helped me get through the week in a place where I only understood 5% of what was going on.

It was really great seeing everyone working together from such diverse backgrounds. I really enjoyed building relationships with the TAs, the other STMers and the Taiwanese Aborigines. The friendships I made inTaiwanfelt so real because we all struggled and worked hard together for a common mission, to spread the love of God to others.

The week went by a lot faster than expected and I wasn’t sure if I made enough of an impact on the kids. I connected a lot more with the girls in my class so I tried talking to them more about the gospel and sharing my testimony before I put them to bed. Being 9 and 10 years old and extremely giddy, I’m not sure if any of it got through to them… but on the last day of the last large group gathering, they played “He Knows My Name” and something unexpected happened. The girls whom I spent most of my time with came toward to hug me with tears in their eyes, and of course tears down my face followed quickly after. That moment made my week more than worth it.

I felt such joy when I saw the happiness in the kids, I love everyone in my group. But I especially hope that the kids and the TAs were touched by God’s presence during the camp. I pray that they will become more curious about his works and may want to accept the great gift. I learned that God is truly great, dependable, powerful, and most of all…LOVING!

I missTaiwanand AEF a lot and hope to better my Mandarin skills so that I can potentially go back in the future. I also hope to maintain and continue my relationships with the people I met this summer. It was definitely a record-breaking awesome summer. I LOVE AEF!

Reflection: Jeff Chang-STM

I am gracious that I came to AEF camp. What I really felt through this camp was God’s love. God’s love breaks barriers of language, culture, and age difference. When I first saw my kids, even though I did not know Chinese, I knew if I just loved them, God’s love would shine. Working with [Shirley], [Nathan] [Esther] [Tiffany] and [Carrie], I learned how humor can bond a group. I also loved that each of us was different and brought a unique quality to the group.

I loved the kids the most. Even though they laughed at me for my bad Chinese, I really saw how love can impact a kids actions and thoughts. My kids were wonderful. They listened, played games, and joked around with me. I hope God can continue to impact their lives and AEF camp is just the beginning of their long journey in Christ. One last thing I hope my little sister Carrie was impacted to get to know Christ. She is awesome and I want her to know the power of God’s love. I will pray for her.

Reflection: Jennifer Sum-STM

My first impression of the missions trip was that it would be lots of fun playing with the kids, singing, dancing, and teach—all of which I love to do. Also, I was expecting for this trip to have an impact on my spiritual life. Before coming to Taiwan, my spiritual life was okay. Not bad, but not great either. After being in the camp for a week, it definitely had an impact on my life, and it was not easy at all.

When I decided to go on this trip, I thought that my mandarin would be sufficient. However, it was a lot worse than I imagined. With communication a huge factor, the missions trip became extremely difficult. Also, before the trip, I felt that this past year God has been pushing me out of my comfort zone and pushing me to do things I normally won’t do. For example, I became worship coordinator of my church/fellowship. I have stage fright so it was scary. Also, I didn’t want to go on the missions trip because I do not like traveling, especially away from my family. However, I felt that God was telling me to go since my summer was wide open.

Overall, the missions trip was not what I expected. It put a lot of stress on me and it was very very hard communicating with the students. Also, I got group 10, the highest group-the oldest kids. That made it harder. In addition, my TA was very shy and not very authoritative. I felt that God put all these difficulties in front of me in order to give me a transformation and for the kids as well, and it did. I ended up loving my kids and they loved me as well. They were so nice to write me notes and cards and so many people were there for me when I needed help and so many people prayed for me and gave me so much encouragement. I was very surprised to find that everyone around me was so encouraging. People I barely knew came up to me to talk to me, to pray with me, and would even give me little notes and gifts. I felt so much love from everyone. It even felt that instead of me trying to transform the kids, everyone was transforming me. I grew a lot during this missions trip and I felt that God used the kids and the workers to help me experience God’s love. I feel a lot stronger now and I hope to learn more Chinese in the future so that I can come back!

For more reflections from other participants of AEF 2011, head on over to http://aefmissions.wordpress.com/

Reflections from the Davis team will be uploaded here as they are uploaded to the Canaan site :)

Also some AEF slang:

STM: Short-term Missionary

TA: Teacher's assistant (Interpreter)

Home.

Hey guys,

In case you didn't hear through the grapevine, we've all been home for just about a week now. Tiff and Seaton are in Summer session 2, Jeff is chillin' (in Davis?) and getting some hangout time in before heading east, Jen is in Norcal until Friday and then will be home, and I am at home working.

I'm doing reflections in my journal, so hopefully I can get something up soon. Will try to get the others to do some reflections too! :)

A quick update on how we're all doing emotionally: I think we all really, really miss Asia, but more the people there. We're still on AEF high, if that's even possible...some 3 weeks later -.-

Tiff, Seaton and Jeff have been able to skype Nathan and Shirley, so they've been keeping in touch and are extremely happy to be able to talk to them. Nathan even met our infamous Kevin Leung!! Guest appearance on the blog :P

Prayer requests:

AEF is going to Okinawa, Japan! Actually...they're already there! So, pray for their camp with the Japanese, especially in the theme of reconciliation.

AEF Short termers are having a reunion in Norcal on Saturday. They are super excited to see each other again :) Pray that we continue these relationships and continue to build our hearts for Taiwan--allowing God to use our passion to shape our lives.

Pray for the relationships we built with the brothers and sisters in Bread of Life Nantou as well as the few students we are able to keep in touch with through facebook/email. Pray that we will also grow these relationships.

Lastly, help us begin to pray for AEF 2012. I know it's early but a great portion of this years STMers have felt a burden to go back to AEF next year. If this is the direction that God leads us next summer, we will be able to have consistency in our relationships and ministry, which would be amazing. :)

Thanks for all of your constant support and prayers. Tell us how we can pray for you too!

In Him,

Sharon (on behalf of the team)

Hong Kong~

Hey guys,

Right now the team's in Hong Kong on a mini rest. If you want to know what we're up to here, you can read up on it on Tiff's blog http://tifftam19.blogspot.com/, although it's not missions related.

Missions reflections and more detailed updates will come soon when we get back to the states and get our (praise the Lord) own/stable internet back.

Love and miss you all!