Well, the outreach is over!
Sorry for the delayed update, for security reasons it is better not to send missionary updates from China (that's what I'm told anyway). Seriously though, I have seen God's faithfulness in the areas of protection and provision, healing and salvation in quantities that have blown my mind, and have opened my eyes more and more to how big our God really is. My team's time in China was an incredible blessing because we were able to see God's kingdom moving forward in that country, which has traditionally been one of the hardest places on earth for the gospel. In both Shanghai and Guangzhou (two of the biggest cities in China) we were able to meet with Christians and partner with them in the ministries going on there. Some of the things we were able to do were: work in an orphanage, mainly for kids with disabilities, attend "underground church," teach and share testimonies in home fellowship groups, do prayer and spiritual warfare around strategic religious and political places and work with a missionary family from my own church at home (Vineyard Christian Fellowship). In both Hong Kong and Taiwan our team was able to work with youth groups and school programs, and saw many teenagers come to know the Lord there, in China we were able to lead one young man to the Lord who we met at a fellowship group.
I want to thank you for your prayers, and for reading my updates, and I truly believe this DTS outreach was a success because you prayed, and committed to be a part of what God has been doing in Taiwan and China through this team. In just the area of transportation and logistics alone, we saw canceled plane reservations be reversed so we could fly to Asia, we saw visas to China (which everyone told us we could not get this summer) be approved in less than 24 hours, we saw typhoons turn around, and airlines create new flights so our team could fly from China to Hong Kong... I'm a firm believer in the power of prayer :-). I've attached some pictures from our time in China in this e-mail, the first is a picture with Pete and Katie Chen and their kids, I know pete from VCF and he's been living in China for about 8 years, it was great to see him and work with him in Guangzhou. The second picture is of a summer camp we taught in Taiwan. The school asked us to teach english, music, drama and sports, this is a picture of music class, where the students learned the song "Amazing Grace." The third picutre is of spending time with some of the kids from a youth group in Hong Kong we worked with. They wanted to show us where to get some "traditional food," which was quite the cross cultural experience. The next picture is of some of the team leading worship... we could sing in English, Korean, French and Chinese... a couple other languages, but those were the main ones :-). The final picture is taken at the orphanage in Guangzhou, China.
My time with DTS is finished now. This next year I will be teaching a bible school with YWAM, training missionaries to teach and preach the gospel, and possibly leading some of them on another outreach next spring. If you think of it could you pray for me in this transition time? I know God is leading me into being staff with this new school, pray that he is glorified through it!
Andrew
