Christmas Party

On December 17, we had a Christmas party for neighborhood kids. The YWAM Taiwan team handed out over a thousand fliers. We didn't know what kind of response to expect because a couple of young kids have been murdered in Japan recently on their way home from school, one by a foreigner. Handing out fliers outside a school is perfectly legal, but a teacher came out and asked our team to stop because of the present atmosphere of suspicion and fear. Also, while a guy from the team was handing out fliers in the neighborhood, he was approached by the police who had received a call about a suspicious person.

We prepared Christmas gifts for fifty kids just in case a big crowd showed up but when the volunteers gathered (over twenty of us) my hope was that would would have at least as many attendees as volunteers. As the party began and more and more kids turned up, I began to have the opposite worry, that we would run out of presents. When attendance passed the fifty mark, we rushed out to buy more gifts. In all, seventy children came.

The program went extremely well thanks especially to the efforts of volunteers from our teens and young adults ministries. The parents who came were pleased and the responses of the kids as they left were all along the lines of "I can't wait for your next event!"

In the past month I have been struck over and over with a sense of gratitude for the excellent people God has placed me amongst at New Hope. This event was just one more opportunity for joyful servanthood to show itself.

Taiwan Team

A short-term missionary team from Taiwan is staying at our Narimasu center. (They are on DTS outreach with YWAM Taipei if that means anything to you.) They have been helping with Oyako Club and handing out hundreds of fliers to publicize our children's Christmas party (more on the party in another post). They've also helped us in Sunday School, visited a small Christian school to encourage the students, handed out thousands of evangelistic Christmas CDs, been mistaken by the police for burglars, and made friends in the community while clothed and naked. (We don't have a shower so they use the public bath house.)

They've been a great help and a great encouragement. They head for China on December 26 to finish their outreach. Thank you Mayi, Sunny, Cindy, Chin Chen, Kuan Chi, Matt, Susanne, and Kristen.