Hello again!
Thank you all for your patience as I have tried to post updates as often as possible, but haven’t posted nearly as often as I would have liked. I am currently writing this post from the middle seat of row 37 of a small jet plane that is making it’s way back to the Raleigh-Durham Airport. I have been in the air for 14 of the last 20 hours and, as you can imagine, I have had plenty of time to reflect on what I have seen and experienced over the past two weeks in Taiwan. Since I have 4 hours of flight time left, I figured that now would be as good a time as ever to put this post together to share with you guys but if you read anything in this post that doesn’t make sense, just blame the jet-lag.
It’s hard to believe that we are already on our way back to the States. It seems like just yesterday that our team of 10 landed in Taipei, and now we are headed back to the place that we have called home for the past two months. More than that, it’s hard to believe how we were able to experience so much in those two short weeks. I was able to see God move in some incredible ways not only in the lives of the students that we went to serve, but also in my own life and the lives of the other students on my team and the long term team in place there. Although there are countless things that I learned in this time, I think that I could wrap up my take away from Taiwan in one statement: The God that we serve, and the mission that we are given is always the same no matter where in the world we find ourselves.
This is a simple statement that I would have agreed with and probably even quoted before this experience, but only now can I say that I truly understand what I am saying. For the first time in my life, I was able to build relationships with people who live in a culture entirely different from my own and through that I was able to see God in a completely different way. Our objective for our time in Taiwan was simple: to build relationships with students there and to share the Gospel with them as much as possible. I was skeptical of this at first, but I can honestly say that I was able to build relationships with some of the most genuine people that I have ever met and I got to see firsthand that these students are being pursued by the same God that I worship every Sunday in the mountains of North Carolina. In the short two weeks that we were there, our team of 10 was probably able to share the Gospel 100+ times, build relationships with 50+ students, and even see 2 students profess faith in Jesus. This is not a result of anything that we did or said but all because of the God that was at work in and through us during our time there. It’s an incredible thing to be able to see a student whose story started out so much differently in terms of culture, tradition, and even faith in something else turn to an Ephesians 2 story just like our own. Here’s how it happened:
We arrived in Taipei late on Sunday night, July 3rd. When we made our way through customs, the field partners we were there to work with greeted us in the airport. They, along with their three children, have lived in Taiwan for the past 9 years working with college students in the city of Taipei. I could use an entire post talking about how awesome they are but I will spare you all the reading and just tell you that they’re great. Anyways, after we landed, we had a 45 minute ride to the hotel we would be staying in. When we got there, we had just a few minutes to check-in and drop off our stuff before we had a team meeting to fill us in on what we would be doing in our time there. Our two weeks were split in two ways. The first week would be spend teaching an English summer camp, and the second would be spent working with an orphanage. Now, I know what you’re thinking. “What in the world is an English summer camp, and why would anyone ever want to go to something like that?!” I know this because I had the exact same question myself. The camp consisted of various presentations from our team and the long-term team there about American history, culture, traditions, holidays, college life, and more. The students were mostly there because they want to practice their English language skills. You see, in Taiwan they study English from the time they are in elementary school until they graduate high school. They have an extensive knowledge of the language, but the problem is that they seldom meet Westerners that are native speakers of the language, so they don’t really get to practice speaking English with anyone whose first language isn’t Chinese. The camp was awesome for us because during every presentation we had the chance to present, and also spend time in our groups going through some guided questions, which gave us countless opportunities to share the Gospel. Other than having opportunities to share the Gospel, the small group time also allowed us to build relationships with the students which in turn gave us chances to hang out with them in the evenings which led to, you go it, more Gospel presentation. I can’t even begin to count the number of great conversations we were able to have with the students just hearing about their lives, their families, and the beliefs that they grew up with.
Throughout the week, we were able to challenge a lot of those beliefs and cultural ideals that many of the students grew up with. In Taiwan, the most common belief systems are of Buddhism, Taoism, and hybrids of the two. These include things like meditation, ancestral worship, and going to temple to make offerings and pray to gods and idols. This has long been the case in East Asia, but I have seen firsthand that there is a movement of God happening in that part of the world just as surely as you are reading this right now. Not only were we able to see two students come to profess faith in Jesus after just two weeks, but we also had countless students agree to come and read the Bible in an attempt to learn more about the Christian faith. One of the things that blew me away about the week is the number of time that I heard “I’ve never really thought about that” in response to question about eternity, their purpose in life, and other questions that point to the Gospel. This is often due to the fact that in school, which is infinitely more intense than it is in the States, they are taught that every question has a right answer, so they aren’t really taught to think critically about things that can’t be proven through something like the scientific method. In fact, we were able to see most of our success through asking questions instead of sharing and by the grace of God alone we were able to have a lot of great conversations and hopefully lead students to begin thinking about things like this for the first time in their lives for some of them.
Apart from the camp, we were able to spend a lot of time just hanging out with the students. I was blown away at how friendly they were and how willing they were to do pretty much anything. If we even mentioned wanting to go and see something or wanting to eat a certain type of food, they went ahead and planned an entire night of doing just that, even if they didn’t like doing or eating those things. For example, I was talking to a guy from another group one day when we were going to eat and on the way I asked him if he liked that type of food. (We were eating at CaliBurger in one of the larger cities). He responded by saying, “No, not really. But I can eat wherever I want after you guys leave, you’re only here for two weeks.” This seems like a really simple response, but it’s just one of so many instances of their selfless attitude and genuinely wanting to do anything they could for us.
The second week of our time there was spent working with children at an orphanage on the outskirts of the city. This was definitely one of the tougher parts of the trip simply because I got to see how much differently these kids are going to grow up than myself. Not just because I grew up in a middle class, western American family, but because I grew up with two parents in my home knowing that they both loved me and would do anything in the world that they could for me. Taiwan isn’t by any means what you would think of as a third world country, but the situation that these kids are going to grow up in is very hard for me to see. Not because they won’t have food or clothes, but because they won’t ever know the love of the people that brought them into the world. I mean, it was a really cool opportunity to take the chance just to play with them and show them the love of Christ even for a few minutes , but it really hit me that they don’t get the chance to just check in and volunteer for a few hours and then go back home.
The orphanage was basically a big padded room downstairs full of toddlers who have nothing to play with except for each other, and the upstairs was two rooms both equally full of babies with not nearly enough people to care for them. Playing with the toddlers was hard simply because there were so many of them, but being with the babies was heartbreaking because of the sheer number of them. For instance, if you heard a baby crying you were supposed to pick it up and console it like any normal person would, but after a few minutes you were told to put it back down because they didn’t want them to get used to being held because they didn’t have enough nannies to be able to hold each child for any certain amount of time. That is something that I can honestly say that I have never experienced before in my life. As a child I was usually in a room with family members competing for my attention, wanting to hold me and play with me, and these kids would grow up feeling that it was more unordinary to be held when they were crying than the be left laying on the floor. It’s hard for me to accept that, but it’s also so awesome to think about the fact that even though they don’t have earthly parents to show them love and affection, they have a God who loves them so much more deeply than any parent of theirs ever could, and we were able to pray for the children that they would come to know that very love.
Though it was a tough experience, the orphanage was something that I am so thankful that I was able to experience. On top of just being able to love on the kids there, we had multiple students that we made friends with at the camp come to serve with us at the orphanage which was awesome. We spend an average of 2-3 hours at the orphanage each day, and the rest of it was set aside to spend time with our groups. We were able to spend some quality time with them the first week, but the second week was really awesome because we had already established relationships with them so we were really able to reach a point where we felt like we were able to know the students on a personal level during our time together that second week. We did everything from meeting up with students to read the Bible, to hiking to the top of a mountain to see a view of the city, and even got to go to the top of Taipei 101, and it made it so much more special that we got to experience it all with our beloved tour guides. I can truly say that I will never forget the relationships that we were able to make with these students in just two short weeks, and I hope that I get the chance to see them again in the future!
Please join me in praying for the salvation of the students that we met, and that the two girls that came to know the Lord in our time there would be discipled well, and continue to make His name known among their friends and family.
You can also be praying for the missionaries there, including the long-term missionaries and their children, as well as the four students there who have committed 1-2 years of their lives to spreading the Gospel in a place that is not their home!
Thank you so much for your continued prayers and support! Please feel free to contact me to hear more about my time in Taiwan, as there are so many other things that I would love to share that didn’t make it into this short post!
-Devon
devon spake 
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