Few things that have been happening

Since we have arrived here in our new city we have been spending a lot of time walking around and getting to know our knew location.  It has been interesting to observe the differences from Taipei, and we have also used the opportunity to look for a location for our future English ministry.  We have not found a location yet, but we feel like we may be getting close.  It has proved to be more difficult then we had originally hoped because rent here is much more expensive then we had been told. Also, some of the buildings were in such poor condition that it would have cost way too much money to get it functional.

If you look closely you can see his scars from getting firecrackers thrown at him

Something interesting happened while we were walking around the city.  The night before this particular day, Biggie (team member from Zambia), and Keith went to check out a local festival.  They knew beforehand that it would be very loud and very crowded.  This festival is considered one of three most important Chinese New Year festivals and many locals and foreigners will show up to watch the spectacle.  The main event is when a man stands on a big chair-like thing with long handles and people carry him around.  He is chosen to represent a god named Master Han Dan and they then throw firecrackers at him. This god is thought to be the god of wealth and is afraid of the cold, so they throw the firecrackers to keep him warm while praying for good wealth in the coming year. Well, the day after we attended this event we were walking around a different part of the city and met the man that was representing Master Han Dan.  So we took advantage of this opportunity and talked to the man for a little while.

Picture courtesy of Google images

                                              Video of the bombing of Master Han Dan

We have just recently had a team from the Montana YWAM base come here and help us by building bunk beds in our outreach house.  This was a huge blessing for us because now we will have a place for outreach teams to sleep.  They also fixed our tile floor that was busted from a previous tenant.  They worked very hard and finished so quickly that we were able to take them around to see our beautiful city.

Beds are Awesome!

Family News:  Elliot has recently started going to a English evening school every Wednesday night.  It is only for an hour.  The family who runs the school are friends of ours and Elliot is good friends with their daughter.  The purpose of the school is to teach English but we thought it would be good for Elliot to be around other kids in a school environment and also get used to hearing Chinese.  He is the only boy in a class of 5.

Elliot working his magic :-)

February

We just finished celebrating Chinese New Year here in Taiwan.  We had a BBQ with friends and also took advantage of the down time to unpack more boxes :).  We just recently made a video of our move to Taidong so click below if you would like to watch it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUJ6UTfwkwY

In the next two weeks we hope to make a decision about a location for our new English cafe.  Please pray for us that we make a wise decision.

The start of a new ministry

Moving chaos

Well, we have recently moved to a new location in Taiwan and are starting a new ministry in YWAM.  This is probably the biggest transition that either one of us have ever made in ministry.  We are no longer working with an already established ministry but are now starting everything from scratch.


Saying Goodbye to all of our friends in the Taipei area was difficult for us.  We had our last meals with different friends and were able to say goodbye to our English class that we taught for around four years.  The meal that we had with our Advanced English was the most meaningful for us because we have spent a lot of time with them over the years and they really mean a lot to us.  They each to took a moment to share kind words, special memories, and encouragement with us and even gave us gifts to remember them by.  We were so blessed and we will miss them dearly.

Our English class

A needed coffee after a very long couple days of moving

This last 2 weeks have been a lot of work. We had to change our address on all our bills, pack up our old house, load everything up on 4 rented trucks, drive 7 hours, and then unpack everything in the new location.  Now that we are in our new city, we have had to figure out a lot of little details that we never had to do in our other city. (we always moved into previously rented YWAM apartments.) for example, how to get gas hooked up to our stove, so that we could cook (we just got it today! Praise God).  We still have to figure out where we can buy all the things we like to eat.  We are feeling pretty tired, but are excited to start looking for a location for our English cafe that we plan to start in April.  It will be an extension of the Rock Cafe in Taipei that we have been working at for the last 5 years.

Our boys are doing really well now.  When we first moved, they were not handling the transition well.  They would cry and wake in the middle of the night and ask to go home.  It was hard for everybody, but we worked hard to make them feel more at home, and they have since been able to settle down.

The boys helping to get the house ready

We are currently trying to collect all the pictures that other people took from the moving process.  So we hope to put together a short video of the whole experience.  Many of our YWAM friends helped with the move and we are so grateful.  It was a lot of work and we couldn't have done it alone.

 This week we are hosting a DTS outreach from our home base in Taipei.  They are at the end of their two month outreach.  We feel blessed to have them here with us because they are going to be helping us clean and paint our outreach house.  It is in need of some TLC, and after they are finished it will be in better shape for hosting future teams.  

Quick and Current News (65 second read) :)

Hello everybody,

We are very sorry it has been so long since we updated last and for that we apologize.  Things have been very busy here and it has been hard to do update you on what is going on.

We wanted to update you on three brief things:

1) Keith just finished the School of Frontier Missions.  He really enjoyed this school.  It was a very practical school and he feels like he has an even bigger heart for frontier missions.  We will probably write more about this experience in the future.

2) We bought a car!!!  Unfortunately the car we originally wanted to buy did not work out, but we were able to find another within our budget.  We really want to thank everybody for your generosity.  We would not have been able to buy this car without all of you partnering with us.  We feel very blessed by everyone and are so thankful for this vehicle. The kids have more space and also love the new car. Elliot always asks, "Are we going in the new car?"

3) This week Keith is going along with a few people from our TaiDong team down to TaiDong for 4 days.  They will be taking a film crew from Montana to do interviews and film different places in the area.  They are doing this to put together promotional videos.  Montana has partnered with Taiwan Ministries for the next three years in what they are calling a "Surge"(Please click the link below for more details on what the Surge is).  While Keith is in TaiDong, he will be looking for a house for us to live in.  So if you think of us, please pray for him while he looks for a place and also for safety while traveling.

http://vimeo.com/108255853 

Recent pictures and news

Titus grad

It has been a great couple of months for us here in Taiwan.  In our last post we gave a big push to support our newly trained Bible teachers to be able to go out and equip the church in how to study the Bible inductively.  They have come back with amazing reports and it has been so cool to hear how God used them to be a huge blessing to the nations.  We sent 6 teams to seven different countries in Asia. We heard many stories of people saying that the Bible has come alive for them and how these teachings were so life giving.  Every team said that in their locations they were asked to return and come back longer because the people are hungry for Bible teaching.  They did everything from teaching in youth bible studies, or at universities as part of their accredited course, in churches, at pastor seminars, in YWAM DTSs and even on military bases.  They did whatever was necessary to serve the locals as much as possible.  God is so good and it has been such a blessing to lead this school.

Here is a link to a video that one of the participants had made from footage from all the outreach locations. http://vimeo.com/93127911

In family news, Elliot has recently turned 3 and Ezra 1.  It is amazing how fast these years have gone.  Ezra has started to walk around EVERYWHERE.  The most fun part for us though, as Ezra gets older, is watching the two boys interact and play together.  We pray that they will be best friends as they get older.

Celebrating Elliot's birthday

Ezra turned 1!

Elliot doesn't like it when Ezra gets gifts

In other news we will be heading back to the US for our bi-annual furlough.  We really look forward to seeing everybody again and spending quality time with each one of you as we catch up.  We will arrive in Arkansas on June 11 and then will go to Pennsylvania on July 17.

Titus Project 2014

We want to take this time to share about our training program that we are currently leading.  We have spent the last three weeks training up graduates of YWAM's School of Biblical Studies to go out as Bible teachers.  It has been an exciting 3 weeks of lectures as they are preparing to go on outreach.

We are sending out 6 teams!  They are leaving this weekend to teach and preach in nations that are desperate for the word of God. They will be teaching in churches as well as Bible schools.  Many of them will have the opportunity to provide Bible training for pastors that have no other way to receive it.

Magan's Bible Overview model lecture

Here are some shocking  facts that show the need for Bible teaching in our world.  This is why we do what we do.

85% of the 2.2 million evangelical churches worldwide are led by pastors with no training.

90% of Christians will not read through the entire Bible in their lifetime.

It has been projected that 20,000 people become Christians every day in East Asia.  If the average house church gathering can hold 10-20 people, then there is a need for 1000-2000 new pastors every day.

There is a formally trained church leader for ever 230 people in the US.  There is one formally trained church leader for every 450,000 people in the rest of the world.

These statistics are absolutely mind blowing.  The world needs Bible teaching and it is our life mission to not only teach the Bible ourselves, but to train up others to teach and therefore multiply the truth among the nations.

Here are the teams we are sending out this weekend for two months!
a security sensitive country in east Asia
Cambodia
Taiwan/Indonesia (1 month in each)
Phillippines/Taiwan (1 month in each)
Japan
North East India (Nagaland)

I also want to share with you a way that you can be a part of this.  Several of our students are in need of finances before they are able to go on outreach.  Please consider giving to help these teams take truth to the nations.

We want to just highlight one of our students so you can meet them more personally.  This is Tam.  She is Vietnamese and she has a heart to bring Bible teaching to her country.  She came to Taiwan to go to Bible school and we've been blessed to get to know her over the past several months.  If you would like to get to know her more, you can check out her blog http://tamfaithjourney.wordpress.com/.  If you want to partner with any of our students to help them go on outreach, you can donate directly by using our donate button on this page.  They need to leave this weekend so the deadline is Sunday. The overall need of our students is between $6,000 and $7,000.

If you would like to donate and get a tax deductible receipt, please contact us and we will tell you how that is possible.

Please be in prayer for us and for this great need.

Typical Tuesday

We thought for this month's post we'd talk about our everyday life and give you a glimpse of what the typical day in the life of the Lapp family looks like.

We live in a 16 story building on the 11th floor.  We have a beautiful view of Danshui from the balcony outside our living room.  We can see mountains in the background and a view of the Danshui River leading into the ocean.  At least I think it is beautiful. I have come to appreciate concrete buildings and city lights. :)

For Keith on a typical Tuesday, he is working in our Biblical Studies Department office most of the day. He is preparing teachings, organizing for the next Titus Project program that runs in February, or having a meeting with someone. For lunch, he usually is in a meeting.  Then in the evening, one of us goes to our Rock coffee bar for ministry from 7:00 - 11:00pm.

This is some of the youth group that Keith often teaches.  We had them over for chili one night.

For Magan, Tuesdays involve taking care of the kids and cleaning the house with an occasional visitor coming over for coffee and discipleship. Sometimes she can also squeeze in teaching preparation as well.  Of course that is Magan's typical day, every day. :)  She stays very busy and as with most moms, is pretty tired by the time Keith gets home.

Elliot's Tuesday looks pretty much the same everyday.  He stays entertained with cars, trucks, trains, rescue vehicles, and dinosaurs.  He doesn't sit still very often unless it's the best part of the movie he's watching.

Favorite past-time

Ezra's typical Tuesday is very similar to Elliot's, except he cries a lot more and doesn't like to sit by himself very much.  He looks up to his brother a lot and loves to sit and watch whatever Elliot is doing.  He is teething and drools alot.

Making turkey for our YWAM feast. 6 months old  (don't worry Ezra was safe on the table)

The following photos were taken of our family when Ezra was 3 months old.

A garden area in our complex

Our living room

The playground in our apartment complex

The boys playing on our bed

In Ezra's room