He Is Faithful

Hey guys, I typically won't update my blog twice in a week, probably more like once or twice a month but God did some really cool things this Friday I thought I should share with you. Either way, I hope all is well with you and Jesus is doing awesome things in your life as well.

This Friday the base decided to have a giving day in the afternoon. Giving day is an opportunity for the students to help out other students who don't have enough money to pay for their school fees. We had four students who needed about 300,000 New Taiwanese Dollars, (NTD's) to raise to keep these students in school which is right around 11,000 USD's. We all showed up to the giving day and it was just an opportunity to worship and ask God what he wanted us to give to help out the other students here who didn't have the money to pay for all of their school fees. Keep in mind this is a group of about 25 people who are pretty much all living off support from others other than one couple. I will tell you what happened in this time but honestly, words can't tell you how awesome of a move God made within each person in that room to give.


The rest of what I am going to share is just stories of people who were moved to give by God to pay for the students fees. When we were praying and worshiping occasionally one of the staff would come up front and erase the debt of each person and put up the new amount left that needed to be paid. As we worshiped, God moved on one of the girls hearts to walk up front, erase the 78,000 NTD debt of one of the other girls and cut the debt in half and took half of the payment of that debt on herself. If that money didn't get paid back, this girl was responsible to come up with the extra money to pay off that debt. As we continued, one of the guys took on about 60,000 NTD's worth of debt that another one of the girls owed and put the entire debt on himself, again if that debt didn't get paid, the debt was his. There was story after story of what God did in that room. One of the guys gave his phone up to be given away or sold. Another guy told me he gave up probably a couple months worth of food money(I'm sure he still has enough to live on but it was a sacrifice). One person I was told gave enough to pay for one of the students school and maybe more, which had to be at least 30,000 or more NTD's. God told one of the girls to empty her pockets even. I was told by one of the students who owed money that they gave up even some of the little bit they had saved up because she wanted to live by faith. There was story after story of how God convicted people's hearts to give sacrificially for the sake of these students to be able to stay in school here and grow in their walks with the Lord and knowledge of who He is. When the time was up the final tally for the amount all of us gave as a school was over 350,000 NTD's! That's just about 12,000 USD's!

I tell you this not because I want to glorify the people and how great and holy they were for giving, but to show you how great our God is.  God took about 25 people who were pretty much all living off of support and made it happen so that each one of those students could stay in school at YWAM. And not only that, but we made enough to give to other ministries. A lesson we can all take from this is the idea of sacrificial giving. We as Americans are good at giving within our comfort zones. I will give my 10% or however much I have decided to give so I can say I give but I don't want to give until it hurts. I don't want to sacrifice buying my new ipod or laptop, I want a car that runs well and has air conditioning, I need to pay off my loans as fast as I can, then I will give. Don't get me wrong, none of these things are bad in themselves, but we have so many excuses why we will not sacrifice these things for the sake of the Gospel. Why we won't give extra to a missions organization because we want to get this or that new thing. As the body of Christ we need to be giving sacrificially, which sometimes means we will lose some of our comforts or give even beyond what we think we can afford to give. If He has called you to give, He will provide the money you need extra to meet your needs, but maybe nothing more than your needs. We ended the afternoon by singing a song about the faithfulness of God and as we were singing a song about God's faithfulness, we were informed that we had the last of the money needed to pay everything we needed off. I am just going to leave you with the chorus of the song to look at. God's blessings and I hope this finds you well.

Travis Kleppen
2 Corinthians 5:21

Never once did we ever walk alone
Never once did You leave us on our own
You are faithful, God, You are faithful
  - Matt Redman- Never Once

God is at Work

Hey guys, it's time to give you all another update. Life in Taiwan has been incredibly crazy, it seems that only the last couple days I have had some time to slow down and really have any free time. We have been keeping busy with class. The last few weeks we have gone through evangelism, the character and nature of God and this week we are going through relationships, from authority relationships to male female relationships. Besides lecture, we have been filling some of our afternoons with small group and preparation for our outreach. Our first outreach will be just in Taiwan for a week. For those of you who have not heard, my big outreach I will be going to India for about a month. We will be going to northeast India by Nepal to a city called Siliguri. We also have outreach twice a week. I go to a University nearby on Tuesdays and do evangelism and on Thursday nights I do my ministry at "The Rock," a coffee shop run by YWAM here in Danshui where we share the Gospel and help Taiwanese learn how to speak better English.

Apart from that, God has been challenging me a lot in my own personal walk. I have really felt like God is really trying to teach me to trust Him fully and specifically who He is. I've believed since I have been a Christian that God is all-powerful and good in all that He does, but in practical experience I have really struggled to believe that. My actions show that I don't completely trust that God is enough and He has my best in mind. I often trust in my own devices. I will struggle with something like fear and I will only see Him as big enough until I don't feel like He is big enough anymore. As much as I don't really want to, I am realizing I have to get past my feelings and learn to trust in what I already know. God has absolutely been doing awesome things in and through me there though. I have a couple of stories to share with all of you. One story about what God is doing in me and another about what God has been doing through me.

One night on a weekend I decided to head down to the river to pray. The river in the evening is amazing, almost every night there is a really awesome sunset. I went down to the river for the same reason again, to see the sunset and pray about what I want to do after I am finished with the DTS here. Before I had came here I just assumed I would be going back home and working at my old job, which is still an option, but I have been considering staying longer for an SBS (School of Biblical Studies), or joining staff for DTS, but that is beside the point. When I began to pray, I started to think about an idea that I learned in a book I read for class here, that it is easier for us to hear God's voice when we come to Him with a clean conscience. I began to ramble off a list of sins that I regularly confess, but I really felt God asking me to go deeper than the surface level sins this time. God began to convict me of my unbelief, specifically of the resurrection. Logically in the Bible, I understand and believe that the resurrection happened and that because of that all who trust in His name will be brought to new life with Him. I realized in this time though that experientially and practically, I didn't really believe it. I continued to pray into it and waited on God to speak, I really realized that I had areas of my life not submitted to Christ because I did not believe this. I was willing to make small sacrifices for the Kingdom of God but I realized I wasn't totally willing to give my life as an offering to Him, and it all stemmed from not fully believing that I will be raised to new life with Him when I die, that I would just cease to exist. As I prayed I just asked that He would place that desire and full conviction in me to be willing to give my life for Him(because let's face it, none of us on our own accord could muster up enough courage to die for a cause, especially one we didn't fully believe). I continued to pray and wait for God to speak and I was really convicted that I should spend four days reading through each of the Gospel accounts of Jesus betrayal, death, and resurrection. In that time God did some awesome things. I absolutely didn't see a complete change of heart in that four days but I believe God really began to work something in me regarding His death and resurrection and my fear of man, and the whole week we learned about the bigness and goodness of God. Although nothing major happened in that time it is something I have seen God working on and I believe He will continue to work until that fear is gone.

Another story about what God has done through me happened when I was doing evangelism at the university near our school. I went up to the university with a couple of the DTS students here for evangelism one night. We went and talked to a couple of girls first, but didn't have really much of a deep conversation. We left those girls and just asked God to lead us to the next person we should talk to. As we walked through the campus we didn't find anyone right away but as we continued to walk I felt like God was leading us in one direction, and sure enough there was a guy sitting by myself that I felt like I should go talk to. I went up to Grant and made small talk. (My first words when I'm doing evangelism are ni hao, then do you speak English?) Short story of my conversation with Grant was, that he spoke perfect English, and that he actually was a Christian already. Grant attended a university in the US and was just back in Taiwan for a short time. He asked a lot of questions about how to share the Gospel and I got to pray for him. The next day I got an email from him telling me that our conversation was very encouraging, and how he had started to backslide away from God and that I was a huge encouragement to help bring him back to Jesus.

I've met other people and had other good conversations with people and God has really been faithful in my ministry and schooling here in Taiwan as well as building relationships with the students here. I have been really blessed by all that God has done in Taiwan so far and am excited to see what happens as He continues to work in me and in the hearts of the Taiwanese people as we seek to win this country for Jesus.

A couple prayer requests.
    - That God would continue to bond us together as a family during this DTS.
    - We have a mini-outreach in two weeks where we will spread out through Taiwan and share the     Gospel in different contexts. Pray for open hearts to receive the Gospel and for team building for our team.

With Love in Him
Travis Kleppen
2 Corinthians 5:21