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