New Hope's Christmas outreach in downtown Taipei

After the worship service on Sunday, about fourteen members of the church including the guitar fellowship practiced playing and singing carols and then they went out into the neighborhood near where our church meets. Wherever they went, they would sing and also hand out chocolate candies and Gospel tracts with our church's contact info on them.

Our three oldest daughters joined the carolers while Judy and I took the younger two children home and hosted Judy's cousins who had visited the church for the first time.

Practicing after the worship service before heading out to the neighborhood to carol.

The group was very bold. You might be surprised at where they went: into a hair salon, into apartment buildings and even into a local precinct police station! The policemen got out their cell phones and recorded the caroling. Most people received it very well.

Please pray that God will bring some from the neighborhood to visit our church.
Please also pray that God will work in the hearts of the church members to continue to be bold in their witness for Christ.

We'll try to post more info and pictures when we get them.

Joyous Christmas

The text is in Taiwanese. It reads in English: "Mulu hugged his dad and said, 'Thank you Lord for hearing my prayer and causing my dad to believe in the Lord and be baptized. I am so moved!' "
In Mandarin it reads: Mulu抱爸爸說：感謝主聽見我的禱告，讓我的爸爸信主受洗，我好感動。

Mulu is 5 or 6 years old (I'll have to check).

This drawing was done by Carol, a member of New Hope Church. Carol grew up in a traditional Hakka family. After several years of prayer, her husband, Acer, professed his faith and was baptized at the Christmas Sunday worship service at New Hope. I baptized his son Mulu and his mom Carol back in 2009 when she professed her faith. Yesterday, I was privileged to baptize Acer and their second child, Jofee, whom they adopted last fall.

When we get the audio uploaded, I'll post Acer's testimony here.

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Our Christmas Sunday worship service was very packed. The Taiwanese language Bible study fellowship sang two verses of O Come All Ye Faithful (the second verse use language about Christ from the Nicene Creed.) The whole congregation joined in singing verses in English and Mandarin. (We'll have to track down a photo for this part.)

Then a little later, the guitar fellowship came up and played guitars to accompany the congregation in singing Joy to the World.

I gave a children's message on Isaiah 53:5-6, using a candy cane as an illustration.

After a young architect, Acer Lee, gave his testimony, we had three baptism including his own.

Finally the sermon was from Luke 1:26-38.

And we sang our closing hymn, Silent Night.

After the worship service, all the guests were given a Christmas gift. The gifts were calendars with photographs of Taiwan's mountains taken by a Christian photographer. On each photo was also printed a Bible verse.

The new visitors stayed to eat lunch with the church members.

Pray for Christmas Sunday worship service and gospel outreach

Please pray for our Christmas worship service tomorrow at New Hope Church in Taipei.

A young architect will be sharing his testimony. Then I will have the privilege of baptizing him. We expect many non-believers to be coming. We will have several special parts of the service and I will be preaching a gospel message from Luke 1:26-38.

Afterwards, we will probably be hosting members of Judy's extended family who will be visiting the worship service, but many of the church members will be heading out with the church guitar fellowship to go caroling and hand out gospel tracts in a nearby neighborhood.

There are some regular attenders who are not believers including a young computer software engineer.

Please also pray as many of the church members are trying to outreach to their non-Christian family members.

Love in Christ, Joel (for the Lintons)