By Faith

Thank you for praying for our summer youth camp. We took ten teenagers from Lighthouse and five from Faith and traveled six hours by train to Taitung on the less populated and definitely more scenic east coast of our island. Altogether there were about 100 in attendance this year. Our camp site was operated by one of the indigenous tribes of Taiwan and was a great cultural experience. This year’s camp host was a Japanese missionary who invited a pastor from Japan to be our main speaker. We were concerned that the teens might have trouble following the messages on the topic “By Faith” because they had to wait for the translation from Japanese to Chinese. However, those fears were put to rest as the pastor poured out his heart and God’s Spirit moved. One area that he emphasized was the need for workers, especially pastors. He shared his concern for the churches in Japan that need workers and noted that the need in Taiwan may be even greater. By the time we packed our bags for the return train ride, two teens had accepted Christ as Savior and many other teens came forward or raised their hands to surrender their lives to serve the Lord. Several of these were from our churches and we ask you to pray that they will not forget their commitments and that we will have wisdom and strength as we work to train these young people.

“And The Lord Added”

Praise the Lord for spiritual victories over the past two months. Lio Yue-li (Ellie) accepted Christ as Savior more than a year ago but had not yielded to follow the Lord in baptism. Then one Friday morning she called and said she would like to be baptized on Sunday. We hurried to the church and happily got everything ready (Due to limited space our baptistery also serves as a storage area and everything has to be removed and cleaned first.) That Sunday night Ellie’s entire family plus a friend attended the service and heard a clear presentation of the gospel. This was the first time that her husband has been to our church.

After the youth camp that we mentioned above one of our younger teens at Lighthouse, Andy Huang, talked with us and told us that he had really made sure of his salvation. The next evening – Saturday, Andy said he would like to be baptized on Sunday so again we made a quick trip to get everything ready. That Sunday evening was another celebration as Andy had assurance of salvation and then was obedient in following the Lord. Since then his attitude has changed and he’s been very willing to help and serve the Lord. What a tremendous blessing! We pray that this is the first of many!

Finally, we thank you for praying for Chinese work of Dali Faith Baptist Church. Bro. Peter Wang did step down but Jong Shan Baptist Church, the mother church, has committed to sending workers and doing all they can to help the work grow. We hope that together we can get this going in the right direction and fruitful again. Thank you for your continued prayers!

For souls,

 Andy & Lisa Simpson