After a quick break, we headed over to our regular FNP Bible study location at NTHU and had our boardgame night. The place was filled with over 50 new students crowded around different tables playing games like dominion, ticket to ride, blockus, sequence, and jenga! We were encouraged to see so many students coming — many went home after frisbee to shower and then showed up for boardgames right after! Overall, we feel like God was the one orchestrating our planning for outreach, as we were able to build relationships with many of the students through the few events spaced throughout the week. For the most part, most everyone whom we had contact with seemed happy to see us whenever we ran into them during tabling, around campus, or at the DC’s throughout the week. We closed out Welcome Week on Friday with our Club Day tabling at NCTU. Apparently, our table seemed really happenin’ with our prize pinwheel, NSWN trailer playing, and lively conversations going on both with new students and with students we met earlier in the week who just stopped by to chat. In all, we had over 70 students sign-up at our table on Club Day at NCTU! It is amazing to see how God has been answering our prayers. Most of the students whom we’ve met and who have come to our events have been freshmen — something that we have been praying for all throughout the summer!

This year is the first that we are putting on two NSWN’s, our first which is TONIGHT (Tuesday 9/14) and second which is on Friday (9/17) at NTHU! As we are in the midst of preparing for the one tomorrow night, please pray that many of the students we have met last week would come to our event, as many of them have expressed how they like our group. Please pray that despite possible rain and competing department and sports events, they would come tomorrow and Friday night and be able to hear the gospel. We recently changed our skit to “Race of a Lifetime” — so please pray that God would prepare the heart of each person who attends; that they would be able to relate to the themes of the skit and message.

Thank you again for all of your prayers. Many of us have felt that we have been standing on holy ground, as we’ve experienced God really working in such unexpected ways in our outreach efforts. We know that it is by God’s grace that He’s led us to meet so many students this past week. Please continue to pray for these two campuses — thank you for praying!

- The Taiwan Team

• 9/29 – UC Riverside NSWN
• 9/24 – UC Riverside Mission Trip

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

After TFN, we walked over to the Coffman student union and we had a great time of bowling/ice cream/board game fellowship. We had 50 additional who came just to our bowling and ice cream night that we had been advertised on our flyers. We had rented out the entire bowling alley for our post-TFN activity. We had fun bowling for an hour and a half. And even after that, many stuck around to play board games with us for another hour or so.

Thank you for your prayers! God is doing something amazing things on this campus!

- Timothy

Just wanted to give you guys a quick update on all that’s been going on here in Taiwan! Freshman moved in on Saturday and Sunday and we have had a busy week of outreach and fun. On Saturday we had a work day with some of our regular students. It was a good time of bonding as we taped 200 tissue boxes, folded our brochures, filmed videos, translated scripts, etc. On Sunday we had our first ever prayer walk with our regular Christians. There were 7 students who joined us and we shared how and why we do prayer walks. It was a powerful experience to be able to pray for the campuses alongside these students. Since then we’ve been tabling and flyering every lunch as well as DC outreaching every lunch and dinner. Through these times we have been able to connect with many of the new students who are open to relationships – especially when they find out that we are from America. It’s been great opportunity to connect with the students before the craziness of the semester as well as departmental sports and activities start.

On Tuesday we had an unofficial basketball and volleyball night where over 20 guys and 30 girls (mostly freshman!) came. That morning one of the staff sisters had prayed that we would meet a “woman of peace” who would lead us to many other students and some of our other staff sisters were able to meet such a person who brought over 10 of her dorm-mates and classmates to the event! Since then we have been able to reconnect with them through dorm visitations. Some of our staff sisters baked yummy cupcakes, visited them, and met many more of their dorm-mates.

Our office has proved to be a blessing as many of the freshman have been coming over to play ping-pong, foosball and board games. Many of the new students we met felt comfortable enough to just walk in and made themselves at home. We’re thankful to have such a convenient location where the students can feel free to visit (which is a contrast to when we would meet in our apartments in which they had to go through security to enter). Last night, there were a group of 10 people playing board games, another 4 sisters playing ping-pong and another group of brothers at the foosball table. It was definitely a happenin’ place and the freshman commented on how fun and lively it was.

We have two official outreach events tonight. One special prayer request is for the weather as one of our events is “Frisbee and Food.” It was raining early this morning when we went on our prayer walk and it has cleared up since then, but please pray that it won’t start raining again. The other event is a “Board games and Snacks” night. Thank you for your continual prayers as we have experienced them at work as we engage in this spiritual battle. Please continue to pray for us as we have many other events coming up this next week including club days and our TWO NSWNs (NCTU; next Tuesday, 9/14 @6:30pm and NTHU; next Friday, 9/17 @6:30pm). Thank you for partnering with us in this battle through prayer.

- from the Taiwan Team

Just a small update for now – one new video from our Minneapolis team.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Also, you can check here for other updates and pictures from our mission trip and NSWN.

Sorry for the delay in sending this out but we wanted to say “Thank you!!!” for all of your prayers for last night’s NSWN.

Thank you so much for all your prayers and encouragement. Praise God for the 453 newcomers (the Coffman Theater max. capacity is 434) that came to the NSWN at U of MN tonight of which 152 students were Freshmen. And 44 signed up for Life Group! Please pray for our Life Group kick-off which will be next Thursday.

The day started with the best weather we could ask for (thank you for all the prayers!) – a cool but sunny mid-70′s weather (it was the best weather we experienced since we arrived here!). After the timely DT in Hebrews 11, by faith we hit the campus prayer walk and then feverishly passed out flyers to everyone we met as our last effort to invite people to NSWN tonight. In sum we passed out an estimate of close to 8,000 NSWN and Welcome Week flyers since welcome week began. Between the 50 of us (FMT and MN team members)we fanned out on 6 different areas of campus at Mpls and on the St. Paul side. People have been quite receptive to taking the flyers here and it turns out that many came to our NSWN through our flyers and chalking signs on the ground (we are allowed to use colored chalk to write our events on the campus ground). We also drew the attention of those passing by as we barbequed the meat out on the lawn. Yesterday was the first day of school so the campus was literally covered with people everywhere. Coffman Student Union building was incredibly packed. Personally, I’ve never seen a Student Union building so packed that people were in line to get in which were going out the door.

Many students of diverse backgrounds attended the NSWN and packed Coffman theater. Many were engaged and were attentive throughout the program and the message as well. The Davis skit team did a great job and with our very own “band from California” really brought much life and excitement with rocking music. It seems that many people mentioned that they were impacted by the message and several people expressed that they were looking for a Bible study and wanted to attend TFNs in the future.

Although we were short-handed and every one of us had to do double-duty on different tasks throughout the night, it was strengthening to labor together tonight with our bros and sis who were willing to do whatever for the sake of the gospel. Some of our more timid brothers and sisters came out of themselves to lead groups of 10-12 people during the icebreaker game time which was such an encouraging sight to see. We are SO thankful for all the hard work, support and prayers of all the extended churches as we used the same resources that were already completed at Berkeley’s NSWN. Thank you CPRG brothers sisters who tireless met all of our request for various resources we needed from publications, banners, website, sound equipment, etc. We showed the NSWN video with Josh Linville as the host and received a good response. God also multiplied our bbq dinner as we had only planned for 300 people but were able to make a total of 400 bentos and still had leftovers!

Through various conversations, we met people of many different backgrounds last which include genuine seekers like this one student who is not a Christian but had been reading the Bible on his own and had been seeking to learn more about the Bible who came; there were many who are new Frosh or Transfer students who are looking for a fellowship to join; those who stopped going to church as a child but now are thinking about going back to church; there was couple of people of another religious background but who are open to studying Christianity and many others. We also saw several people who had met during the early part of summer during our outreach on campus who came out last night. And a girl we had just met during lunch right before our prep, who was looking for a fellowship also came out last night and stayed the whole night. There was an international
exchange student from Uzbekistan Belarus who had also attended our picnic who came and thoroughly enjoyed the night to the very end.

Tony Sun reminded us that yesterday was the exact 3 month anniversary of the move of MN team (we arrived here on June 8th). We were simply amazed by the harvest field on this campus and felt confirmed that God sent us out here for the many precious lives who need to hear and know His love. The DT passage in Hebrews 11 was appropriate as we were not sure what would happen last night. But what provision of God’s word to challenge us to have faith as our forefathers of faith before us and learn to surrender our own anxieties about the outcome of our labor and to earnestly seek Him who is our Sovereign God, who simply asks us to be faithful regardless of the task before us.

Please pray for us for wisdom as now we have the hard work ahead of following up and building up relationships with many people who came in contact with after the mission team leaves this weekend. We will be having the Taste of Twin Cities tonight and then TFN tomorrow night followed by bowling and ice cream at Coffman. We also announced our Gracepoint Open House for this Sunday which will take place on the West Bank side of campus. Please pray that many who are looking for a church will attend this weekend.

Thank you for the overwhelming love, support and prayers as we are so strengthened by them. We really felt that this NSWN was the labor of love of the entire extended Body of Christ as we all labored together for the cause of the gospel. We will continue to send you daily updates as we still have several more days here with the FMT.

We will upload some videos soon.

- Timothy and Alice (on behalf of everyone on the Minn. Team and FMT)

Check out the video

We spent most of today tabling and flyering and getting the word out about NSWN. For the first time, we were able to table within Coffman and sporting our nifty UMN a2f shirts (soon to be available at the book table) we made our presence known the rest of the campus. We also spread throughout the campus to flyer to students to let them know about NSWN that was going to happening in nearly 24 hours!

Afterwards, we had a meat marinating party as we prepared the 250 lbs of meat we are going to bbq for NSWN as well as had a skit practice for the Davis skit team. Some of the more athletic ones of us hosted a gym night at a building called the Armory and continued our night-time frisbee in front of Coffman. Frisbee still remains to be a popular draw despite the cool and wet weather.

Please continue to pray for the weather. It rained slightly today, but it’s still forecasted to be sunny tomorrow for NSWN!

On the eve of the historic first NSWN at the U, we are all excited and looking forward to seeing how God will use us here. We definitely are being supported by your prayers and we are grateful for them all!

Thanks,

- MN Mission Team and Church Plant Team

Just a reminder that NSWN at UMN is tomorrow, starting at 6 PM (CST), so please be sure to pray. Once again, a specific prayer request is for the weather – please pray that the weather would not be a hindrance to people coming to NSWN.

Our Minnesota mission team is uploading videos about the different events that they are a part of; you can check them out at the Gracepoint Vimeo site. Here are the new videos as of Tuesday night (Berkeley time).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.