Transcription
Over us today and let us know what God is doing in and through their lives. Amen.
So, I want you to give me I want you to help me with a warm Mount Pleasant Christian Center welcome for Chanel Schwe. Amen. And David. Amen. And daughters, the whole family. Amen. Thank you everybody.
What a wonderful morning. Uh it's our privilege to be here and share our story with you. Um want begin to say thank you. Thank you so much. So uh I'm David. This is my beautiful wife Chanel. And we have two wonderful kids, Abigail and Hannah. So we are your missionary to Taiwan. Um before we start sharing we will give you some update uh video to introduce what is Taiwan. Taiwan is not Thailand. You know, there a lot of people confused after sharing. They would tell me, "Hey, I love Thyu." And it's like, "No." So, yes, we will give you a video that you understand uh about Taiwan and Taiwan is not China. No, not yet. Pray for us. Pray for Taiwan. Okay. So, before we start sharing, um, can you help me to put that on the video? Thank you.
Let me introduce you to one of the most beautiful islands in the whole world, Taiwan. A small nation of 23 million people, vibrant, free, alive. But behind the beauty, only 5% of Taiwanese know Jesus. The major religions are Buddhism, Dowoism, and folk religion. There are temples everywhere, and incense fills the air. Taiwan is not just a country that needs Jesus. Taiwan is a strategic gateway to Asia. It rests in the shadow of China, a place where churches are torn down and evangelism is restricted. But Taiwan, we have freedom. Freedom to preach the gospel, freedom to plant churches, freedom to disciple the next generation.
>> And that is what we are working to do. We're dreaming of building up generation of Taiwanese believers that are passionate about Jesus and winning the war for him because we believe if Taiwanese is one for Jesus, his impact will spread through China, Asia and the whole world. We are here because someone sent us, someone pray, someone give. Now we are asking you will you respond to his call? Will you send? Will you pray? Will you join us?
>> Okay. Well, >> good morning again. It's so good to be back here. Um it's been a long time. This church was, as pastor said, uh, instrumental in helping send me out to Taiwan now 14 years ago. Uh, it was just me back then, but I have multiplied. So, that was a good investment on your guys's part. Um, but it's so good to be back to get to say thank you in person and share what God has been doing overseas. Uh, this last term that we just made it back from was about four and a half years on the field. Um, and it's a term where I can say we experience probably more spiritual attacks, sickness, disappointment than ever before. And on the other side of that, it's also been a term where we've experienced more of God's power, redemption, and breakthrough than never before. So, as I share about missions and Taiwan today, I want to kind of do it all under the theme of God's sovereignty. Um, and you know when we say God's sovereignty, what I what I mean by that, I know it's a big theological word, basically is that God is the boss of everything. He is big. He is powerful. And he is intimately involved in our lives and the affairs of this world. And I learned that more and more as I continue to follow him.
you know, as a as a missionary, when you're working overseas, often in um very different and challenging environments, one thing you learn very quickly and are grateful about for is that God is sovereign over evil. Um you know, evil is something we encounter here in our lives and we encounter overseas. And this uh last term in Taiwan, we actually spent two out of the four and a half years in the Philippines. Uh, and that was at request of our leadership to accept a two-year assignment at a Bible school way up in the mountains in a city called Bagio. Um, and at this school, they had a Chinese department. So that means they were sending people from mainland China from the underground church to the Philippines where they could get a theological education in complete freedom. Um, so ministry-wise, you can see some of the pictures back here. I mean it was an incredible time of investing in the next generation of leaders in China and we were also able to to teach uh in other facilities both in the local church and training up and discipling local Filipinos and it was an awesome time of ministry and so many opportunities. Um but we also during that two years experienced some of the most extreme spiritual attacks that we ever have before. my my poor husband David. I think he got all of the sicknesses they had there probably twice. Um there were a lot of frustrations um and some extreme spiritual attacks.
Today we brought up our two children, Abby and Hannah, and my oldest daughter, Abby, who's five years old. Um you know, you learn that children are not safe from or free from spiritual attack. The devil is after our kids. Sometimes even more than it seems like he's after us. And we had a point in the Philippines where we experienced this firsthand. My my daughter Abby, we're grateful. She's always been a good sleeper from, you know, a few months old. She started sleeping through the night and was doing 12 hours, you know, 8 to eight every day. It was wonderful, you know, especially when you're teaching and you're trying to get those things done when your kids are asleep. Um, you know, but about halfway through our time in the Philippines, very suddenly she went from 12 hours a night to waking up sometimes four, five, six, seven, almost every single hour screaming in tear. And as a mom, you know the difference between I had a bad dream and and and full-on terror. And you know, we we tried to stay rational as possible. You know, I thought of bad dreams and would ask her what had happened. um she was about three at the time and she couldn't seem to get it out what was going on. So I started doing research, night tears, talking to people that had experienced, you know, medical things and nothing seemed to add up. And I knew, you know, whatever the problem is, the answer is always, you know, we we can always go to Jesus. And so I started praying and fasting. And the more I did and the more I leaned into God, I felt that there was something off. And as this problem continued to worsen so that even in the day it was like our daughter's personality was off, disrespectful, rude. Um she was not herself. And I I can still remember one Sunday afternoon we had come back from preaching and ministry up in the mountains and I was exhausted and she had me on my last what do you call that? the last breath or you know I was up to here and and she was being disrespectful and I was about to you know give her the the the the wrath and I I was just about to say something and it felt like the Holy Spirit took a cane and just like pulled me back and said Chanel be gentle and so I pulled her up on my lap swallowed all that frustration and I said hey Abby what is going on you are not yourself and in her little at the time three-year-old voice the first time she was finally able to open up and she said, "Mommy, I'm scared." And I said, "Baby, what are you scared of? What's going on at nighttime in your room?" And in her words, she said, "Something's coming in my window at night." And she described it as a black scary dog that would say mean things to her. And you can imagine as a mom how I how we felt. We went into overtime with the prayers. We I mean all the oil in my house, it was on the doorpost. It was around. We were fasting. We were praying. We were crying out to God. We were sleeping on the floor of her room at night and praying. And can I tell you something? Sometimes the devil doesn't go out easy. There is a struggle. And despite these efforts, it continued to get worse. And so we were praying and and through I believe truly an act of God um one day in conversation with another person on our Bible school campus, God opened the door for me to be a little bit more vulnerable with people about what was going on because at this point I you know I thought you know even in the church half the people are going to think I'm crazy. Um, but yeah, I sent out some message. Got a group of fellow Christians in our house that night because how many of you know when when you feel like you're losing a battle, you don't give up. You call in reinforcements. And I am so grateful for the body of Christ. So, we got a big group of, you know, Bible school teachers and and theology students in there, and they were absolutely wonderful. They, you know, they they brought more oil. Um, they prayed for our daughter, prayed for us, sang worship in her room. They were doing the March of Jericho around our house. I mean, it was it was it was awesome. And we felt so encouraged and not alone anymore. And that night, I went to bed with high expectations. Um, but unfortunately, our daughter once again woke up multiple times throughout the night screaming. And the next morning, I said to her, "Abby, what happened? Is it is it coming back? did you did you see the dog? She's like, "Yeah, I saw it." And then without thinking, I just blurted out, "Well, did you see anything else?" And without hesitation, my three-year-old looked me in the eye and said, "I saw Jesus." And I said I said, "Okay." And and and what did what did Jesus do? And again, without hesitation, she said, "He made the dog go away." And in the course of the next two or three days, these attacks went to zero and have stayed that way ever since. And what's what's really cool, too, is is over the next few weeks, you know, she would tell us she would see Jesus in her room and then she started talking about a bird that would come in her room. And I'm like, "Okay, tell me about this bird. Is it is it a nice bird? I mean, it seems better than a black dog, but she's like, "Yeah, you know, it'll come in and it'll sit at the edge of my bed." And I'm like, "Well, what does it look like?" She's like, "It looks like Jesus, but it's not Jesus." And it protects me and says night nice things. And so, one day I'm googling guardian angels. And I pull her over. I'm like, "Abby, do you think this is what you're seeing?" And she's like, "Yeah, that's my angel, my bird angel." And so over the next few months, you know, instead of waking up to screams at night, we would be welcomed every morning with stories of her angel and things they did and things her angel told me. And my daughter continued to sleep alone in her room at night with the lights off, but was no longer afraid because in her own words, she doesn't have to be afraid because Jesus is with her. Praise God.
I I am so grateful that God is bigger than the darkness. But the reality is this is only good news if if you know it. And the reality is there's a lot of people in the Philippines, in Taiwan, and even here where we live in in San Jose that are experiencing the darkness but lack the knowledge that there is one greater than the knowledge than the darkness that can set them free. And that is why we do missions and that is why we do evangelism to save those who are in captivity. You know, on the next slide there's some pictures. this. My husband is actually in the final stages of completing a children's book on spiritual warfare because again, kids, they don't get a junior Holy Spirit. They get the the real deal. Um, and we're excited to be able to use our daughter's story to empower more kids to know that they don't have to be afraid of the darkness because Jesus is with them. Praise God.
So, so God is he's sovereign over the darkness and and one thing I'm grateful for too is that he's sovereign over the lost that we have been called to reach all around us. Um, you know, people say with Taiwan, it's a nation that's politically open but spiritually closed. And what I mean by that is you can preach the gospel on the streets if you want to. You can set up your your box and and yell it out however you want. Um, but sometimes it feels hard to find someone that actually wants to listen. And the challenges we have is one, Taiwanese are steeped in a mixture of Buddhism, Dowoism, and folk religion. And this is so ingrained in their culture that it feels a part of their identity and takes a huge step of faith for them to leave it and come to Christ. And we also have a younger generation coming up in Taiwan that's not as religious but simply just doesn't care. They worship the god of self, the god of money. Um, and so this is the the context that we have been called to come and bring the gospel to. And one of the most effective ways we have found is working with the local church there to evangel evangelize and disciple through small group and one-on-one ministry. So, this is what we spend probably the bulk of our time in Taiwan. You can see some of the the photos through here. We have small groups at our house. We do outings. Um do a lot of one-on-one stuff. We're developing disciplehip material. And slowly but surely, we have seen God break through the darkness in his sovereignty and bring people home to him. Uh one of the the ladies um that we saw a breakthrough this last term, her name is Mia. I think I have her picture next. Oh, she's over. Oh, where'd she go? Okay, next slide. Yeah, she's over here on on my right, your left, um getting baptized. And Mia is a lady. She's about my age. And she started coming to our small group, I think six or seven years ago. And it was the coolest coolest story how it started. My husband and I one day were at a mall in Taiwan and we hear a voice from behind of us saying, "Hey, David." And it is Mia and her husband. Turns out Mia's husband grew up in my husband David's church, but left when he got older. Hadn't been back probably for a decade and had fallen away from faith. And he recently got married to Mia, who was not exposed to Christianity at all, had no Christians in her family. But we happened to be launching a young adults small group in our house just down the street from where we were. So we invited them and they came and they kept coming. And so I, you know, I got my eyes on Mia and I started um having one-on-one disciplehip sessions with her. I'd ask her to coffee, ask her over to the house, and I'd share with her testimony after testimony of what God can do and what he's done in people's lives. we'd pray over her. And over the course really of several years, you could see her h her heart softening towards Christ. She came to a point where she liked Jesus. She would pray to Jesus. She liked Christianity. But every time we'd bring up baptism, she wasn't ready yet. And I remember one day um about a little over a year ago, I met her for one more cup of coffee, not really expecting anything to happen. just wanted to love on her and pray over her. And she brings up to me quite unexpectedly, Chanel, when when is the next baptism? When can I get baptized? Like, well, what when do you want to get baptized? Um I said, yeah, yeah, we we'll get you right in, but but what happened, Mia? And she said, I had a dream. And in this dream, I won't get into all the details, but Jesus revealed herself to himself to Mia in such a way that she had peace about becoming the first Christian in her entire family line. So the Christmas before last, we were able to baptize Mia and her and her husband and their now little boy have been in the church ever since. And it is the sovereignty of God. When you are at the end of your rope, when you've done all the things, God comes through because he is drawing people to himself.
You there's another young man we just in the last few months saw a breakthrough with and that his name is Waiter and he's on my uh you're right, my left, the guy in the white and Wager has also been attending our small group about six years. The first time he came uh he was chasing a girl that he met at the gym. He liked her. So, you know, good motives. Um and he came week after week and heard the gospel. He heard all of the things, you know, and my husband joined his gym so he could start discipling him. And he he again started to soften towards Jesus and Christianity. He had no Christians in his entire family line, but he liked what he was hearing. But every time we brought up baptism, because that's that's the big deal for Taiwanese. That's like when you're all in, I'm getting baptized. Um he's like, "No, I'm not ready yet. No, I'm not ready yet." And just a few months ago, this last December, um in one of our Sunday morning church services, he came that day and we had a guest missionary speaker that morning and they were actually Taiwanese missionaries to the country of Iraq and they shared with us incredible testimonies of God doing mighty works there, of people from Muslim background coming to Christ, getting trained in theology, being sent out to do the ministry. I mean, I was in tears myself that morning. God was at work. But Ways came to David after service of his own accord and said, "David, when can I get baptized? This has to be real, and I'm choosing to believe." And so, a few weeks after that, for Christmas, we were able to baptize Wait. And again, he has been in the church in our small group getting discipled and continuing his walk with God.
And so, you know, as as cross-cultural missionaries, we we do our best to share the gospel with wisdom, creativity, in culturally relevant ways. But at the end of the day, it is up to Jesus. And Jesus is sovereign over the loss. The Bible says in John 6:44 that no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws them. And I praise God that he is drawing people in Taiwan and his sovereignty. He is choosing and drawing people unto him. And so these days, you know, David and I, we we continue to work hard, but we pray more than we used to because we have seen and experienced that it is God's sovereignty that can actually lift the veil from someone's eyes so that they can come to Christ. And so be encouraged as as you prayer warriors out there, as you pray for missions, that it is effective, that God is using those prayers to facilitate the the testimonies and many more that I just told you so that people can come to know Jesus.
So we praise God that he is sovereign over the darkness. He is sovereign over the loss. And you know, the last thing we we've really learned this last term is he is also sovereign over our own lives. You know, our greatest call as Christians is to sanctification and to becoming more like him. And you know, I grew up in in the church and I often heard a phrase uh the Holy Spirit is a gentleman. Have you guys ever heard that? Yeah. And you know, it's definitely true um a lot of the time, but in my last term, I feel like I've known him a little less as a gentleman and a little more as a sovereign king that does what he wants and doesn't always ask me permission because he has chosen me. In John 15:16, Jesus said this to his disciples. He said, "You did not choose me. I had chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit, fruit that will last." And I know it's it's all of our responsibility to respond to Jesus. But the reason we can respond is because that he chose us in his sovereignty. He has chosen me and David and our family to bear fruit in Taiwan to be sanctified to become like him. And he does this often through painful experiences, through sickness, through heartbreak, through spiritual warfare, trials that he he didn't necessarily cause, but he allowed to happen and didn't always ask our permission. and yet is redeeming each and every one of them for his glory as he takes us through this process of becoming more like him. God is sovereign over our lives and he has chosen us to bear good fruits. He has chosen you to bear good fruits. And so a thought I want to leave you with this morning is since he has chosen each one of us in our context where we are in our families in our job to go and bear good fruit to be like him. Will you submit to his lordship? Will you submit to him as king over your life? Because I know a lot of Christians that we we we like Jesus, we talk to Jesus, we appreciate Jesus, and yet we live our lives as if he's in the passenger seat, like we are the ones calling the shots. So, are we willing to truly submit to Jesus with all that we are? Are you willing to suffer when God calls you to suffer? Not not if, but when he calls you to suffer, are you willing to submit? Because some things can only be learned in the valley of the shadow of death. And God did not cause it, but he will redeem it if you submit to him. Are you committed to your own sanctification, to not making any excuses for your own sins and shortcomings, but nailing it all to the cross? as many times as it takes on this side of eternity so that we are becoming more and more like Jesus. And are you willing to submit to whatever he asks you to do in this life in obedience to him? Whether it's being a missionary in a foreign country, we are recruiting. You can talk to me. Whether it's it's getting involved in this church in more ways, whether it's being more brave in in your family or in your work for him. Are you willing to submit to the call that he has on your life and ask for David to come at this time?
You know, one of our our many dreams in Taiwan as we, you know, look to going back hopefully in September. We have a lot of dreams, but is being able to write and compose more Christian worship songs in Chinese. Um, a lot of the songs we sing at our churches in Taiwan, they are actually translated from English hymns. And while that's not a bad thing, it doesn't truly capture the heart of the Taiwanese Christian experience. And through some difficult times in our own lives this last term, um God inspired this song from David. And uh it is in Chinese. Do we have any Chinese speakers? Okay, that's okay. Um I will provide a rough translation on the PowerPoint. Um so I'm going to run back there and do that. Um but David share a little bit more about this song and what it says.
>> Okay, thank you everybody. So,