Breakfast was at one of the local breakfast shops down the street from Aroma. We picked up some of our favorite breakfast of dan bing (egg & bacon crepe) along with another type of sweet potato pancake. We got our meals to go and sat on the floor in the prayer room and shared our meal. This is a good time for us to talk as some of the Aroma staff can stop in and talk to us while we eat. After we have a time of prayer.
Prayer time consists of allowing God to move in you. You are free to worship in song, dance, prayer, Bible reading or any other way you feel you need to express God. We typically have Chris play the guitar while we sing along, pray aloud, or read a Scripture.
Our outreach challenge for the day was inviting people to come out to Aroma. We had coupons, signs, samples and some muffins that were for sale. We were stationed in 2 groups. One group stayed in front of Aroma the first 30ish mins and gave out coupons and raspberry banana smoothie samples. The second team went down to Ximen MRT (subway) exit 6 and gave out coupons, samples of muffins and sold muffins. Both teams were very successful for the first 30 mins so we took a little break then all of us stayed together and went back to exit 6. By the end of our time reaching out we were almost out of coupons and only had one muffin left. We sold a total of 27 muffins on our excursion and who knows how many coupons we handed out. The coupons were designed to be used with smart phones. When some one got one all they had to do was scan the code on the coupon on their phone and it would send them a coupon for a muffin discount. To give you an idea of how much muffins are they cost 30NT (new taiwan dollar) which is equivalent to $1 US. This was a great outreach for us. We were ready to be out of our comfort zones since we had been pushed to do something similar the day before with our hugs and prayer ministry.
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| A muffin from Aroma?!?! |
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| selling muffins |
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| Would you like to try a sample? |
We had a block of free time then decided to stay at Aroma for lunch. They have some awesome foods here. They have a lot of sets. I had the light combo with spicy tuna and potato soup. I also bought an osmanthus tea latte. Osmanthus is a type of flower dried and in honey. This is a local thing and a specialty drink at Aroma. I might add that it is one of the tastiest drinks I have had in a while.
I am having a moment and cannot think of the name of the homeless outreach ministry so forgive me, but you know what we were doing. We had made sandwiches, had some noodles, and some water to take around to meet our homeless friends. The church does this as a regular outreach so they know the names of a lot of the people that we saw. We split into 2 teams. One team went down to the river while the other stayed in Ximen. The team that went down to the river consisted of 6 people; Greg, Shelter, and Annette along with their translators; Nancy, Mark, and Polly. The second team consisted of; Sarah, and Beth; along with their translators, Joe, Larry, Tiffany, and Ariel.
Here is the story from the Ximen group homeless outreach. We prayed then parted ways with the first team. We head down the street from Aroma and by the first ATM was one of the regular homeless ladies. We sat with her for a minute and talked to her to find out how she was doing and if she needed food or drink. She accepted a sandwich and talked briefly to us. We asked if she had anything she needed prayer for and said no she was good. After talking with our translators I found out that this lady has warmed up to them, but is still very tight lipped about sharing with us. We continued down the street where we met one of the guys from church and we stopped to talk to him. About the time we were leaving him a guy on a bike almost clipped him and knocked him over. We continued on to the end of the street where we found 3 homeless people sleeping on the benches. We left them sandwiches for when they woke up and continued on our way. We wrapped around the block back toward Aroma. As we made our second lap by the ATM another woman was there who did want to talk to us. She invited us to sit with her. Ariel and Tiffany began talking with her and she got very deep very fast. She was talking about her job and her life which led to her belief that as long as you are a good person you are okay. She believed that religion didn't matter as long as you were this so called good person. Ariel went into a the conversation with her and shared about Christ. She listened intently, but did not understand. She said I here what you are saying, but I do not understand what the difference is. About that time that same guy that almost took our friend out with the bike, pulled up and parked his bike. He was wearing running shorts and a running sleeveless top. He got off almost falling over, then proceeded to take his shoes off on the sidewalk. This was happening during this deep conversation. The woman we had been talking too stopped her conversation with us to yell at the man about not wearing shoes and not enough clothes. They bantered back and forth some in Mandarin some on Taiwanese. They stopped, but the man continued doing awkward things like digging through the basket on his bike and shaking out plastic bags. The lady continued talking with us. Not long after this the other lady by the ATM quick got up and left. Tiffany asked where she was going. This led to another loud argument between the man and the woman debating where she may have gone. The whole time the man is arguing he looks unstable standing and more than likely he was drunk. They got them calmed down enough that we could pray. As the prayer ended the man asked for $1000. They said no. He asked for $100 and again we said no. They offered him food and he got angry and gave it back. He said Christians are hypocrites and they are the ones killing the Chinese in Tibet. He said just leave I need a drink.
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| Team 1 by the river |
It was quite a day of interesting events.
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