Life in Taiwan - Part 2

I realized in the desire to emphasize a very important aspect of my work life that I completely forgot to include it in the previous entry - Prayer Meetings!

Since our Area Partners meeting in June, we have started a weekly prayer meeting via conference call. Partners from all over our Far East Area dial into a conference line Tuesday evenings for one hour. Our typical agenda is to go around sharing for each country and then spend time prayer for one another. The updates include some aspect of the following: 1) Business updates, 2) Marketplace ministry updates and 3) Personal updates.

It's quite amazing. I've always craved for something like this. Being very new to this role, I do appreciate that there are people who are more experienced sharing their challenges and prayer requests. Each week it is truly a snapshot of what it means to be living out a Christian life as a business leader in our different markets. We confidentially share about our real issues in a way that most people would not share in their own offices - what bonds us is the knowledge that we are children of God. What do we share about? Struggles with leaders, staff, client proposals, difficult situations, etc. I feel very small (in faith and in experience) in these meetings - which is very healthy for me.

We also challenge one another in terms of our marketplace ministry. For those of you accountants, you will know that "some" if not "most" of our partners are quite intense. Well, if you apply this intensity and drive to marketplace ministry what happens? Well.. there isn't room for the shallow "things are going well in Taiwan" updates. You get asked - what happened to what you were praying about last week. Why haven't you met with this person to discuss ___? Its quite intimidating and to be honest, I've thought about skipping the meeting or two because I didn't feel like I've done my part!

Its a wonderful community and its also amazing to hear what God is doing in each of our offices. In some cases, Hong Kong in particular, the team is very bold. We ask for (and receive) permission from the leadership to hold after office meetings right in our conference rooms. Many people come to know God or join the network because of these meetings.

I'm a little ashamed to say that it is still taking us time in Taiwan to bring together the Christians. I hope I'm wrong, but we are almost concluding that in this relatively "open" place, there are relatively few active Christians. On Thursday mornings, another brother and I meet at 8am. It's only the two of us, but we continue to pray that God will increase our numbers. I need to pray for guidance on how to approach this. I must admit I was a little shy in being aggressive in recruiting or talking to people. I'm praying that we will identify some younger managers or seniors who can actively invite people. I'm just a little conservative because I am quite a bit more senior than most people here and also technically the head of HR. In this culture certain actions from me directly could be interpreted in the wrong way.

I'm thankful for a network of strong men and women who are like-minded in this profession. It has become even more critical in the past few weeks as we are all feeling the stress, pressures and impact of the financial tsunami. I must say that I don't think in my short career I can say I've truly "experienced" a recession before. Being in a position of leadership, in a new market, growing a book of business from zero is not the easiest place to start. So.... perhaps it is as easy as turning your eyes upon Jesus and relying on him!

The next post on Life in Taiwan will be some pictures of our new apartment (we moved in July) and our new car (also July) - I know - I promised some of you these a long time ago!