Obedience and serving in our weakness is success in God’s eyes, yet I always made excuses to God and always said I’m not ready or I’m too busy. I thought that if I just did things well and lived a “good” Christian life, I would grow closer to God and He would use me. However, I realized that it doesn’t matter how well I can do or be, but I just have to simply obey what God is asking of me. As I was entering my last year of college, I remember asking God to use me fully for KCM and really serve sacrificially. This past year was full of many obstacles and struggles, but amidst the trials I was able to really see the fruition of God’s power in KCM, and His love really pouring out onto the community as well as me. After missing STSM in previous years due to my own excuses and disobedience to God, I felt a conviction to really stop denying Him and obey Him by serving overseas for a month, even if I felt incompetent. 

Through this trip, I received many blessings through the people of Taiwan as well as my own team. As soon as we arrived in Taipei, we were greeted with such hospitality and warmth by Missionary Peter and the members of Friendship Presbyterian Church. One thing about Taiwan is that everyone there really cares about convenience, and their entire culture is about convenience, whether it’s distance to places or traffic rules or even how they treat people. I think that being in a culture so different from the U.S., it was an eye-opener for me to see how caring and genuine people can be. Doing ministry was very hard because each week we did different types of ministry, and through each week I could feel God really stretching and molding me. I experienced a lot of mental battles and spiritual warfare because of the comfort of being in a first world country and being in an environment similar to one back at home. Because of the fact that we were very busy, I caught myself doubting God amidst the work we were doing and even found myself relying on my own strength and skills. God really humbled me and a lot of my weaknesses were exposed whether it was my fear of man or stubbornness or even my impatience. However, I was able to realize these things almost immediately and found myself clinging to God for everything, even the smallest things. One instance is during the second week when we went to a missionary conference and held a youth retreat for all the missionary and pastor kids. I remember going into the week I had so much doubt on how God could move through this conference because in my view, these kids know so much if not more about the Bible than me, and I felt like I wouldn’t be able to help or teach them anything. I realized, however, that I had such a limited view of how God works, and my own pride and selfishness were the reasons why I felt like I had to perform or be successful in a certain type of way. The retreat and conference as a whole turned out to be such a success, and God truly revealed to me that He is able to move in all things, no matter how big or small through the conversations I was able to have with my small group as well as just meeting all the missionaries there and hearing their stories. God constantly proved me wrong every week of the trip, and I believe that my trust and belief in God’s sovereignty and goodness was immensely strengthened after this trip. 

After getting a glimpse of the work and fruits of what God has been doing around the world, I see now that this world is so big and grand, but God is so much bigger than everything. He doesn’t need me to do His work, and one month of missions is really nothing compared to the years and decades these missionaries have been devoting to the kingdom. Though I may never get to see the fruits of the work that is happening in taiwan, I know and truly believe God is and will always be working around the world, and I want to carry this belief and all that God has shown with me back home and continue obeying Him and serving Him in my communities here. I also want to stop being legalistic in my faith. I realized that I think I could earn God's favor or grow in holiness by “being better” and doing more work. Through this I realized this led to a lot of doubt when things seemed uncertain and I developed a lot of self-righteousness in myself, doubting others and even God’s will thus not trusting Him. A passage Pastor Peter showed me is Psalm 42, and this passage reminds my soul not to be weary of the world and my doubts, because I only need Jesus and the work He has done is truly enough, that is why God’s wrath towards me was taken on the cross. So now my soul does not need to be weary, and when I feel those doubts, this passage reminds me that the work has been done already.