The 10th week of our ALPHA course marked the end of a wonderful season. Instead of one of us Western co-workers giving an ALPHA Talk, we celebrated all that God had done during the course.

The evening kicked off with the final part of our weekly ALPHA Skit, in which Sam and Jim (played by Julianne and Erich) reflected on how their friendship had grown during the previous 10 weeks of ALPHA. After recalling some of the great times they had together, the skit concluded by Sam sharing about how he has really been affected by Jesus' claims, and inviting Jim to go to church together.

After the Skit we enjoyed a special musical treat - our friends from the Transition Band played two of their songs for us! "Real Dreams" is about a person longing for his/her friend to exchange their 'distorted dreams' for real ones. The message of "Hope is Coming" is that we are worn out of living a shallow kind of faith, and desperately long for true satisfaction - not just for us, but for those around us! Transition had us singing along, pledging ourselves to bring the Hope of the World to others.

Next Rhys had us all get out of our seats, and play a crazy game in which we had to pretend to be different animals competing against each other in playing "Paper, Scissors, Stone". The more people you beat, the higher you evolved, from an egg to a chicken, to a monkey, and finally to a T-Rex! It only took a few minutes of frenzied competition until we had a horde of T-Rexs roaming around the room. Great times :D

Kelley led the next activity, which was designed to lead into our small group discussion time. She placed stacks of sticky-notes on each group's table, and had us writing notes of encouragement to others, then sticking those notes on their back! After a while everyone's backs were covered in messages of encouragement, which we then shared in our discussion group time.

ALPHA Week 10 ended with an extra long discussion group time, in which we could encourage each other, share about our ALPHA experience, and plan how to continue meeting in the future.

ALPHA is over - what now?

There are several ways we can keep discipling our new friends. Often our new friends from ALPHA are simply invited to join the church cell group led by their ALPHA Course group leader. That way they already know at least one person in a Truth Church cell group, and can integrate smoothly. If several members of an ALPHA group are all willing to continue meeting, their ALPHA group leader can just continue meeting as a church cell group with these members.  Many times the ALPHA co-workers will also meet with a new friend from ALPHA one-on-one to lead them through our church's "New Life Book", which teaches basic Christian doctrine, and leads up to baptism.

For those new friends from ALPHA who either don't have the time to continue meeting regularly, or who simply aren't spiritually ready yet, the ALPHA co-workers will stay in touch with them, and invite them to church outings, meals, etc...

Please pray for us!

Overall it was a great season, in which we touched the lives of over 100 non-believing friends! We co-workers learned a lot, and have lots of new ideas to improve the next season (starting in October 2010).

Even though this season is over, please continue praying for our team of Western co-workers at Truth Church. Some things you can pray for are:

• We need to preserve unity as our numbers grow (altogether we're at around 16 people now!), and our cell group transitions into a larger fellowship.
• As our numbers grow, so will our opportunity for service. We are praying about other ways besides ALPHA to reach out to the community of Westerners living and working in Taipei. We need to receive direction from the Lord before we can go forward.