entering the home stretch

HellooooOOooooO!

How are all of you doing? We are now entering the final week of our time in Taiwan and we can't believe we've been away for so long. Anyway, a lot of good things have happened since Greg posted last on Thursday so I'll go chronologically.

THURSDAY
On Thursday, our team had a debriefing and prayer meeting where we were able to share honestly about our experience thus far in Taiwan. We had all been feeling sort of discouraged about our transition to Taiwan from China but had kept it to ourselves. Team relations were not in the best state and we were not continually depending on God in all things. When we sort of confronted this in our time of sharing and prayer, we felt refreshed and have since been able to approach each other and our work here in Taiwan with new energy and attitudes. YAY for God - we literally woke up the next morning feeling like new people and I think it really showed in our words and actions. We are so thankful that God has been so faithful to our team and was able to re-orient our focus back to Him and away from our pride and selfishness.

At around 11:30pm that night, Annie Blakeslee arrived! She is American Friend #3 on our trip (Grady was American #1, Kristen #2) and we've been hanging out with her since then. Annie is our age and the reason she is here is because her family is in the process of adopting two Taiwanese children from Taipei so she's here to learn about the culture and language. We are glad that she's here with us because she is actually an ESL teacher during the year in Pennsylvania so she has been helping us teach English since she arrived. We've also been really lucky because we have gotten along with all the new people we have met and Annie is no exception. On a sidenote, Annie gets a lot of stares because she is Caucasian. We went into the town of Liu Kuei today and some people took photos of her with their cell phone from afar hehe.

FRIDAY
On Friday, we started teaching English to the adult workers. This was actually a refreshing change from teaching English to the children because the adults are a lot more motivated and attentive during class. We have been teaching them every morning from 8-9am after breakfast and morning devotions and we always look forward to this time.

We also went to Kaohsiung (I don't know if I spelled that correctly - it's the 2nd largest city in Taiwan and it's about) on Friday, Saturday AND Sunday. It is a little more than an hour away so we've had our fill of long car rides. On Friday, Mel's dad arrived from Hong Kong and it was so nice to see a familiar face. The orphanage has a choir that tours every summer (they've gone to Toronto a few times) and Mel's dad coordinates the canadian leg of their tour so he knows many of the children and adult workers here.

SATURDAY
On Saturday, the children oddly had to go to school to make up for a fake holiday that they had on Monday before Dragonboat Festival holiday on Tuesday. We were originally supposed to teach "Sunday" school on Saturday at a mountain church but then those children ALSO had to go to school as well. As a result, we went back to Kaohsiung but this time it was to visit Grandpa Yang, the founder of the orphanage, who entered the hospital on Friday night for high blood pressure. After our visitation, we went to dinner with the education coordinator, his wife, and the assistant superintendant of the orphanage (who is the education coordinator's sister and the wife of the founder's oldest son). We heard hilarious stories about the education coordinator and his wife (it was about what he has learned in his 24 years of marriage) and then had another long car ride back to the orphanage.

When we returned, we went to the night market with some of the older high school kids which was really fun. I got bubble tea (which is SO CHEAP here - around 50 Canadian cents) and Melody got stinky tofu which was a constant assault to my nose. *blech* The best part about that was that we got to spend time and build our friendships with the older kids (we usually just spend time with the elementary school kids).

SUNDAY
On Sunday, we taught Sunday school to the elementary school kids at the orphanage at 8am. This actually turned out really well because we did a skit about the Good Samaritan and the kids LOVED IT :) We were also able to have a discussion with them about what a neighbour is and who your neighbour is. After that, we went to church at 10am in Liu Kuei (Mel's dad preached) and at noon, we left to attend a dance festival in Kaohsiung. This was held at another orphanage and around 30 of the high school kids from this orphanage went to perform 2 dances. We were literally only there for 30 minutes but the long bus rides gave us good opportunities to talk and bond with the older kids again :)

We had another church service at 7:30 at the orphanage (Mel's dad preached again) and then tri-church service day ended. The four of us stayed up and shared until 1am so it was pretty hard to wake up at 6:45am this morning.

Anyhoo, thank you so much for keeping us in your prayers. God is really working in each of our individual lives and also in our experiences as a group.

prayer requests:
Our main prayer request is for energy - all of us are feeling very tired and exhausted now and I am sick with a cold (but feeling better than before). Please pray that we will stay healthy and have enough energy to teach English and interact with the kids effectively.

Please also pray for our team unity - we love each other dearly but after three weeks of being with each other 24/7, we sometimes have to be reminded to extend more grace and love to one another.

Also pray that God will continue to speak to us and teach us through our experiences here in Asia.


Okay that's it, sorry for the super long post. It's been brought to our attention that our blog posts are not as funny or entertaining as our friend Grady's emails to us about China so we commend you for getting through this all the way to the end :)