we're home!!!

Well that's partially true. I (Emily) am about to get onto a plane in Hong Kong but Mel, Esther and Greg should be resting comfortably in their own beds in Toronto.


Here's a picture from our goodbye party in Taiwan - we learned a traditional Taiwanese Aboriginal dance from the kids and performed it at the party. The stage was too small so there some disastrous results but it was really fun and I think they enjoyed watching us "tiao wu." Greg and Mel are making the best facial expressions in the photo taken during our dance :)

Anyway, hopefully we can write another entry about our last few days in Taiwan and HK but until then, it's been a great month. Thanks again for all your support, we couldn't have gone through it all without you.

Alright, my plane is boarding - see you all soon!

I can't believe that we are leaving in two days!!! Last week seemed to move by so slowly but this week has been speeding by. To be honest, I don't even remember what we did on Monday. On Tuesday, we had our last Gr. 3-6 English class (because other activities were planned for Wednesday - Friday) and Esther, Mel and I had some good bonding time with the older girls in the evening.

However, the important part of this post is what happened YESTERDAY (much more notable than other days). In the morning, we went to the Taiwanese Aboriginal Park which was beautiful. Each aboriginal tribe has a section to exhibit their traditional village life and there was a traditional dance show. Afterwards, we went to lunch at a restaurant halfway up a mountain and in Esther's words, "Lunch was amazing." We were all very full and successfully paid for the bill after some sneaky planning.

All of this however was not the "big" part of yesterday. The big part was that GREG SPRAINED HIS ANKLE playing basketball in flip flops. Somebody fouled him (I think) and then he crumpled to the ground. AIYAH!!! Poor guy. Greg was jumping on one foot all of last night but I've got to say that he kept a great attitude about it and didn't complain about it at all. Fortunately, he is feeling much better after the orphanage's house parents forced him to go to a Chinese doctor this morning. Please pray that his ankle will continue to heal and thank God that the injury was not worse than it is.

Besides the sprained ankle, an exciting part of last night was that some of the teens taught us how to do one of the traditional dances that they performed last weekend. The reason we are learning it is because they are throwing us a good-bye party tomorrow (YAY!) where all the houses perform something (usually singing or dancing) and we want to perform something for them as well. It is a lot of fun and honestly not that difficult, but Esther, Mel and I, given our lack of dancing ability, look pretty funny when we go through the dance moves :) We'll tell you how it goes tomorrow - there is a high probability that we will forget half the dance sequences and consequently FREESTYLE our way through the song hehehe

Anyway, must go and do a few things before dinner time
But please pray for Greg's ankle! God is the ultimate healer and we know Greg's health is in good hands.

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 :)

Hello from Taiwan,

Apologies for not posting for a while...the internet here is even more unreliable than the factory. However today the power and internet are up so let the updating begin. We've been here for 6 days now and praise the Lord, each day has been even better than the next.

Our graduation/goodbye party last friday was amazing, despite some initial technical difficulties. Lots of singing, laughing and crying. We were so impressed by all the work and effort that our student put into their presentations ... while their english has improved a lot, we are most pleased about how much more confident they are now about speaking and even expressing themselves through the English language. After the presentations Esther and Emily were able to share their testamonies with the help of a local missionary to translate. We really wished we could have stayed longer as all us felt that we were just starting to see the fruit of our labour, it was time to go. So after an hour of lots of pictures, hugs, gifts exchanges and kind words, we said our goodbye and rushed off to the train station.

We arrived in Taiwan on Saturday after extremely rushed morning where we almost missed our flight but luckily we got to skip the line instead of waiting at least 2 hour in the check in line. Flight was so smooth that even melody stayed the awake the entire 1 hour flight. The eldest brother of the founder picked us up, and after a Mcds lunch we made our way to the orphanage 1hour outside Kaohshing (2nd biggest city in Taiwan).

Our first impressions of the Christian Mountain Children's Home was how beautiful and peaceful it is in the mountains. A huge contrast to the busy, rainy, industrial city in China. Every day here has been very busy, however each has been very different. Some days we tutor the kids in English, other days we're pulling out weeds from the many gardens here. However we spend most of our days entertaining the kids. The kids here range in age from 3 to our age. But most of the time we're teaching/playing with the 5 - 11 year olds. The kids have been a handful to say the least but as we spend more time with them, we are getting more respect and less abuse.

Just like the factory, we're been treated so well here. No more bucket showers for me...athought I was growing quite fond of my bucket and cup...perhaps I will buy one for my Toronto shower. Even thought we have a full shower here, I still take cold showers which last less than 5 minutes each. In contrast to Esther's showers which have gotten longer and more frequent. Anyways .. we are never hungry and never without food or snacks. It's been really hot here though so we've had to keep very hydrated.

When we arrived, we joined up with a Taiwanese Amercian girl named Kristen from Florida. It was fun getting to know her and she was so helpful in helping us get to know the kids and in translating for us. Unfortunately she had to leave yesterday (Wednesday) .... but Today another American girl named Annie will be joining us. She's been teaching in the States for two years and seeks to learn about both the Taiwanese language and culture in preparation for her families adoption of two Taiwanese orphans. Pretty cool. So we're excited to meet with her tonight.

Language barrier has been more of an issue here as the kids are even more difficult to communicate with...me with my broken Mandarin and Esther/Emily with their limited yet growing vocabulary. But it just goes to show that the relationships we've made thus far are totally a testament of God's power to touch people through non-verbal means. We ask for your prayers that we will continue to be humbled by our weaknesses .... but strengthened by God's sufficiency in our ministry here.

Please also pray specifically for our patience with the kids ... that we would not be discouraged by our inability to communicate with them with words. While some of the kids are so cute and lovable, others are so NOT cute and very difficult to love. Like two days ago we had a kid through a rock at point blank range at a girl which drew blood ... the kids was only like 5 years old! (however it here right between the eyes...so that was pretty impressive to me at least). Play fighting it so rampant here and all the kids tend to use violence rather than words or reason to make their points. As some of you may know, this orphange is the home of the famous taiwanese children's choir who've been able tour around the world. We've had the privilege to hear them a bunch of times already as well as get to know them. They practice 3 times a day on top of their regular chores at the orphanage so they are much more disciplined than the non-choir kids. Needless to say, spending time with them is usually more pleasant than babysitting the other kids. But we konw that God has called us to take care of the non-choir kids so please pray that we remain focused on them and not take the "easy way out. "

Also please pray that we continue to extend grace to each other as we are now in our third week in a row together and patience has begun to run thin in some departments. However it's really good here too cause there's far more freedom and opportunity to take quiet time alone.

Anywayz, gonna end it here, so talk to you soon! Thanks to all who've been keeping up and commenting on the blog. It was only today that we were finally able to view the comments!

Final Day / Graduation Day

So today is our final day at the factory and we are holding a graduation ceremony in class for all our students. Instead of teaching a lesson we are having them put on presentations in English about a topic our their choice. The beginner level students have chosen some of their favourite English songs like "Take me to your heart" and "Tears in Heaven." The advanced level students are putting on skits based on a topic of their choice such as Chinese New Year and a famous Chinese WW2 story.

We have basically spent the whole day running around thanking people and distributing personal gifts we've prepared for each worker...everyone from the cleaning staff to the General Manager! We really are SO GRATEFUL to everyone for the incredible hospitality that has been extended to us throughout this entire trip. We literally never go an hour without being visited or checked up on by someone. And we've been taken out countless time by various staff for meals after class.

As great as class has been going, I think I speak for all of us when I say that it's the times outside class that have been most rewarding. Our 1.5 hour daily class has proven to simply be the means to spearheading relationship with each of the workers. However, the rest of the time each of us has been building amazing relationships primarily during meal times and after class when we just hang out with them. We really have not been getting much sleep since every morning from staying up late with the workers and praying/debriefing afterward and then waking up early for 7am prayer meeting lead by the local evangelists here. But God is faithful and each day he has provided us with enough strength and energy (and random nap times) to generate our lessons plans and practice our skits.

As mentioned in previous post already, God's faithfulness has been shown time and time again ... but it was not until this week that we really began seeing evidence of how God has impacted the workers here through our work. On Wednesday night, we asked the students what they are thankful and many of the advanced students shared openly that they were in fact thankful for us being here. They told us that even though we have only been here for a couple weeks, it has been the happiest time for them since they signed on at this factory. One member even told us how thankful he was for English class because it allowed him to express himself for the first time. And more incredible was that they all communicated this in English!

On Thursday we were suppose to hold our basketball tournament but unfornately it rained again for the 9th straight day. Since we've been here, we've only seen 2 days without rain, our first day and last day here. One of the workers told me that they've never seen it rain this much before. But this streak of rainy days has proved to be an incredible blessing as it has made what would otherwise be unbearably hot/humid days into relatively comfortable conditions. And this phenomenon calls for even greater praise and thankgiving as the cool weather has prevented Emily asthma from acting up.

And even though our basketball tournament was foiled by the rain, God had something else in store for that night. After class we had a couple our students approach us about what it means to be a Christian. And after a 2 hour conversation involving all 6 of our group members, the local evangelist, a recently saved worker and plenty of on the spot translation ... one of the workers asked us how he could become Christian. So we're praying that the local evangelist will be able to follow-up. Micky and I have also had opportunity to have deeper conversation about our faith with our roommate and last night we were able to witness to him as well.

Anyways, it is dinner time and I have to go change for our closing ceremonies. Esther and Emily are sharing their testimonies tonight so please pray that their personal stories will really move our friends in the audience tonight. Oh man, so much more to share but I think this is long enough. Save it for another post.

Quick prayer requests
1. Esther and Emily sharing their testimony tonight
2. Smooth journey to HK and then Taiwan. We'll be leaving right after class for HK (1 hour drive to the train station and 1 hour train ride to HK). Probably won't arrive in HK until after midnight. Then early flight to Taiwan next morning.
3. Smooth transition into Taiwanese Orphanage. We're expected to lead Sunday Service the next day.
4. Continued protection of all our health as we move into a new place with new conditions. Specifically continued protection for Emily for her allergies and asthma!

last week! preparing for farewell!

we can't view our blog here in China, so we're sorry if there's comments and we haven't replied. although, there might not be any comments, this won't be a problem.



so we've been waiting for internet to show you what we made in the factory. anyways, this isn't exactly what we made but it's close enough. micky and greg molded the top and bottom parts of the pencil together. melody stuck on the yellow buttons. esther and emily stuck the wires into the pencil and placed plastic insulation so doctors don't electricute themselves. greg also stuck those blades into the pencils. so yeah... in the afternoon, we were still making these pencils but we all had different jobs. micky pounded the circuit boards with a metal pounder, emily soldered wires together onto the circuit board, greg did the same job, esther stuck on sterile stickers onto the package and melody packaged electrical pencils into a plastic box, which required winding it correctly. the factory makes about 10,000 of these a day. i'm sure they didn't meet the quota that day. we probably gave quality control a good run for their money.

we are nearly done our time in china. we're running a basketball tournament tomorrow but it has rained EVERY DAY here since we've come. there has not been one day where it didn't rain. so yeah, if you read this, please pray for the rain to hold up tomorrow so we can have more outreach with the workers.

micky was supposed to leave for a new factory this week after we leave, but now he has been offered to stay here for another week. he's not sure what he can do now without us but he might teach lessons one-on-one with girls. (or so he hopes). JUST KIDDING. but yeah, keep him in your prayers and keep praying for us also.

hola Canada!

This is a picture of us in our cleansuits before we entered the sterile production area last Friday. We look like oompa loompas and Micky looks like a Beastie Boy.

Anyway, we had a really exciting Saturday and Sunday this past weekend.
Saturday was one of our most exciting and long days. We planned to have a social in the evening so we went shopping all morning for snacks and music at the closest shopping centre which is a 4-level superstore that resembles Wal-Mart. The CDs that we bought were dirt cheap (my favourite, the Backstreet Boys compilation cd, was 25RMB) but we have a feeling that they are not real haha. When we returned to the factory, we found that Melody's computer had somehow contracted a virus so an error message popped up every second (literally). The factory's IT guy was nice enough to look at her computer - he didn't solve the problem but he made the error message pop-up noise go away.

In the evening, instead of having class, we had a "Canadian Chinese American hangout" time. This is because a lot of workers leave the factory on Saturday night because Sunday is their only day off. Many people return home for a day or go out and stay at a local friend's place. We invited those who weren't going out to an evening of games and singing. Apparently "My Heart Will Go On,"(everybody has seen Titanic and some of the guys even admit to crying haha) "Take Me To Your Heart" and "Yesterday Once More" is very popular here. We even had snacks and a dance circle afterwards which was hilarious. The best part was when one of our students, Toby, started popping and locking. He's a married 34 year old with an 8 year old daughter, but he is way hipper than we are. The entire evening was a lot of fun and was filled with constant laughter. I think that students are really beginning to trust us and are not afraid to be themselves around us which is pretty awesome.

Okay, it's 5pm so the internet is going to shut off..... a description of Sunday's exciting activities will have to wait :)

Hope everybody is doing well - thanks for remembering us, we can't wait to see what happens in our last 5 days here in China.

Our internet connection is shoddy but things are going well

I have to type fast because the internet will cut out in 17 minutes

Just a quick post to check in:
- we haven't had internet in the past two days
- it is still raining all the time :)
- we got to work in the factory for several hours yesterday so that we could get a taste of what the workers' lives are like. We'll elaborate on this later on but it's hard work, i don't know how they do it every day.
- English classes are going great and we've developed some amazing friendships with some of the students! Many meaningful conversations have taken place and we feel privileged that the students trust us enough to share with us and have shown interest in our values, perspectives, and beliefs.
- our team is still bonding well - we love sharing ridiculous stories and laughing together all the time

Alright, a better post and photos to come the next time we have internet (which is unpredictable haha)
Please keep thinking of us and the interactions we have with all the workers

Bye!

We've arrived!

Hi everybody! Ni hao!!!
Just wanted to let you know that WE'RE STILL ALIVE!!!! Internet has been difficult to come by (it's only available from 9am-5:30pm) but we finally got Mel's laptop online.

This is our third day in China and it's been great so far. Here are a few details about our trip so far:

TRAVEL
Greg and Esther arrived on Sunday afternoon and Melody and I were able to greet them at the airport :) On Monday, we took a bus from Hong Kong and it took about an hour and a half. We arrived here on Monday just after lunch and started lesson planning immediately.

TEAM MEMBERS
Our team has grown quite considerably! YAY! Micky, from Vancouver, joined us in Hong Kong (He has signed up to serve in the factories for 8 weeks so he is with us while we are in China) and when we arrived on Monday, we found out that the factory had an American intern named Grady. When we met Grady, he seemed very relieved to have some people to speak English to :) He does administration work in the office during the day but he has graciously helped us out during English classes in the evening. Everybody is getting along very well and we already feel like family.

ENGLISH CLASSES
We taught our first class the day we arrived and our second class last night. The first night was a little tricky because we didn't know any of the workers or their English skill level yet but once that was established, planning became much easier. Esther, Micky and I are teaching the advanced level (less Mandarin required!) while Mel, Greg, and Grady are teaching the beginner level. The workers love playing silly games and are also willing to sing silly songs. We've only been here three days but we already feel like some good friendships have been made. Everybody has been extremely gracious to us and we get very excited during meal times and English classes because we get to interact with the workers.

LANGUAGE
Melody, Micky and Greg have been quite good at communicating in Mandarin while Esther and myself are less proficient :) However, we have not been afraid to try out the Mandarin that we do know and our mispronounced Mandarin phrases have actually served as a great conversation starter.

THINGS WE ARE THANKFUL FOR
- great weather - it has rained the past two days which means that the temperature has been considerably cooler than the first day we were here
- good friendships - all of us have met great people and try to sit with them during meals so that we can get to know them even more
- Micky and Grady - we wanted more male members back in February and we have been provided with much more than we had asked for! (threefold!)
- our health - I haven't died from any allergic reactions yet and none of us have fallen ill
- local support - there have been many locals and factory administration members who have been able to support us in our endeavours. Their hospitality and kindness has blown us away.

Alright, I think that's it for now! Hopefully we can update more frequently now that we've figured out the internet situation.

Zai Jian!

Three weeks to go!

Hello again!
We're not sure how strict the internet censorship is in China so we'll probably remove all explicit religious references before we start publishing from there.

So since our last post, preparation for the trip has been coming along! Team building has been going well and we have begun brainstorming for our English lesson plans. Our visas were also processed this week so that is definitely an item of thanksgiving.

As we go deeper into the month of May, it has finally hit us that we will be going on our trip very soon! Melody has already been in HK for 2 weeks, I will be leaving for HK this Friday (for a 2 week family vacation), and Greg and Esther will be joining us on June 3rd. Because this is the last Sunday I will be in Toronto, Greg, Esther and myself were commissioned at my church this morning. We got to share a little bit about our trip and then Pastor Richard prayed for our team. This was of particular encouragement to me because it was a reminder to me that we are not going "alone" but that there is a faithful network of people who will be praying for us while we are away. That is a fantastic piece of knowledge :)

Here are some ongoing prayer requests for our team:
1) language - that we will be able to pick up as much Mandarin as possible before we leave and that we will be able to effectively communicate with locals when we are in Asia
2) health and adaptation - that God will build up our immune systems before we go and that we will be able to adapt to the climate, food, and time zone quickly and easily once we are there
3) housing in HK - we will be returning to HK on July 1 for a time of debriefing and some sightseeing and our housing plans for that leg of the trip just fell through. Please pray that God will provide housing for us at that time (July 1-4)
4) Esther's travel arrangements - Esther is unsure when the best time is for her to return to Canada - please pray for wisdom and for affirmation from God for her decision
5) that God will continue to challenge us in our personal walks with Him and that He will use the trip to teach us about His character and His heart.

At the same time, I have got to say that preparation for this trip has already taught us a lot about reliance on God and His provision. On numerous occasions in our preparation, God has provided for our needs (God is so good) and we believe that He will continue to do so.

Anyway, I am really excited and can't believe that we will entering Asia as a team so soon! Stay tuned for more updates :) Thanks again for your support