Asia Does Exist, I Promise

I have arrived in Asia!  Yes, I’m in Taiwan and everything is just fine.  I have to say that I’m still in a bit of shock as to how busy I am.  I really never found time to write this until now.  Monday is the church’s day off, the equivalent to a Saturday…at least the way I spend Saturday.

The flight out here was long and uneventful.  On an airplane there are always interesting people to meet.  On my connection flight to Detroit, Michigan I sat with a lady who had traveled the world and was currently on her way to Quebec, Canada.  She and her granddaughter were going to the French speaking parts of the country to practice the granddaughter’s verbal skills.

Next, on the flight from Detroit, Michigan to Osaka, Japan, I sat next to a big guy named Myles.  We laughed and joked about a lot of things.  He was going to the country on an exchange program and was constantly going through his English to Japanese dictionary.  I learned something from that dictionary too.  Domo oragato Mr. Roboto means thank you Mr. Robot.  Who knew!

I arrived in Taipei to a long customs wait.  I stood in line with a family from New Jersey.  It was really interesting speaking with them because they knew about all the stuff in the Christian world that was going on that I was interested in.  Our conversation was mostly on the miraculous healing that was going on in Lakeland, Florida probably because they had been there.  Not only had they been there, but the younger of the daughters had been healed of a skin rash type thing.  Awesome!

After customs I waited for approx. 1.3 eternities for my bags.  My Mom had told me that they might be stolen because they weren’t marked very well.  She warned me that it might be claimed by somebody else by mistake.  As I waited this weighed on the back of my mind, but proved to have only remained a myth.

I knew my Uncle Matt had sent somebody to come get me.  In an email my Aunt Elizabeth had said that I would be riding the bus down to Tainan.  How surprised I was to find that not only had Uncle Matt come, but the Hendrickson family was there as well.  Little did I know that they had missed a flight out of San Francisco and had been delayed their arrival for a day and thus arrived when I did, we had a most exciting ride home…mostly sleeping.

After a late night i was a little surprised to find out that I would have an early morning the next day.  I am now an individual involved in an initiative of Living Water Christian Church called the “222 Project”.  This comes out of 2 Timothy 2:22 which is as following:

22Now flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.

This starts with a prayer meeting at 7:00 am.  Now, what a prayer meeting is is exactly like what they do at IHOP in Kansas City, Missouri.  If you don’t know what that is, no fear, there will be better explanation later.

From there we do a quiet time.  Aunt Elizabeth has implemented the quiet time method that my Uncle Phillip has instituted (as far as I know) and that I am doing as well.  The only thing is these kids are going through the gospel of Luke.  That would be fine, but we only have a half hour, usually, to do it.  A chapter in Genesis, which is usually around thirty verses, takes me an hour, but lately I’ve been trying to pack just as many verses in that amount of time, it’s just no happening for me I guess.

After the quiet time we either take turns sharing some of the revelation we received from the Lord, or are brought a lesson from somebody of the household of Matt & Elizabeth Chen.  Aunt Elizabeth is kind enough to teach in English, but Kristopher goes straight to Chinese and I just sort of tune out.

Then it’s time to work.  All of the youth in the 222 Project, except me, are on the payroll.  A lady in Taipei is contributing to the church here enough money to have these kids on an hourly salary.  This is actually a full time job.  It’s really interesting to see people employed by the church for their summer job.  It’s something I’ve never seen back in the states.

Working for the church doesn’t mean anyone is doing a long theological study, it’s just whatever needs to be done.  For example, on Saturday I was asked to clean the windows at BUS-7 and then go search through the internet for pictures and photographs to put into a booklet for all of the youth leaders at the Shine camp coming up in two weeks.

That has pretty much been my week so far.  I’ve also been on the worship teams playing my sax with everyone.  I’m planning on teaching a guy here in Living Water to do as I do so that Uncle Matt can have his saxophone in all of his services when I’m not around.  I’ve never taught anybody like this before, it should be interesting.

~ by demo318 on June 29, 2008.