Cookie Extravaganza!
"Bringing the gospel and cookies to Taiwan since 2004"
Since I didn't update yesterday, I'll have to describe its events later on, but first, the cookie extravaganza! What a fun word... probably wouldn't dream of using it in conversation here... though maybe i could teach it as vocabulary? lol
Anyways, we enjoyed baking so much the other day that we decided to bake on our day off... this small flicker of an idea turned into an all day project! In addition to wanting to bake, we have been wanting to encourage the pastors here, as well as say thank you to so many people who have been taking us places and never letting us pay for ANYTHING! So we made cookies. What could be more perfect? Not only did we make cookies, we made 4 kinds of cookies, M&M (a variation of my famous chocolate chip since i haven't been able to find any), oatmeal rasin, hershey kiss cookies, and peanut butter cookies! JoJo you would be proud! This almost rivals my bake sale days, and is much more fun! I'd love to make mint chocolate ones, but I don't think I could find all the stuff! ANYWAYS, back on subject here, we spent the morning going for breakfast and grocery shopping (and a haircut for me), the afternoon baking, and the evening delivering... well more or less.... We even attached little notes with a Bible verse that Hope painstakingly wrote out in pinyin (transliterated from our bo po mo fo New Testamants woohoo).
Anyways, onto the singing extravaganza, ok well not really the most accurate description, but hey gotta get my word for the day in!
As I previously mentioned, on Thursday we learned we would be helping lead worship with the youth group and were given two new songs to learn. They weren't easy songs either, they were contemporary Christmas songs from a CD (which fortunately we got to borrow). I worked really hard to learn the songs and was understandably feeling a little nervous about it! We practiced on Saturday night, there were a few surprises such as a Chinese phrase they wanted us (just the two of us) to say to begin the worship set, a “solo” (again, the two of us singing the first few lines of O Holy Night at the beginning and end of one of the songs), and that they wanted us to pray loudly into the microphones during the “free” prayer time… Anyways, despite my reservations and bad pronunciation, it ended up being a lot of fun, and I was able to worship! I think the people in the church were really happy that we tried to speak/sing in Chinese, and most were really surprised to see us up there!
From there we move to the translation fiasco which is more amusing than anything. There is a Doctor from the church who translated the sermon for us, which was so nice! It definitely makes it bearable. His English is quite advanced, and we are definitely appreciative of his efforts. When we arrived we found out that they even had headsets for us! The way it's supposed to work is that the people with head sets can sit anywhere in the room and the person translating speaks quietly into the microphone which broadcasts into the headsets... minimal service disturbance, everyone's happy..... in theory it's quite simple, like giving a hearing aid to elderly people. Oh but in reality.... it is far from simple.... you see, they had arranged it so our translator was actually sitting right behind us.... as well, he has an extremely loud voice. So we put our headsets on, and he begins to speak into the microphone, but we can hear him quite loudly since he is sitting right there! We tried to communicate this to him, but he didn't understand.... at all... he suggested that we could turn the headsets down if it was too loud.... so by this time i have broken down laughing at the situation and am trying to hide it and allow Hope to attempt further explanation, which included "maybe you could go sit at the BACK" I don't think I can do the humor of the situation justice here, but anyways, we settled for not using the headsets and him translating for us from there. Throughout the sermon we were quite aware of the fact that everyone else could hear him translating... even the kids who sit in little desks in front of all the benches were turning around to see who was talking.... perhaps by next week we can make SOMEONE understand how it's supposed to work....
So, to do conclude this posting extravaganza, i would just like to say
Women dzway xihuan Shang Dahn jie le. Which, of course, means "Christmas is our favourite holiday"
Anyways, we enjoyed baking so much the other day that we decided to bake on our day off... this small flicker of an idea turned into an all day project! In addition to wanting to bake, we have been wanting to encourage the pastors here, as well as say thank you to so many people who have been taking us places and never letting us pay for ANYTHING! So we made cookies. What could be more perfect? Not only did we make cookies, we made 4 kinds of cookies, M&M (a variation of my famous chocolate chip since i haven't been able to find any), oatmeal rasin, hershey kiss cookies, and peanut butter cookies! JoJo you would be proud! This almost rivals my bake sale days, and is much more fun! I'd love to make mint chocolate ones, but I don't think I could find all the stuff! ANYWAYS, back on subject here, we spent the morning going for breakfast and grocery shopping (and a haircut for me), the afternoon baking, and the evening delivering... well more or less.... We even attached little notes with a Bible verse that Hope painstakingly wrote out in pinyin (transliterated from our bo po mo fo New Testamants woohoo).
Anyways, onto the singing extravaganza, ok well not really the most accurate description, but hey gotta get my word for the day in!
As I previously mentioned, on Thursday we learned we would be helping lead worship with the youth group and were given two new songs to learn. They weren't easy songs either, they were contemporary Christmas songs from a CD (which fortunately we got to borrow). I worked really hard to learn the songs and was understandably feeling a little nervous about it! We practiced on Saturday night, there were a few surprises such as a Chinese phrase they wanted us (just the two of us) to say to begin the worship set, a “solo” (again, the two of us singing the first few lines of O Holy Night at the beginning and end of one of the songs), and that they wanted us to pray loudly into the microphones during the “free” prayer time… Anyways, despite my reservations and bad pronunciation, it ended up being a lot of fun, and I was able to worship! I think the people in the church were really happy that we tried to speak/sing in Chinese, and most were really surprised to see us up there!
From there we move to the translation fiasco which is more amusing than anything. There is a Doctor from the church who translated the sermon for us, which was so nice! It definitely makes it bearable. His English is quite advanced, and we are definitely appreciative of his efforts. When we arrived we found out that they even had headsets for us! The way it's supposed to work is that the people with head sets can sit anywhere in the room and the person translating speaks quietly into the microphone which broadcasts into the headsets... minimal service disturbance, everyone's happy..... in theory it's quite simple, like giving a hearing aid to elderly people. Oh but in reality.... it is far from simple.... you see, they had arranged it so our translator was actually sitting right behind us.... as well, he has an extremely loud voice. So we put our headsets on, and he begins to speak into the microphone, but we can hear him quite loudly since he is sitting right there! We tried to communicate this to him, but he didn't understand.... at all... he suggested that we could turn the headsets down if it was too loud.... so by this time i have broken down laughing at the situation and am trying to hide it and allow Hope to attempt further explanation, which included "maybe you could go sit at the BACK" I don't think I can do the humor of the situation justice here, but anyways, we settled for not using the headsets and him translating for us from there. Throughout the sermon we were quite aware of the fact that everyone else could hear him translating... even the kids who sit in little desks in front of all the benches were turning around to see who was talking.... perhaps by next week we can make SOMEONE understand how it's supposed to work....
So, to do conclude this posting extravaganza, i would just like to say
Women dzway xihuan Shang Dahn jie le. Which, of course, means "Christmas is our favourite holiday"
mmm cookies and Christmas... that reminds me of something I should share with you... I was sitting in the Pil the other day, and Beth Olsen came in with Seth and joined me. I don't remember the context but at one point she began to reminisce about our room and how great she thought it was (meaning us... not necessarily the room... though the room was certainly an extension of us) heh... we are remembered fondly in the memories of our fellow dormies.
ReplyDeleteHa! That was great. I really want to steal your description of the translation fiasco for my blog.
ReplyDelete