Always an Adventure...

We started each morning with singing, which was led by some of the team from San Francisco. English activities The girls in my small group! They were so cute, and really great attitudes. Phil, Beth, and I - the main English teachers for the week Awesome helpers from the church in Taipei: Gina, who helped all three weeks, and Marli, who is from Myanmar but has lived in Taiwan for 7 years. She went to university in Yilan and goes to my church, but I'd never met her before! She was my small group helper, and was really sweet and kind. Students doing a find someone who activity. My small group playing a game All of the groups had to choose a song and perform a dance or skit to go with it. This was one of the groups performing the song "Making a Difference" Have You Ever activity The game I've seen at almost every camp in Taiwan. They have to try and stand up relying on each others' strength Relay races, passing ping pong balls on spoons Newspaper models There were a l...

The second week we had to travel about 40 minutes to get to where the camp was. We met every morning at the office around 7:15 and took a taxi to the MRT station. Then we took the MRT about 11 stops and had to catch another taxi at the other end. Fortunately in Taiwan , taxis are extremely cheap, so we only paid about $3.0 0 per ride. We walked from the MRT station to the church the first day when we went for training and it took at least 20 minutes, so because of time (and hot weather) we didn’t walk during the camp itself. This week was more relaxed for me, because I wasn’t a small group leader. I helped with songs, PowerPoint and did a lot of English teaching in the mornings. Our lessons ended each day with a cooking class given by yours truly. It was really funny because the first day the dish was Chinese dumplings. You have to wrap a thin wrapper around a meat filling, which I was to demonstrate for the students, after teaching them the English vocabulary words. The funny thing...

This is the team from our second week of camp. It includes people from our office and two different churches. I'll try to post some pictures of our adorable campers soon! It was a good camp. A lot of the helpers have been stretched this week with acting, singing and translating on stage!

My first impressions of Taipei perhaps weren’t the most positive. I remember a constant headache and grey skies every day. It was probably even more shocking coming from the lovely fall of rural southeastern B.C. But now that I’ve been here for a few weeks (this month has been the longest time I’ve spent in Taipei actually), I’ve been surprised by the blue skies I’ve seen almost every day! Tonight as I was walking home the sky was almost cloudless with a lovely sunset coloring the horizon, and a view of the Grand Hotel in the background starting to light up. So, I’m changing my initial opinion of Taipei , though I do miss Eastern Taiw an , Yilan and Yuli! It’s nice to just hop on my bike when I want to go somewhere instead of the combination of buses, taxis and transferring to the MRT that have been part of my life lately. Our second week of camp has been less busy for me so far, though we have a bit of a commute to get there. It’s a kids’ camp, and I’ve found lately that teaching...

Wow, I have so much I could write about. It's been a crazy week. It all started last Saturday when I went for camp training, which was actually just getting to know the San Francisco staff who came out to help with our camp. We played a bunch of games and I met my two helpers (after finding out I'd be the leader of a small group during the camp), Jonathan and Marli. Jon is a 16 year old from SFO who is ethnically Chinese, but actually doesn't speak a lot of Chinese. Marli is from Myanmar but has lived in Taiwan for about 7 years (actually she lived in Yilan and went to my church, but I somehow never met her!!!!) and speaks Chinese and a number of other languages, but not a lot of English. So at times, I felt like I was translating for both of them!! Kind of ironic, since I'm the only one who doesn't look Chinese!! I was a little worried at first, but between the three of us it worked out ok. Monday was more training and last minute prep, and Tuesday, we welcomed 110...

On Saturday morning, I received a call from one of my Yuli friends with the horrible news that one of the missionaries/teachers in Yuli had passed away in a tragic airplane accident. Our time in Yuli just overlapped a little, but I remember meeting him when he first arrived in Yuli and being so thankful that God has provided Christian teachers for the town I loved. I'd seen him a few more times on some of my return visits there, and could see that he and his team were making a huge positive impact on the people there. Some of my good friends were also really close to him. On Sunday morning I took the train down to Yuli and was able to pray with a lot of people there. I was awed by the sense of worship there was. We know God is good, but sometimes when we face tragedies we have more questions than answers. Fortunately, we can know that God is still in control, and that he brings good out of even the most acute pain. There was a memorial for Jon-Eric on Friday, and his family will be...

Take a listen...this song kind of describes my feelings after my trip to Yuli, there's a hole in a lot of hearts after the passing of a teacher there.