Always an Adventure...

I was helping out a friend this weekend who works at a Catholic school here in Taiwan, as she was asked to undertake the difficult task of translating legal/doctrinal statements from English into Chinese. To make matters worse, they were originally written in Italian! But the interesting thing about it was how the document was relating the vow of poverty that nuns take to the financial administration of an institution. The idea is that if our own Savior emptied himself and took on the nature of a servant, if he had no place to lay his head, and if the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, shouldn't followers of Christ also choose to live a certain kind of lifestyle? To our modern way of thinking the idea of renouncing your rights and/or possessions, much less committing to never acquiring anything except as you plan to offer it for the good of the community, well it seems outdated, impossible, and maybe even crazy!  The next morning I went to a church where the speake...

It's a new year, and just like last year , I wanted to ask God to give me word for the new year, to guide me, to inspire me, and to be a theme for me. I've been thinking about this for a couple of weeks, and the word freedom popped into my head one day as I was walking, but it didn't seem quite right...too easy almost... so I kept thinking, then I started sharing with people that I was looking for a word, and the pressure was on, I knew they would ask me what I chose...or what chose me! As I went through a fun long weekend and an enjoyable New Year's Eve with friends, I still didn't really have a word... just before bed, I read a verse from Streams in the Desert which came from Deuteronomy 11, here set on the background of my view of Taipei 101 on new year's eve: It kind of inspired me to remember that God is there among all the beginnings and endings. In fact, 2012 was a year of many endings for me. The end of my 20s, the completion of my master's degr...

 ( I took this picture!!! ) I took this picture on a little photography trip, and my friend told me that in Chinese, these sunbeams are called "Jesus Light." I thought it was very appropriate! Last night at bible study, we were talking about who God is and different names for God. I asked my students why God has so many different names. Some websites  list over 700!  We teased out the idea that God is everything to everyone. He has different names because he comes through for us in different ways and in different circumstances. Sometimes we need him to be our refuge or healer, other times we need the master and shepherd, and still other times we need the lover of our souls. God has been doing a new work in my life in this past year, and it has been hard at times. But last night when I got home, a paper literally fell out of my bag and onto my lap. It was some verses our professor had given to us on the last day of class back in July. But they were exactly what I need...

Life just keeps going at breakneck speed. It is just over two weeks until my birthday, and I have 4 more blogs to write! This week has been a pretty typical week:  Teaching at the girls school (their annual school fair is this weekend, which I'm looking forward to) English bible study (a small but sweet group of low level students in the small town of Zhuang-Wei outside of Yilan)  Small group (meeting in my home since October, we're in James chapter 4 now)  Writing tests (never ending)  Doing homework (ironically, my project due Monday is to create an achievement test)  Teaching in Hualian (funny story - the school has been asking me to do more classes, even offered to pay me directly. I really do like the school, so I emailed our office and recommended that we could add a couple more classes this semester. I got back a proposed schedule of 8 more classes in the next two months which would have me going to Hualian almost every week... inch - meet mile....

This semester in my English Bible study, I'm teaching about the life of Jesus. For the first class, I wanted to give some background and introduction, including "Why Study Jesus?" and "How do we know Jesus really lived?" I actually did quite a bit of research in preparation, thinking about with things like the DaVinci Code etc, many people have questioned whether or not the Bible is even real. I looked up information about Josephus and Tacitus, two non-Christian sources who indicated the existence of Jesus in history. I explained who each of the gospel writers were, and how they were connected to Jesus, emphasizing the fact that all the gospels were written within 70 years of Jesus' death. The interesting thing was that the response I got from the students wasn't even a little bit skeptical. Maybe it's because in this culture, people are taught not to question their teachers. I often have to encourage my students to question and search out informatio...

On Monday night I was having some dinner and watching TV. My English Bible study started at 7:30 and my ride was going to come at 7. It was around 6:30 and I still had half an hour when I heard my doorbell ring. It was a little odd for 2 reasons: First, it was the doorbell outside my door, not the downstairs buzzer. Second, I wasn't expecting anyone for another half an hour. The best I could guess was that it was my ride here early? The moment I opened the door my stomach clenched in terror because the first thing I felt was a strong shove towards me from the other side. I saw that it was not one person, but two men standing there. All I could think was that this was a home invasion. I slammed the door shut and leaned against it as I struggled to lock it. I looked out the grate that faces out to the courtyard and elevators and saw the guys heading back toward the elevators, I yelled to them "Who are you?" and threatened to call the police. They said "Sorry" as ...

Maybe you're wondering why the urge to blog has come upon me so much this week.... well look at my to do list: clean apartment, go out in rain to mail letters, write lesson plans and test questions.... blogging has never looked so attractive! I received a book for Christmas from a very well-meaning friend. It's a book by megachurch leader Joel Osteen called Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential If you know me well, you'll know that I'm the kind of person that will deliberately NOT read or watch something, just because everyone else is doing it... Anyways, I saw smilin' Joel on Larry King Live a couple weeks ago, and their church services are broadcast in Taiwan on the Christian channel.. so I did a little google 'research' which tells me what I kinda suspected just from reading the title of the book.... they lean a little (or a lot depending on the source) toward the "health and wealth" gospel. But I figured, since I have the...