Service 傳道

(Literally translated, "hand over the road"!)

Looking over my pictures from each week- or, more often now, about ten days- I realize that this week I have been more studious than I thought. Although I suppose it's true that I have been trying to get a little work done on my schoolwork each day, I didn't realize I have no pictures of anything else except service this whole week.

So... let's talk about service!

Service (or "The Min" as my British friends say) is very different here in Taiwan than back in California, or even in New York. I had imagined that going out in service with the Oak Park Mandarin back in Sacramento was preparing me for the work here in Taiwan... not so much.

First, back home we drive everywhere. I think we had two territories in the entire city where we could walk from door to door. Here in Taiwan, more than half of or brothers and sisters don't even own a car, and anyway Taipei is so built up there's really no reason to drive, even from the Hall to the territory. (Actually, that's different in and of itself, but I'll get to that later.) Many brothers and sisters ride their bike around the city, and although I personally don't own a bike I also often use the city's YouBikes to get around. But all that means that... back home, you know how some friends like to take breaks at Starbucks or wherever after like an hour out in the ministry, and although it's nice you feel kind of lazy? Not so here, especially in the summer. It's hot, and we walk everywhere, and when you go out into territories with older buildings most of them don't have elevators, so you're walking up and down flights of stairs all the time. So, after an hour or so of walking door to door, we often go sit down in a park for fifteen minutes or so and let ourselves cool down.

This isn't at a park, but there was a really nice breeze here.

Sometimes, before you even get to the territory you've sweated through your shirt. That's another big difference: we only have one field service meeting a week, on Saturday morning at the hall. Every other day, we meet in the territory at a prearranged location, form pairs, split the territory up and off we go. It saves on travel time, but it's easy to get lost sometimes!

Of course, all of that also applies to doing return visits. Because I don't have a car here, unless I'm working with someone who has a motorcycle, I ride a bike between calls, which means I can usually do... two or three an hour.

Joel and I did calls together one day!

Second, the method of actually preaching. I think it isn't news to anyone that the vast majority of American people live in suburbs, with the exceptions being people in city centers who live in high-rise apartments. So, most of our witnessing really is door-to-door: we walk up to the door and knock on it, or use a doorbell, and most of the time if we talk to anyone it's a face to face conversation.

In Taipei, not really. Very few people live in single-family houses here. There are a couple really poor, slum areas on the outskirts of town where they do; there are also a couple of crazy rich mansion areas of town. The vast majority of the rest of us live in apartments- the cheaper, older ones are called 公寓 (gong yu), the newer, more expensive ones are 大樓 (da lou). 

Gong yu are very rarely taller than six stories, they never have elevators, and mostly were built before the 70's. The nicest ones have rooftop gardens, but many landlords illegally build additional apartments on top of the garden- they're not insulated, they have no water pressure and their electricity often comes from an extension cord, but they're cheap! (Also, when typhoons come they're really not safe- several people die each year from that.) Many gong yu started off as whole-family dwellings, with grandpa and grandma buying the building and inviting their whole extended family to live in Taipei with them for the work opportunities, and have since been subdivided into individual apartments. I personally live in a gong yu.

Da lou have a lot more differences than gong yu. One thing they all have in common is an elevator: if a building is built in Taipei, and it's taller than five stories, it has to have an elevator. (Old buildings got grandfathered in.) Besides that, they can run the gamut from very tight spaces and cheap materials (but low rent), to luxury apartments with wraparound windows and private terraces.

A shot of two sisters in an ordinary Taipei territory.

Unfortunately, that means most of our door to door activity is in fact intercom to intercom. Now, it's not impossible to have a decent conversation through an intercom... if it actually works, and if they speak up, and if there's no traffic behind you making it so you can't hear. But it is much harder, especially when you're still learning Chinese (it's hard enough understanding people normally, let alone when you have an old intercom muffling their voice and adding static)!

Third, the people's background. Obviously regular Americans and Taiwanese will be very different, but even in the Chinese field the culture is different. Back home, we usually had two kinds of people: one was Cantonese-speaking, had been in the States for a while, and usually was either Christian or standard American apathetic. I couldn't really talk to these people, since I'm learning Mandarin, not Cantonese, but I did sometimes go with a brother or sister who could speak the language. The other was a young Mainland Chinese student (or recent graduate), very well educated, often with a Master's or a Doctorate, almost always atheist.

In Taiwan, most people are Buddhist. Not the Buddhists we see in the West, either, the kind of people who treat it like a philosophy or lifestyle choice (along with rock climbing, eating vegan and living out of their van). The average Taiwanese person is a 'serious' Buddhist, whether or not they themselves are all that diligent about it. They have evil spirits they ward off, they have the Buddha of vengeance as well as of prosperity, and they make monthly offerings to their deceased ancestors.

This man is burning "Hell Money" for his deceased loved ones- their afterlife still requires money to buy food

Here's a link to a short video I took inside a Buddhist temple.

Really though, people are the same everywhere. Some people are too busy to talk to us, some people don't care enough to make time, some are simply too entrenched to consider other viewpoints. But some are open to hear the Bible's wisdom. Despite being Buddhist, traditional Chinese culture preserves parts of Confucian and Taoist traditions, and among those is a respect for books of wisdom of all sorts. So if we can prove to them that the Bible has practical wisdom for all sorts of people, many will discuss it with us.

The group taking a quick break later that day.

Fourth, the emotional disposition of most Chinese people. When studying with a typical American, they start off taking in knowledge but not doing anything with it, then gradually, over time, as the truth begins to reach their heart, they change their life- they quit smoking, come to meetings, marry their girlfriend, etc. Chinese people are not the same: they are either hot or cold, with no warming up period. A typical Chinese Bible Student will begin studying the Bible, and at first make no changes because they don't really believe it is the truth; but as soon as they decide it is the truth, within weeks their life has completely changed and in fact they tend to be too strict, throwing away TVs, computers, disconnecting the Internet, even pulling kids out of school to avoid bad association! And then, over time, they gradually become more balanced in their viewpoint.

This is also expressed in their frequent protests. Here we have citizens striking at the Zhongshan District Government Building, and riot police blocking the entrance. Sorry for the bad quality, I didn't want to get closer!

Fifth- and this isn't the territory, really, so much as it is the congregation- we do stuff together all the time. Like, back home I though Sacramento Chinese was awesome for that because we'd have a game night or something at least twice a month. Here, after almost every meeting and group service arrangement we go out to eat. Every week we have a soccer game planned (although sometimes we get rained out). We usually have one big group outing a month, like two weeks ago to Fulong beach. It's really nice to spend so much time with my brothers and sisters when we aren't so focused on our work!

舉個例子來說: Dinner one night after service!

It's especially nice for the newly-arrived friends, or those that don't have a great grasp of Chinese, because it introduces them to new foods and restaurants they may not have had a chance to try before.

For instance, this is the first time Joe has had both a fork and a knife to eat with since arriving in Taiwan. He's about bursting with joy!

All of those differences- and this isn't an exhaustive list, there are still more- combine to make this a very different territory than anything I had experienced before. That isn't to say it's bad- actually, I really like it! Sure, intercoms are annoying, you can only wear a shirt once, maybe twice in between washes, and you need to memorize a new set of go-to scriptures. But it's a lovely territory in every sense of the word, and definitely worth the effort. 

This was just taken this morning. Notice Joel's stylish, unchanging pink shirt.

And so long as there are sheeplike ones who have yet to hear the good news the Bible has to offer all humans- and there are, many of them- we will keep trying to reach them.