District Assembly 區域大會

(Taiwan is slow, we haven't changed the name yet!)

I survived the typhoon everyone! :-D It really wasn't that bad, it's not like Taipei hasn't gone through typhoons before, the city is built for it.

Actually, before I say anything else, I want to mention the gas explosion in Gaoxiong you might have heard on the news. It happened at 5 this morning local time; about 30 people were outright killed by it, another 300 injured and a decent chunk of Gaoxiong is on fire. As far as I know, no brothers or sisters were injured in the blast, and it appears to have been an accident rather than terrorism. And of course, Taipei is 400 miles to the north, so we're totally safe. Please keep those people injured in the blast, and their family members, in your prayers.

Also of note: I'm famous now.

My co-famous people, Jessica and Joel

Last Tuesday we three were asked to take part in a Taiwanese commercial for fish sauce, which of course we agreed to. None of us had ever done anything like this before, and we didn't get any real instructions on how to prepare- I was told "dress like a European tourist"- so we just did our best to look actor-y.

They sent a bus to pick us up on Tuesday afternoon and drove us to a town about an hour away called Sanxia, where they were busy building a set inside a rented coffee shop.

I think the "My Little Pony" dolls are a nice touch.

First, they called Joel and two other Taiwanese people up. They set the stage to appear to be a traditional Chinese dinner arrangement- people kneeling on cushions around a low table, eating from communal bowls. I'm pretty sure Joel also got a fake girlfriend for the commercial, too, but she didn't talk much so it's impossible to say for sure.

They basically just wanted Joel and his table to enthusiastically dig in while looking very happy. They had them "start eating" five or six times, taking different angles and correcting small things, then handed them this sign: 

The sauce was ok.

They had to say "Taiwan No.1 Sauce!" in unison and in the exact same way. However, the two Taiwanese people had really thick accents, and there wasn't much to be done about that... so Joel also had to affect a Taiwanese accent or else sound out of place!

Then it was our turn.

The boss setting things up

The premise was the same, but there was four of us instead of three, and it looked like we were at a restaurant. We had a short script: The Taiwanese guy across from me would invite us all to eat (in Chinese), and say there was plenty more. Jessica and I thanked him, and enthusiastically took food. I asked him what the sauce was, he said the name (Niu Tou Jiang) and said it was very famous in Taiwan. I dipped some food in it, ate and looked happy.

Or inquisitive, 都可以.

They did it a few times, got a couple close up reaction shots (awkward to ignore the camera being that close, but really funny), then handed us our very own sign!

I...guess?

These guys had better accents, so it wasn't as funny for us. Oh well! It was an interesting afternoon, we got paid for our time, and the boss said he might have more jobs for us in the future. Not bad!

That night, Typhoon Matmo struck Taipei. The wind was incredible, the rain poured down in sheets and the lightning was nonstop- very awe-inspiring! Joel was a bit worried about his place, and he didn't want to get stuck so far away from everyone if there were problems, so he stayed with us that night. Taipei cancelled work the next day, Wednesday, because of safety concerns, so no one could go to work or school- vacation day! And since none of us had to do anything that day, we stayed up late watching movies, and in the morning did this:

Best brunch ever.

Simple, but delicious. We ended up slowly cooking and eating food while chatting until like 3pm, and by then the typhoon had died down enough to poke our heads outside and look at the damage. Some trees fell down, lots of branches, some motorcycles had been swept into the street, and lots of tiles had been knocked off buildings- we figured that last one would be the most dangerous thing during the typhoon! But only one person died from the typhoon, a tourist who went onto the beach to get good pictures of it making landfall.

Last weekend was also, as you may have guessed from the title, our District Assembly- the last one we'll probably have! (After this they'll turn into Regional Conventions, and I think they already have in most of the world.) Ours was for the entire north half of Taiwan, held in a city called Zhubei, on the western coast. Because many of us don't have cars, we worked together to rent a few buses to take us to and from the convention site each day, about an hour and a half each way.

Arriving! The bus was cramped for us Westerners, but at least it was cheap!

The convention was held at an arena, and although it had a section for Chinese Sign Language and one of the indigenous Taiwanese languages, 阿美語, there was no English. Surprisingly, that was ok; I could understand way more than I was expecting to! 

Convention!

The programs were all really nice, very encouraging. I especially liked the opening symposium on Sunday! Obviously I can't say too much for fear of spoilers :-) There was no A/C on Friday which was killer, but they had it fixed by Saturday.

At the end of the program, leaving was interesting. We weren't the only ones to rent a bus, and we all had to group together to board the buses in waves. Which led to this mess: 

So many people!

It was chaos, with people milling around trying to find their group leader so they could board the bus. No one knew where they were going, there were no lights, and it got worse when a few people drove their motorcycles through the mess (Why?!). That only happened on Friday, though; on Saturday they had made alternate arrangements so it wasn't quite so crazy.

Also on Saturday, Jerry got baptized! Although this means we can't count time for our family study anymore, we're still incredibly happy for him. The baptism pool we rented out was literally a swimming pool, and we didn't rent the whole thing, only one lane. 

Note the guy swimming laps in the back

A decent crowd turned out to watch- no video this time, so if you wanted to see it you had to come in person

Jerry was so happy! I asked him if he felt any different now that he's been officially baptized- he said no, not really, but he feels like he belongs with us now, where before he was just kind of tagging along.

Jerry's hair is still wet!

That night, a large group of us went out to sushi, and of course treated Jerry.

Real wasabi! My stomach is happy while my face burns!

Oh, also, I've forgotten to mention one person: Everyone, meet Tom.

Hi Tom!

Tom is Joe's friend from Yorkshire. He moved in with us last Thursday night, and he's only planning to be in Taiwan for one month. He has only been studying Chinese for one month, but he's already making good progress, and he hopes that spending a month in Taiwan will give him a jump start in the language and help him to be effective in the ministry faster. He's welcome to stay with us- since Joe is paying his share of the rent still, he's helping out by cleaning our house and stuff, and since he's a contractor he says he'll do some work for us for free! Awesome!

Also, Terry Miller is back. He spend a month in Germany and England, attending the Frankfurt Int'l Convention and then going on vacation- he hadn't left Taiwan in over seven years, so this was a long-overdue break! We're happy to have him back, though; it just wasn't the same. 

Everyone at the sushi dinner that night

During Sunday's lunch break we had the SKE meeting- this was the first meeting since the school changed to allow single sisters to apply. As a result, we had over 800 people attend the meeting! 

Look at all the people!

Unfortunately for me, they announced that Taiwan will not be having any foreign-language SKE classes for the foreseeable future, and if you want to attend in Chinese your Chinese must be exactly as good as an actual Taiwanese person... and mine isn't. We also cannot apply to our home country's SKE school from inside Taiwan; we must first go home, have our cards transferred back, then apply, so it's not exactly something you can do without a commitment of at least a few months. So for me, for now at least, I won't be applying to the school. If I end up serving in an English-speaking land, or my Chinese becomes incredibly good, I will reconsider.

It was a great convention overall. We had 6,243 people attend the Sunday meeting, and 209 people baptized in total. Excellent!

All of us bus people on Sunday, back in Taipei

And one last thing: This week, we were once again visited by our local rockstar Irinca, so naturally we threw a party for her. She says her assignment is going very well, and invited us to come visit her this winter, which I might try and do!

It got a little crazy :-)

And that's it for now! Next week is my Pioneer School, which I am super excited about. I'm a little nervous going through it in Chinese, but with Jehovah's help hopefully I will got a lot of benefit from it. I'm not certain how much I can post about it- when I was in Bethel, they were quite strict about recordings, pictures and such- but I will do my best to share a few encouraging things I learn if I can. Until then!