(It's a good thing, life is change!)
Change is a hard thing to get used to, sometimes. Many people fear change; anything that could change their lifestyle, or habits, or environment, or anything- is immediately bad, and must be avoided. Others love change; they bounce around from place to place, getting restless if they stay still for too long.
I think I'm somewhere in the middle. I do enjoy an adventure, which of course needs to have new experiences and encounters in it; at the same time, this is definitely a learned ability. It's always sad to see friends leave especially, even if you know they're going off to new and potentially better things. Still, as my little tiny superscript above said, life is change. If nothing changed, that wouldn't really be life, would it? Even memories change every time we access them, being updated with new connections and information. The real key is making sure you're changing in the right way, and the only way to be sure of that is to have some sort of guideline, a model to follow. Happily for us, Jehovah knows we need these things, and many examples are laid out in the Bible for us to follow.
One couple that recently left us here in Taipei are following those examples quite well. Cameron and Michelle took off to Myanmar a few days ago, going to their new assignment of Mandalay. This city has somewhere around 750,000 to 1 million Chinese people, but previously only had one Witness who could speak Chinese. So, now there are three!
The day before they left, Cameron had a public talk in the Taipei English congregation, so naturally many of us went to attend. This was actually the first time I have ever gone to the English here in Taiwan- I kept meaning to, but I've been busy enough with work and pioneering and my responsibilities in Chinese that I just hadn't made time to before.
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| English!!! |
They don't have their own standalone building like Taipei South does; instead, we've bought the fifth floor of a building in the north part of the city and fitted it out to be a Kingdom Hall. The English congregation is much smaller than Taipei South, with only about 80 people. The majority of the publishers are originally from the Philippines, but they've got brothers and sisters from all over- I even met a family from Zimbabwe who regularly attends Taipei English!
Cameron's talk was very good, all about technology and its proper place in our lives. The branch, as always, has a very balanced position- technology is good, and a very powerful tool, but it can't control you. I've gotta say, it was nice listening to the meeting in English. My Chinese is such that I can usually understand about 90% of what is said at meetings; however, when I want to comment, say, during the Watchtower study, it takes a decent amount of preparation and focus, which distracts me from the material being discussed. It was amazing being able to listen and think at the same time!
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| Cameron, teaching like a boss |
A little while afterwards, a bunch of us went over to their house and help them get stuff moved. They put most of their possessions up for sale, since Myanmar only lets them take one bag each with them. (side note: Myanmar has crazy rules, and they're very serious about them. You can't bring playing cards into the country on pain of imprisonment. Bikinis either. Foreigners are not allowed to stay in the same house as locals, under any circumstances. This last one was especially a headache!) Some of their stuff is pretty cool, so I asked about buying some- only to find that within minutes of it being posted, all but about three things were bought by the same sister, Alix from Minnesota. So we basically moved things from Cameron and Michelle's place to Alix's place for a few hours- happily, she lives nearby.
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| Also, Nikolai can play the didgeridoo. |
Maybe you can tell from Nikolai's coat in the above picture- it's gotten cold in Taipei! Well, colder than usual anyway. It's about 50 degrees Fahrenheit outside right now, around 12 degrees Celsius, which doesn't seem all that cold... but no one has heaters in any of the houses, so you're stuck with that temperature all the time.
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| Of course, there are ways to solve this problem. |
Two of our sisters were in no mood to complain, though- Angelica and Anica, the Swedish sisters, have also gone back home within the last couple weeks, and compared to Sweden Taiwan is downright balmy!
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| Sad happy face? |
We will miss them all. They're all going off to more service, of course- the great thing about change is that it keeps happening. No change is ever truly permanent. So if you don't like your current situation, just have faith that change will happen! Cameron and Michelle will do well in Myanmar- they've sent us some pictures, actually, and they are already doing well from the looks of things- and Angelica and Anica will do well in Sweden, assuming they don't freeze. The two sisters have plans to come back to Taiwan next year, once they've saved up some money. 加油!
It works both ways, of course. Some people leave, and others arrive. And when they do, we celebrate by eating!
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| 吃到飽喔! |
The sister on the left is just recently arrived, also from Minnesota- she and Alix knew each other back home, apparently. Not hard when your state only has like twenty people in it. Anyway, her name is Avery, and she's already having a good time!
Speaking of Averys, Joe appears to have good taste in cardigans:
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| Yeah, sure Joe, of course it wasn't on purpose |
Because he keeps matching with various sisters, who of course have good taste themselves.
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| Not fooling anyone, man |
At the very least, he makes up for it by being brave/crazy enough to walk out into traffic and preach to people sitting at a red light!
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| He took the tract, too! |
As opposed to Alix, who of course is just crazy.
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| I'd make fun of her raincoat/trash bag, but I totally have one too. |
While Cameron and Michelle, while they were here, dealt with the colder temperatures by adorably sharing a blanket while they walked down the road, that method isn't available to everyone.
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| Poor Jenice! |
When you're moving around on a bike, the cold is actually nice; but once you've been standing in one place for a few hours, it starts to get really cold!
This is, of course, at Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall; our ministry there is still going strong, with an average of ten books and twenty-thirty brochures placed every three-hour shift, and actually recently more and more people are signing up for a free Bible study! It really seems to help that we agree to use Skype or some form of video chat to study; many people are a little wary of random people just walking up to their door and talking to them, even if they signed up for that very thing. Having an alternate means of communication makes them feel a little safer, so more people agree to the study.
Of course, the regular ministry doesn't stop just because of a little cold or rain, either. A good umbrella is very important, though!
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| Look at them go! |
And of course, the cold makes it even more important that we do fun things together. (That's our excuse at least.) We haven't been able to play soccer lately because of the weather, so instead a few of us went over to Terry's house and cooked things!
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| Master chefs! |
Terry and I made handmade pizza, right down to the bread;
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| Master baker! |
Alix made amazingly good cookies;
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| Master taster! |
And Joe didn't make anything, but brought drinks and boosted our egos by complimenting the food a lot.
Oh, and here's a shot of the finished pizza, courtesy of Brandy:
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| It tasted as good as it looks. Seriously, why don't we do this more often? |
It was a fun night! Afterwards, we meant to play nerdy board games, but watched movies instead. If we did this instead of soccer more, we'd probably get fat, but every once in a while is fun!
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| ...is Alix okay? |
A few days after that, I gave my very first public talk in Chinese! And then I gave it again the next day! The topic was 行事忠義, Walk the Path of Righteousness, and although it undoubtedly wasn't the best talk anyone had ever heard, I think I did okay!
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| Taking pictures of people while they're speaking is funny. |
At the very least, no one died. I think. That's success right there!
I'll end this post with an amazing discovery I made recently. I was doing some return visits with my Taiwanese roommate, Cary, which of course means we were riding his motorcycle around the city. One of the things I like about motorcycles (and bicycles too) is that you get a chance to experience the things you pass- if it's cold, you're cold, if it's hot, you're hot, and if there's a delicious smell, you smell it. While driving past a new restaurant on the way to a call, I smelled an amazing smell: Chicken and waffles.
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| With sweet potato fries! |
Who would have thought Taipei had a chicken and waffle restaurant, of all things? But it does, at least, now it does. I didn't exactly eat chicken and waffles a whole lot back in America, but it suddenly sounded perfect, so after we had finished our ministry Cary and I drove back and ate some chicken on top of some waffles. Cary was bewildered by the combination, but had to admit it was pretty good!
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| Isn't it beautiful? |
So there we go! People left, people came, we all did new things, Joe can't cook apparently, and I found some soul food in Taipei. A pretty good time! It'll be the 1st of January pretty soon, and that means another great fireworks show from Taipei 101; I'll see what I can do to get some shots! Until next time...
