Friday, January 2, 2015

Sorry I'm Late, Or am I... (Duh, Duh, Duhhh)

Well, here's the thing... I went to Taiwan, oh, about a month ago (maybe more...) and after I finished and came back home I promised myself I would write a new post describing the trip. You know, this blog is supposed to be about my time in Taiwan. So, here it is... I'm sorry, I am a scatterbrain, a magpie mind, head-in-clouds, day dreamer, where was I... Oh, yeah! I have ADHD. I should try to stay on subject.

Anyway, it was a really fun trip, extremely refreshing. I really didn't have a whole lot planed, just a few things: Go out in service a lot, plan ahead for when I move back, re-unite with all the people I knew last time but couldn't communicate with, spend a lot of time with the congregation, meet as many new people as possible. I did all of these things very easily. At first it was a little difficult. You see when I was looking for a place to stay before I went to Taiwan I was asking around for a place to stay. I did find a place, but it was a little out of the way. The longest it took me to get down to my friend's house was 1 hour unfortunately. I did borrow a bike to make the trip shorter I was going to borrow a bike, but I biked to service one day and it took 30 minutes and I lost my deluxe bible, plus I almost got hit three times in 5 minutes. But about a week into the trip something unexpected happened. You see, the brothers who helped me set this trip up rercommended this place to me because they said one of the brothers at this appartment was going to be gone for a while and his space would be free. But after a week of me being there he moved back in. It was a little awekward and no one wanted to tell me it wasn't going to work out but I just decided to find a new place. I slept on Dylan's(remember him from tangdetaiwan.blogspot.com?) floor in my old place for a few nights then moved into a little hostile run buy a sister. Those places were much closer to the territory and made spending time with the friends much easier.

Anyway I think it's time to show off some pictures. I was going to do this in two parts, but honestly if I don't finish this here it will never get done.

As I said before one of my only plans was to go out in service a bunch, and a bunch I did...
An old but favorite spot

Me lost. They really shouldn't leave me with a minor

Where's Waldo: British and American Extension pack
The joke about British Waldo above is for the benefit of the brother on my left(picture wise). He is Dylan's new roommate from Britain. He is a really nice guy and probably the tallest man in Taiwan.

It wasn't just door to door I got to do though, the friends from Taipei south, my old hall, recently have had a huge success doing table witnessing at a famous tourist spot called the Chang Kai Shak Memorial Hall (I probably won't spell check that either). They have a very hard time keeping their books stocked up. If I counted right one day the friends at the table placed a combined total of over 40 books! There were a lot of really cool experiences there too. A Taiwanese lady from Georgia came up to us looking to expose how hypocritical Christians were. She at first was argumentative but as time went on and we showed her more and more real bible teachings from the scriptures she seemed to calm down. But when we showed her the "Why Study the Bible" video her attitude did a complete change and she ended up taking some books home with her. I even saw people practically get handed bible studies. I was working with two sisters from South Korea and two American sisters basically walked up to us and said, "Hey, this is our old Bible study, she is moving back here. Do you want to study with her?" After that we all talked, I translated, into Chinese not Korean;), the two sisters asked her what she wanted to learn about and got the girls contact info and just like that a new study. As a side note which ever one of them who counts the study could at that point have seven or eight bible studies. 

Then there was this...
I HAVE... A PIGEON!!!
One day while a group of Chinese tourists where coming through an old Chinese man taught me how to catch pigeons. I called this one Dylan:). Still, what I did paled in comparison to this...
This is Paul. British master of all things avian.
Although I really did not plan this, the Friday I arrived I was told we were going to have the one day Assembly that upcoming Sunday. This was obviously great new to me.

This was a really fun day. I understood quite a bit of the program, which is encouraging for me, but it was also quite nostalgic. About one full year before that picture was taken this picture was also taken.
This was the two day Assembly from the previous year. At that time I had also just got into town and was told I would get to go to the Assembly. Just about one full year ago. Perhaps you all also have pictures like this. The ones where you look into them and see so much different and so much the same. Take the assembly hall for example, some of the people in it are the same people you know and love but quite a few are missing. And then you look at yourself. You look very similar but you know you are not the same person in both pictures. It is eerie but beautiful at the same time. It makes me think of just how long it has been since I took a step into Macedonia, maybe not in time, but in growth.

This was a very typical feeling through the trip but there wasn't a whole lot of time to be nostalgic. Two sisters who have since had to move, Aika and Chihiro, had two friends from an English congregation in Okinawa visiting Taiwan. Dylan was free so he took me along with him to help them out for an afternoon.
What better way to help out than with shaved ice?
They were pretty fun. They were both studying English so even though they didn't speak Chinese the conversation kept going. We went to eat and told all of our weirdest stories since we joined a foreign language. I even learned some Japanese. We at some shaved ice afterwards and gave them directions to where they wanted to go next.
They also thought it was funny how easily I sunburn.
There was a bit of tragedy as well. A sister who had been battling cancer for a number of years passed away while I was there. Although she was very young she was very encouraging to her family the whole time. She, her mom, and her sister were at meeting whenever they could be. The real encouraging part though was her father. He always thought that it was strange for his family to what to go and study the bible and never went to the hall once. Her funeral was the first time he went to the hall. I could tell the shock on his face and her other relatives when they saw just how many people showed up for the funeral. The hall she went to had a base of 145 publishers but it wasn't just them who came. It was all of the people she met through the truth. In a hall that fit over 150 people in it rows of people lined the walls and empty spaces in the hall. I never got a figure on how many were there, but the support was enough to bring the father to tears. It truly was a great witness.


I had met two friends the last time I was in Taiwan named Cameron and Michelle. The had come in around the same time I did. They are from Reno, Nevada and we share a common friend that works at Wallkill, Bethal. I had just found out that they were going to move to Myanmar of all places. Since I realized I came just in time to say goodbye to them I spent some time hanging out with them. We made a trip to Costco, played board games a couple of nights and I invited them to a party I through together(but more on that later...).
Lots of Catan that night.

Aren't they just the cutest?
I think what they are doing is really cool. The group they are supporting in Chinese now has only three people who can speak Chinese(this includes them) and they have to leave quite a lot behind to go there. But it is so cool to have friends like this that just go into new assignments full force. I will miss them but I am very proud of them at the same time.

I was very happy to reconnect with all of my old friends, but being as how Taipei South Congregation always has multiple people coming in and out I got to meet some new friends. And yes, we did goof off a bit.
Dylan's Mandolin serenade.



I think this happened sometime after midnight.

Beware the Creepers...

The less than Adequate Spider-Man? 

Forced Selfy also known as Selfy-Assault 

There were so many new people to meet. Brothers and Sisters from all over: Swedish, Korean, Japanese, Canadian(too much Canadian;)), tons of Brits, new Americans you name them we got them. I had so much fun seeing all them. Some have already left as I write this but I know I will see probably see them all again one way or the other. Just about every night we all did something fun. But, in my opinion, the most fun I had was the Running Man night!

Ok, here is the background. In Taiwan there is a very famous variety show from South Korea called "Running Man". It is a kind of urban variety show were the contestants run around town to try and find puzzles to solve, games to win, or other teams to mess up. It is really fun to watch and I always thought, "Wow, that would make a great party." There aren't a whole lot of good places to do it here in Nebraska but I could think of a couple in Taiwan. I pitched the idea to a bunch of friends to see what they thought and all of them wanted to do it. All in all 14 people showed up.
...In none other than Da'an Park!

The games worked like this; For the first game I would randomly divide everyone into two teams and we would play Treasure Hunt Charades. I had written out a bunch of Bible based charades and hid them around the park. The first team to find ten and bring them back to me and act out there charade won and got to add me to there team. So after the first game the teams looked like this.
Team Black from left to right:
Michelle, Mason, Hanjik, Clara, Anica, Brandy, and Joe



Team White from left to right:
Angelica, Dylan, Cameron, Carry, Jenice, Chloe, and Ayaha

Team Black's backsides.


Team White's backsides.
But before we started the second game we had two sisters, Clara and Chloe Im, bring us some chocolate cake to eat. Isn't that sweet?
Awe...
Since there were 14 of us slicing the cake up seemed difficult. I used a cool method I learned a while back. If your interested here it is http://youtu.be/wBU9N35ZHIw. I got some grief for it, but by the time I was done there was so much left over we could even finish it. Mathematical!

So our second game we played was Jingle Bell Hide and Seek. This variation was that all of the Seekers had to wear bells around there ankles. This way as a Hider was slinking around in the dark they could hear the terrifying sound of ding ding ding ding as their Seeker foe was about to get them. Everyone had name tags on their backs and in order to get someone out you had to tear it off their backs. After the Seeker gave it back to you the Hiders had to go sit in Jail. 
Poor Angelica and Jenice were the first ones out...
The goal for the Seekers was to get 5 out 7 Hiders to Jail and the goal of the Hiders was to get 5 out of 7 back to base (which was jail but with their name tags still on their backs). Black Team got to go first. I thought that 30 minutes was a good amount of time to play the first game so I told everyone to keep track and go back to base after 30 minutes. Dylan did not have his phone on him so I said to use your best judgement in keeping track of time.

After the fist game was over Black had won. We waited around for everyone to get back and play again. Dylan was late so we sent some people out to look for him and played a quick game of NINJA! Still no one could find him. We ended up deciding to play again by switching spots from Seekers to Hiders and hopefully Dylan would either be found or would come back. 

The second game was pretty epic. I got chased by Cameron who is pretty stinking fast. I barely made it to base and almost had a heart attack. The sound of bells jingling towards you in the dark is absolutely terrifying. We ended up winning that game too but still no Dylan.

It was getting pretty late and he still hadn't come back so we were pretty worried(what if he tried to climb a tree and fell and hit his head? What if someone shanked him in the park?) So I had all 13 of us spread out into a thin line and do a full comb of the park while shouting for him. Whoever found him was to call everyone else and meet up somewhere else. This park was huge by the way. If you run along the outside of it in one lap you can cover a mile and a half. Finally I got a call from someone who had found him. He had been hiding in a tree for 2 hours. To hear his side of the story read his blog post Too Much Fun on tangdetaiwan.blogspot.com. 

Afterwards some of us were tired and wanted to go home and some of us were hungry and wanted to go eat. Carry recommend an awesome Taiwanese family style restaurant to us. It was quite tasty. A great way to end the night.
Carry took the picture. You I don't really have any good pictures of him.
He is like some sort of face-less hero.
The next day I spent with some friend in a park. Then I returned everything I had borrowed and got ready to leave the next morning. 
I sent this picture out to everyone before I left.
It really was a great trip. Very fulfilling and very refreshing. As I said I did everything I wanted to do. I found out some potential places to stay when I move back. I know Taiwan will change some more when I return but that is just half of the fun. If anyone from I know over there is reading this thanks for all the memories and I hope to see you again soon.

















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