Friday, September 28, 2012

New Asian Friends in Lincoln, Nebraska

Last Monday I hopped a ride down to Lincoln, Nebraska, where I’m  visiting and speaking for the next couple of weeks. To my surprise, when I got out of the car in front of the home of my host family, I was greeted by a man with Taiwanese ancestry—the first I’ve met in Iowa or Nebraska.

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Kevin is a cancer doctor at an area hospital. His wife Maybelle, a Filipino American, is a PA (physician’s assistant) in another location. Both Kevin and Maybelle are faithfully living out the call to “Be Light” in the marketplace.

Kevin invited me to “job shadow” with him yesterday, visiting  patients and hanging out in his office at the radiology clinic. As you can see, he’s a huge Jeremy Lin fan!

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Read more about Kevin and his Taiwanese roots on page 23 of this article about Lincoln’s 20 Under 40.

Also, for anyone interested in leaning more about cancer, Kevin highly recommends the recent bestseller The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee.

Besides church meetings and meals, other activities I enjoyed this week included taking Kevin and Maybelle’s friendly pit-bull Laoban 老闆 (Mandarin Chinese for “boss”) for an hour-long walk while his owners were working. LaoBan pulls very hard on the leash!

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IMG_1611Thursday night after basketball with a few men from the church and community, we enjoyed some Vietnamese-style sandwiches, bubble tea, and coffee!IMG_1613

Monday, September 24, 2012

Charles City, Iowa

Last Friday I rode 6 hours from Nebraska to visit friends here in Charles City and Nashua, Iowa. Last year and on several other previous occasions, they  visited us in Taiwan.

Last year back in Taiwan my neighbor and friend Mr. Ding had drawn and presented this picture of a dragon to Sheila. She and her husband  since purchased a box for it and put it on the shelf in their house in Iowa.

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Also last night, we passed by the famous country church below.

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Tomorrow, westward to Lincoln, Nebraska!