Don't Play Recklessly with Fireworks!

Last night as the Chinese New Year holidays continued, I braved the cold by walking down the street to a neighbor's house. The 5 kids there were waiting for me to watch them shoot off their fireworks... pretty sophisticated compared to anything I saw when I was a kid in the United States. They had invited me the previous night as well, but this night they were a little bit more wild in what they were doing.

At some point I looked across into the field across from where they were shooting to see a small fire some 20 yards into the distance across a ditch. I quickly alerted them and their mothers. It got big quick! Another guy called the fire department, who sent in two trucks which put out the fire before it could spread further south across the field in the heavy winds. One guy got injured slogging through the field. Hopefully he just turned an ankle.

Be sure to click here for my videos on my Chinese page. Too bad I only got the fire and not the small fireworks which proceeded it! The warmth from the fire sure made us forget about the winter chill.

Hmmm... my first Chinese New Year in the countryside. Much more interesting here than the city. :-) God's also been giving me lots of other opportunities to get to know others as well. My very kind neighbors to the right brought lots of delicious food over to see me through the week... never had that happen before in 10 years here. And others brought lots of snacks (some of which I ate and others of which I preferred to give away. Plus, I enjoyed a good time of worshipping the Lord with coworkers here in the store front of my home today... the neighbors were so curious!

As for the firecrackers, hopefully some lessons were learned about safety, but based upon interaction I had today I don't think so.  

Thoughts on 2nd Language Acquisition and Reaching the Working Class

Some time back I set out on a quest to begin acquiring a second language with which to interact with working class people in their mother tongue here in the country where I serve. Up to this point in time,having been studying part-time only 3-6 hours a week for a total of about 16 months, I'm still a way off from fluency.

Realizing that age is now a factor and that I am only allocated to study part-time as opposed to when I began learning Mandarin Chinese 10 years ago, I did not set very high goals initially. I figured that if I could interact with people out in the street in their heart language from time to time, that would be enough ("Listen to the foreigner. How cute. He can speak some Taiwanese!"). I could switch back to Mandarin most of the time when necessary as most people speak both. And when it comes to sharing about Christ, I can probably do that just in Mandarin as well (to be frank, my Mandarin's not so hot either).

Circumstances are forcing me to reexamine those suppositions:

1) Yesterday I went for a haircut in a local shop. Two elderly men were ahead of me but one of them insisted that I go first. Both men, as well as the older lady barber, were only able to speak Taiwanese. The barber's Mandarin was stronger but still not strong at all. After the first guy left, the other guy asked me several questions. One of them was the typical question I get here about Christianity and Catholicism because there is a large Catholic school nearby (but no viable Catholic church). But another had to do with Jesus. Sadly, I was not able to tell him about Jesus yet because I have yet to get that far in my Taiwanese! I'm reminded that God wants me to get to the point soon where I can not only handle daily conversation in Taiwanese (which I still cannot maintain for long), but definitely also share the whole gospel.... not just switch back over into the other language.

2) A few weeks ago, I had corrected my Mandarin message on the father figure in the story of the Prodigal Son. As I have been doing my last 2 messages, I then selected a few key sentences to sprinkle in a little Taiwanese in key places here and there. My teacher that hour, a charismatic Catholic believer, said that adding the Taiwanese, even though it was only 7 or 8 sentences in a full message, was a very big deal. Without it, he feels like he's sitting under the stern, strict mandatory Mandarin language  educational system instituted by the KMT which he sat under years ago in his childhood. The Taiwanese sentences, he says, make the tone much less formal, more interactive, more earthy.

3) One of my neighbors, an elderly lady, is illiterate. I can read much more Chinese than she can, and my reading skills are not so hot! What are the implications of reaching this kind of person when, say,  a short term team from an on-island church comes down next summer or winter vacation wanting to distribute tracts? She can understand a lot of Mandarin, but cannot speak much. And she reads even less.

4) Lately, my field director Tim Iverson has been quite thoughtful in volunteering his copy of Evangelical Missions Quarterly for me to read after he is done (I used to get it regularly until funds got tighter and the denomination had no choice but to make cuts in the missions budget). In the January 2008 EMQ, one particular article, "Event-speech as a Form of Missionary Communication", particularly relates to my countryside context. A house church pastor in Central ASia says: "If I stood up and gave a speech like you do in your Western churches, people would think I was crazy! No one would ever talk that way in real life." Rather than investing hours and hours of preparation time to deliver a speech that may or may not meet my listeners where they are (and which takes far longer for me to prepare than it would a native speaker), I should be prepared and expectant of the spontaneous opportunities to speak God's truth into peoples' lives in response to the questions and issues they raise and the divine appointments God sets. In fact, this is the context for most of the "sermons" that are recorded in scripture.

So what should "church" eventually look like here when we have one? Probably very different than the traditional Sunday sermon with a few hymns tacked on front and back. Another good reason to continue forging ahead with the 2nd language, and to trust God for national coworkers who have some insight and discernment to see past the traditional way of doing church in Chinese culture. No matter what, my Taiwanese will never be as good as theirs.

Wierdest Fix I've Come Across

My Acer Orbicam application, with the cam built into the laptop, had always came up "orbicam has stopped working" whenever I tried to invoke the software. The cam has always worked fine with other apps.

Because I want to try using the cam to project story books on the wall for kids who have been coming over to my house in greater frequency these days, I finally began looking for a fix. A quick google revealed the following solution: move all the pictures in your My Pictures folder out of the folder. Reinvoke the application. Satisfaction Guaranteed!

Low and Behold... I tried it with not a lot of expectation, but it worked!!! One of the strangest solutions I've ever come across. I wonder who found it, and how? Evidently it didn't come from Acer.

Discernment Lacking

I was up in Taipei last weekend and hadn't been around any people or been to any churches there for a while. It was interesting to hear that Joel Osteen is quite the rage in some places here as well as the US. One woman who comes to the English afternoon meeting at one of our churches is heavily involved elsewhere in leading meetings using his material at her regular church.

Sadly, as far as I am aware, Christian writers who cause readers to think (eg. Ravi Zacharias) have never been translated into Chinese and marketed in the Christian book stores. They just don't make money. I HOPE I am wrong here!

Yet on the other hand any number of "feel good" or prosperity gospel writers get translated. Binny Hinn and others are regular visitors to Taiwan.

I've only heard Joel Osteen once or twice so dare not issue a judgement. A writer friend of mine has visited him and approves of his ministry. But what I read on Trevin Wax's Kingdom People blog the same day as I heard about Osteen's upcoming Taiwan trip would express my gut reaction as well.

Why is discernment so lacking amongst those who flock by the thousands to "special meetings" here all the time? And where in mass market publication are writers who express a full, balanced gospel?

Beyond What We Can Imagine

I first saw him in the rear view mirror, coming up from nowhere as he dangerously weaved in and out of traffic on the three lane high speed freeway to the peril of the drivers around him. I was in the leftmost lane behind another car.

He sidled up on my right, but couldn't pass because of the other cars. As he crossed over into my lane, inches from the right side of my car, I blew the horn to move him back over.

A few seconds later, he had moved up and cut me off dangerously by only a few feet. I honked the horn again. To spite me, and only to spite me as by this time the car in front of us had moved further on, he slammed on his brakes so I had no choice but to hit mine. He then sped off, weaving dangerously and recklessly through all the other cars. He was gone in seconds.

Even though I knew there was no possibility of pursuing him in the car I was driving, nor did I honk the horn again, I entertained both of these possibilities, if only for a split second. Though the whole world is full of selfish drivers who put others at risk, where I live often seems far worse than the U.S. After all, someone needed to bless this person by instructing him in the art of safe driving!

I then tuned back into the message I was in the process of listening to on my mp3 player: Beyond What We Can Imagine, a spiritual assessment by Bruce Jackson. Bruce happened to be filling the pulpit at a church whose podcasts I frequently listen to while I'm driving on the highway. In this particular message Bruce encourages us to consider where we are heading spiritually as we head into the new year.

I kid you not-- this is what I heard in the split second after the car cut me off and slammed on his brakes: "One thing, if you drive, on the roads, during rush hour.... and someone cuts you off... When someone cuts me off, what's the disposition of my heart?.... " Even someone as dense as I can be gets the point when God speaks in such a clear and obvious way. The section on driving occurs about 1 1/2 minutes into the January 6 message linked above. Check it out!

Thanks God, for loving me so much that from time to time you speak miraculously like this. Some might merely dismiss it as coincidence.

Thank you too for the invitation to look into my heart again, and for another safe arrival to my intended destination. I'm reminded once again, whether it's in local driving on a scooter when a crazy driver narrowly misses me, or in highway incidents such as these, that You are in control, and that you desire to use the circumstances I encounter to change my heart.

"O LORD, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it. Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?  If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,  even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.... Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting..." (Psalm 139:1-10, 23-24)