Of all things to leave in the states, we left our camera charger there. So, sorry about the lack of photos of Taiwan. Our radical friends Paul and Trilby are sending us the charger soon though, so expect to see some pictures up soon.
In other news: we had an open house at the apartment tonight - tons of friends and acquaintances honored us by stopping by and spending time to catch up etc… We’ll be here for such a short time this go around, so we value every interaction and event that we are part of.
Speaking of events - I got to play a soccer game today and just had a great time. A friend Doug has a team he invited me to play for - we have a tournament next weekend in Kaosiung - 18 teams from around the island play.
Quick post to note something I finally understand that has always puzzled me about Chinese.
The term “chen mien” means _in front of_. As in the driver sits in the front of the car. The term “ho mien” means _in back of_, as in the yard is in back of the house.
The interesting thing is that the terms “chen” and “ho” are also used to qualify times. For example, “ho tien” means two days in the future, and “chen tien” means two days in the past. Something like _in two years_ is signified by “liang nian yi ho” where as _two years ago_ is “liang nian yi chen.” To be clear, the term for “in back of” is used to signify times in the future, whereas the term for “in front of” is used to signify times in the past.
I asked a Chinese friend about this and they responded by saying “well, when a thing is in front of us, we can see it. this is also the case with the past - we can see it clearly. When a thing is in back of us, it is out of our sight. this is also the case with the future - it is unseen and unknowable.” Interesting to me that my western-trained thinking would always put future events in the forward direction - or in front, and past events in the backwards direction - or in back.
Quick post to let everyone know we made it to Taiwan safe and sound. We are setup in a great apartment that has room for Hans’ office, rooms for the kids and a great living room that could host a Bible study or alpha course.
The kids are amped about being here - the first day after we got here, Malachi said “ok, I think I’d like to live here now.” The community of local and expat believers have truly been family to us - with their welcoming smiles and consistent desire to help us get settled in - thanks all!
One of the things that both Lana and I have remarked about after one week here is that everyone we have talked to from overseas (wai guo de) is here on faith - they felt that God had them come here and are following His lead in their daily life to understand the further revelation of His will for their lives.
Just updated the website. Used the same type of color scheme, but added a few more pages and a few pictures. We should be able to add onto this structure fairly easily for postings/data in the future.
If anyone has any comments, feel free to add them. I am by no means a web developer, and the layout/info/etc… may not be what folks are looking for or can easily navigate. Main thing I still have to add is an easy way for Lana to get volumes of pictures posted.
OK, so we decided on the name for the Oregon land - “Selah” “Selah” means a rest or a stopping place after a tulmultuous period in life.The land is kind of like that - away from the business of modern life and into an environment where there is time and grace to reflect, pray and create community.
I’ve been thinking about micro hydro lately - mostly because the stream is running fast at “the land” and the sky is always overcast. Many of the web resources on micro hydro are either “pay us to install a micro hydro system for you” or are about large-scale micro-hydro systems (village size) or use surplus parts for projects that are out of date. Why hasn’t anyone created a simple 2″ or 4″ pipe coupled unit that will just hook up to whatever resevoir/head is available and generate some type of power. Something plug and play that will generate an amp or two if configured properly.
Global opportunities seminar in the Portland Oregon area is being held on December 16th, 2006 at the Salmon Creek Four Square Church. http://www.globalopps.org/seminar/vancouverwa.htm
If you’ve ever been interested in using your job/vocation overseas in a missions capacity - come check it out.
