Ni Hao :)

Hong Kong a Success!
Thanks for praying for me and my trip to Hong Kong! By God's grace, I succeeded in my goal of obtaining a visitor's visa and safely making it back to Taipei. Additionally, I was bountifully blessed with an unexpected, uplifting time of fellowship with Clara's Aunt, who graciously volunteered to host me for my 1-day foray into the territory known as Hong Kong.

Initially, I was planning on sleeping at the airport, but when Clara's Aunt Vivien heard about that, she offered to take me in for the night. It turns out that she's a Christian, too! In God's providence, she is in between jobs (she had quit her previous job because they wanted her to do dishonest things) and so she was able to spare a day to help me. And how generous was her help towards me! She gave me a bed of my own to sleep on, let me use her bathroom, fed me, drove me to the consulate to apply for my visa, helped me exchange money, treated me to lunch at a dim sum restaurant, took me out for the rest of the day to look around HKG, bought me a drink, went back with me to get my visa, and then at the end of the day, she went on the bus with me all the way to the airport (it must've been over an hour each way for her) just to see me off. And we got to talk about spiritual things all day! Wow, thank you so much for your prayers!! Here are a couple pictures I snapped during the trip.


The view from Vivien's apartment. Hong Kong is just packed with people and buildings! The taller ones are the newer ones, which means that they're going to keep building higher for want of space.


In one of the malls of Hong Kong. Check out the long escalator filled with people and imagine how many people must be shopping there. Vivien told me about how Hong Kong is very materialistic and many people there are enslaved to beating their neighbors by buying expensive designer clothes. May God have mercy on them!


Work
We've all gotten many chances to share the gospel with various people who visit our church or happen to be loitering around on the NTU campus. Many seem interested in showing up, but few have been truly called by God and are willing to believe upon Jesus. We are constantly being reminded that salvation belongs to the Lord. We don't have any pictures of last week's gospel party, but here are some more details: This time, many unbelievers showed up (7 or 8?) and Jeff and Linda were the two who gave their testimonies (cute, eh?) To be honest, I teared up a little after hearing Linda's testimony because God is so brilliant. God is working out here in Taipei; thanks for your continued prayer for the work of evangelism. May we boldly preach to exalt Christ, not good works.

John and I are still looking for jobs. Please pray that we'd get hired by Dana (Happy Top Language School), Gina's former employer, because it's right next to where we live, which would enable us to save many hours, and she seems to be a good, lawful employer. We'll hear from her at the end of this month!


How are you serving the church?
Bryan and I currently serving on the praise team, and MattH started letting me lead the Saturday prayer meetings...please pray for me! And now John is serving on the finance team! He'll be in charge of reimbursement, reserving the basement, and TBM runs. Speaking of which...

Today, John and I went to the TBM building to exchange some money. Along the way, we came across a molten idol, and so I did what I had to do.




Daily Life...what do we do in our spare time?

Clara doesn't have much free time. She's really busy with her job. And she's a little shy about posting her pictures on the blog...


Bryan's been practicing his drum skills.


John's been visiting many, many relatives, designing many, many things for people, and teaching Bryan how to use Illustrator, Photoshop and Flash.



And yours truly has been learning a little Hebrew and working on memorizing Proverbs 31:10-31 in Hebrew while posting blog updates.



That's all for this time, folks. Feel free to ask us for a camera conversation. So far, no one's asked. Stay tuned for Leo's interview. :)