Date:  Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Day:  14 of 180

I guess I should tell you what my usual day looks like, though I should tell you that my schedule now is by no means set in stone.  It’s more like a card pyramid built on the San Francisco Bay Bridge, which is to say it’s fragile and easily blown over or changed.  So, we must speak of it in whispers so as to not startle it.  Right, anyways.  My week begins with Monday.  I love Monday.  Best day of the week.  Why, in all that is good and innocent would I love a day like Monday, you might ask?  Well, it’s my day off.  Technically, I work from Tuesday to Sunday, from 8 am to 3 pm and from 7 pm to 10 pm, every day.  Needlessly to say, I have a pretty busy work week.  Though in reality, work is not really the term I’d use to describe what I do.  What I would call is paid, play.  Maybe play isn’t the right word, but it’s definitely the furthest from work.

So basically work begins bright and early at 8:00 am every Tuesday through Friday with an all Member/Staff prayer meeting.  The exception this month is that the prayer meeting is accompanied or guided by a special prayer/fasting booklet to guide the congregation through the month of prayer and fasting—the goal of the month of July is to pray into action God so as to meet every need that has been brought to the attention of the church, whether congregational or ministerial, nothing is excluded.  One thing that I have found so awesome is that three times a year TLC’s (Truth Lutheran Church) staff and members devote themselves to prayer and fasting for the proceeding trimesters.  I have to say that the intimacy shared between the staff, pastors, and members is one of the most beautiful aspects of TLC.  Because they pray over every ministry and minister, everyone, from the Senior Pastor to the weekly attender, has intimate knowledge of every need that every ministry has expressed.  As a result of their practice of utter devotion and faithfulness through the practice of communal prayer and fasting, God has been faithful and gracious to bless their faith in His sovereignty to pray God-glorifying prayers and dream Kingdom-significant dreams.  It really is a testimony of Ask, you SHALL Receive; Seek, you WILL Find; and Knock, it WILL Opened.

Sometimes I feel like the American Church, on the whole, fails to practice the disciplines of a Spirit-driven, God-seeking faith.  We preach devotion and faith, but somehow we’re scared to put them into practice on the macro level.  Maybe we practice these Spiritual Disciplines (consistent reading of God’s WORD, Prayer, and Fasting) in secret, but when we take a risk to practice these disciplines as a public community of Saints, we call into action our Creator God.  While I do believe there is a place for a “personal” relationship with God, I believe with all my heart that a relationship with the God of the universe was never intended to bottled up and experienced on the individual level but was meant to publically experienced and worshipped.  Sorry coming across as maybe confrontational, but as you can see I’m quite passionate about the fact that our Faith should be experienced in community.  If you have any questions you should read Dietrich Bonheoffer’s book Life Together.  There Bonheoffer explains in detail the need for intimate, communal living in the life of a Christian.

Okay, where was I?  Oh, yes, my weekly schedule.  After the morning prayer meeting, this occurs every work day from Tuesday to Friday, Pastor Moses and Jonathan, my advisors, have decided that it would be pertinent to my growth and maturity that I take time to adapt to the culture and learn the intricacies of TLC before I decide what ministry I should devote my remaining months toward serving.  Therefore, my time after the prayer meeting until 3 pm in the afternoon could be spent in various interviews where I’m introduced to various pastors and ministries or out seeing different parts of Taipei with different pastors and staff visiting their specific ministry location.  If not those then I’m usually hanging out with Pastor Erich Robertson who I’ve chosen to call my handler.  He’s the pastor for the foreign nationals that attend TLC on a regular basis.  It his job to organize small groups and cell groups (basically like a small group but is made up of 3 or 4 small groups) into which foreigners could be integrated with English speaking Taiwanese TLC members.  The hope is that through these interracial relationships both the native and foreign members and regular attenders can experience God in a unique way.  The hope that the faiths of both parties can benefit from the differing theological and personal backgrounds represented within the small group and cell group.

So that is basically my morning to afternoon schedule.  Basically, I don’t even know what I’ll be doing each day.  For that reason, it makes for quite an exciting experience.  But what I have come to expect is that while I don’ know what will happen or what my future might look like, I know that God, My Father, He knows; and this, above all else, is what keeps this exciting, because I know He has something absolutely amazing planned for my stay in Taiwan.

As I conclude my blog post, I want to publically thank all of you who have been faithfully praying for me.  I could not survive each moment without your daily prayers.  I could not have the faith nor the patience to trust my God to provide without your prayers of spiritual protection.  Your prayers really are the lifeline on which my very well-being depends, thank you all.

                                                                                                    Living for Christ and His Kingdom,

                                                                                                                                                  David

Prayer Requests:

1)      Spiritual Protection:  pray that I might remain devoted to prayer as I seek God’s face in search for direction for my time here in Taipei.

2)      Spiritual Maturity: 

·         pray that God would use this experience in Taipei and TLC to expand my capacities to Love, both God and those that are less fortunate than myself

·         Pray that God’s Love for me would overflow in a bondless desire to serve and love for fatherless, widow, and orphan.

3)      Humility:  pray against my pride, I my job in TLC is to serve and my role is to learn.

4)      Direction:  pray that God would reveal to me what ministry I should devote my time to here in Taipei.

Date:  Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Day:  7 of 180 (so, I counted wrong the first time....this is awkward....)

Despite my most lazy efforts I’ve somehow managed to be talking to you a week from last.  Wow.  Good work procrastinating self.  Though before I move on with the update, I should revisit last week’s post and do some explaining.  Some of you have heard that story, others have not.  It was not my intention to force our relationship into a territory that you are not comfortable with; it was, however, my goal to give a testimony of God’s sovereignty and love during one of the lowest moments (though highest moment if you view it through God’s eyes) of my life.  Previously, I didn’t know how to answer the question regarding how I would sum up my Wheaton experience, since it depends on what my perspective should be.  Also I didn’t know how the casual conversation atmosphere would take my serious testimony, so a lot of times I chose to deflect, and I apologize.

My hope with that last post was 1) help myself verbalize what I have been feeling 2) give testimony to God’s grace, mercy, steadfast love, and sovereign control over all situations no matter how painful or frustrating they may seem to us.  Many passages in the Bible have been very helpful to me now that I find myself more dependent on God than ever in my life.  Some of them are:  Psalm 136, Romans 8, Ephesians 1:15—2:10, and Galatians 2:5-11.  I would encourage you to take the time to read the surrounding passages as well.  God has been so faithful, and I have found, through God’s grace, how to anxiously wait for God’s timing.  Despite what I think I know, God knows best; He knows all.  These passages have been an endless source of peace and comfort to me.  I pray they might be the same for you.

Well, it’s been one week since I’ve started.  Work is finally starting up, though the original plan as been tossed aside, which is good.  Originally, I was to be guided by Pastor Cho the Youth Ministries Pastor.  But when I arrived, and he accessed my initial limitations, he made the choice to move me to the Bilingual Ministries department under the guidance of Pastor Moses, which is a logical decision.  There I will be able to work on my Mandarin within a group of ABCs (American Bilingual Chinese) while still being able to have the option of using English, which is nice.

After being transferred to Pastor Moses’ leadership, he immediately thought it was prudent to extend my transition time to 2 months.  He doesn’t want to rush me into a ministry role before either I’m ready or my language skills are ready.  So he giving me 2 months to learn the system and the language.  During the 2 months, he is going to give me as many opportunities to try everything and have as much fun as possible. Learning the cultural intricacies and the language is hard enough; so he doesn’t want to burden me with an overloaded work schedule before I have found which ministry I want to devote my 6 months.  So the 2 months’ time will allow me to work on my language skills, adjust to the different culture, discover what my interests are, find out which ministry coincides with my interests, and have as much fun as possible.  Couldn’t be more perfect!

Overall, I’ve been adjusting quite well.  Though the first night was the hardest, writing about it definitely help me get over it emotionally.  Additionally, God has been faithful in His providence of relationships and opportunities to taste and savor the goodness of His Word during my down time.  Since that time, God has been amazing, helping me to find strength and hope in His WORD.  Those passages, previously listed, have been instrumental in my spiritual growth as of late.  It is amazing how alive the Bible is when you’re desperately trying to find comfort, hope, and peace within Its folds.

Relationships have been more difficult but with each new day bring a new relationship and new opportunity to experience God’s providential grace.  Your prayers have been instrumental, thank you.  Please continue to prayer that God might reveal what He wants me to get involved in during my time here in Taipei.

                                                                                                      Living and Hoping in Christ Jesus,

                                                                                                                                                  David

Prayer Requests:

1.)    Revelation of how to spend my 6 months here in Taipei

2.)    Roommates and Mine health.  There seems to be a cold wafting about here

3.)    Continue to pray that Mandarin would hasten to return to me.

The Great Begining

Date:  Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Day 1 of 173

Well, it’s my first night alone in Taipei’s Truth Lutheran’s College dorm.  And wouldn’t you have it, it’s my birthday.  I’m 22, today.  Wow.  22 years of God’s Faithfulness, Grace, Mercy, and Steadfast Love.  Isn’t it amazing that he chose this moment to begin my 6 months in Taipei?  What a gift.  Amazing experience, amazing lessons to be learned, an amazing opportunity to expand and stretch my faith—all start on my birthday.  I don’t know how to tell you.  Oh, where to begin?  Tears Or Joy?  Pain or ecstasy?  Loneliness?  Unspeakable sadness or unspeakable happiness?  This is where my faith becomes real, righ now.  This is when God appears—when I’m being brought low, when I’m the weakest and most saddened.  I have known this truth, this unbelievable reality.  Why don’t I feel excited?  Why am I not jumping for joy at the opportunity to serve the LORD?  Why am I so depressed?  Why I am so broken?  Of all people to know and understand God’s steadfast faithfulness and unwavering presence, it’s me.

How, you might ask.  Let me tell you.  Loneliness has been a reality in my life for much of my life, but not loneliness in the traditional sense.  because you see, I had many friends.  I didn’t have a problem with making friends, but for some reason out of my knowledge whenever, I’d make a lasting and deep friendship, God would chose to take me out of my comfort zone and place me somewhere new.  This happened at the end of Grade School, High School and College.  Each time God was teaching me valuable lessons in dependence, obedience, and faithfulness; but each time the pain became more and more unbearable, each relationship deeper and more valuable; and each lesson increasingly more endearing.  The most significant transition, besides the present, was when I graduated from High School.  Up until that time, I had become numerous deep friendships where we’d all encourage one another to pursue our relationship with God.  The most notable of these individuals being, Zachary Larson, Josh Daramola, Austen Dahmes, Mike Dehnboustel, Patrick Franzen, Kyra and Tahnee Brundell, Sarah and Megan Byron, Paul Willis, and Whitney Lowe.  All of these individuals, powerhouses of faith, mentioned and those left unmentioned, all endeavored to grow and stretch my faith.  Who knew that as an answer to all of our prayers to foster a new more real faith, God would chose to take me out of my comfort-zone and place my in an entirely new environment, called Wheaton College?

Needlessly to say, the first two years were emotionally lonely and temptations abounded.  All of my feelings of loneliness and isolation, despite my ever growing friend group, climaxed and exploded all around me my Senior year at Wheaton.  In late September, 2011, my Men’s Ultimate Frisbee College Open Club Team and I headed to Lafayette, Indian, to compete in a tournament near Purdue University.  The night before my life threatening incident, I shared a meal and a joyful evening with my dear friend, Mike Dehnboustel.  We had dinner at a local diner where we both ordered meaty burgers.  Jokingly, Mike suggested that I order a burger prepared with peanut butter then slathered with a peanut butter type sauce.  Casually I declined, but answered his innocent remark with my own stating that I should because it’d make our night way more exciting than it had been.  Little did I know that this hilarious interaction would play out later the next day.

That Sunday, the second day of our tournament, one of my teammate’s parents brought some chocolate chip cookies that had been prepared with walnuts.  When I was offered one, I asked if there were any peanuts in them or if they’d been prepared with any peanut oil—I had glossed over the fact that I’m deathly allergic to all nuts not just ground beans like the peanut.  The parent answered no, and thinking nothing of it, I picked one up and took an small bite not sure if I should believe him or not.  Oh how wrong I’d been!  Within seconds I knew right away that something was terribly wrong.  In an effort to prevent the worst, I ran to the nearest porta-potty to throw out the cookie and induce myself to vomit out the rest of its contents within my stomach, too late.  From the time it took to run to the porta-potty, vomit, then fast walk back to the playing field—2 minutes at most—swelling of my face, mouth, and upper throat/wind pipe had begun and had advanced quite quickly.  By the time I returned to the playing field swelling in my mouth and cheeks were pretty bad.  I asked the parent if he had any Benadryl to combat the swelling and the increasingly worse reaction I was having to the cookie.  When he ran to the car and returned with the bad news that he did not have any Benadryl with him, I began to contemplate a hospital trip and started to assess just how bad the reaction was—did I need to use my Epipen?

I asked one of my teammates to go get a trainer to see if they had any Benadryl handy.  When my teammate returned with the trainer, the trainer said that they were not allowed by policy to administer any medication to me because they could not be liable to any complications that may arise if they worsened the incident.  The only thing they could do is call for an ambulance.  At that point, approximately 15 minutes past the initial ingestion, my swelling and reaction to the walnuts had steadily advanced to point where I was starting to feeling light headed and nauscious (the beginning of a lowered blood pressure response my body was inducing to try to limit the spread of the allergen toxins that were starting to infect my blood stream) and requested that they call for the ambulance.  When I was being walked to the ambulance pick-up site, I was in a pretty bad place; and even though I was being lead to the spot, I felt out of it.  By the time the ambulance came, 45 minutes had past.  After a quick assessment, the medics decided that no matter what I said they were going to take me to the hospital no matter what I might have said.  Needless to say, I don’t think I would have refused!  Once on the ambulance, they immediately began an IV drip and then asked if I used my Epipen.  When I had told them that I hadn’t, they quickly gave me a 5 mg shot of Epi as opposed to the standard 3 mg.

I took approximately 5 minutes, 10 max, to reach the hospital.  Upon my arrival, the ER doctor assigned to my case quickly ordered another shot of Epi after looking at my vitals.  This was to be the stop-gap treatment before he could figure out the best course of action to both slow the spread of the toxins and prevent the dreaded post-drug reaction which could be 3x as bad and could be a fatal reaction.  This is due to the fact that once the steroids and other treatments wear off, if the toxins had not be removed or flushed from my system the reaction after would be body-wide and there would be little to nothing they could do if it was detected too late.  But in my case, since the initial reaction was already in the critical zone, the reaction being within 15 minutes (in my case it was less than 5 minutes), an after-treatment reaction could be so fast and so severe that they’d have no chance to treatment in time.  So they began a threefold treatment utilizing three types of steroids:  one lasting 6 hours, another would treat during the first night and through half of the second day—12 hours, and lastly the last treatment phase would be in pill form to last me two weeks—making sure there is no chance of an after treatment reaction.  The side-effects of all these steroids was drowsiness, so I took the week off after I returned to Wheaton College.

During my night in the hospital, I found myself wondering where was all of my friends?  I found myself both enjoying the company and amazing treatment and service that the ICU nurses gave me and questioning God’s design to leave me stranded and alone without anyone to hear me out and help get through this trial.  Not only did they basically bring back from the brink of death, but they also made sure that I had a way to get home, by organizing a cab to take me to the nearest train station and bought me a ticket on the only express train that day.  For this and so much more, I owe my life to those selfless angels that serve in Elizabeth Medical Center at Lafayette, Indian.

When I finally arrived at Union Station, I was elated but also thoroughly fatigued.  I was happy that I had arrived in Chicago, but disappointed that I still had an hour Metra ride before getting back in Wheaton, then needed to walk all the way to my dorm, MacEvans, in the center of campus.  I almost collapsed when I got to the counter to by my ticket home; I literally had to hold myself up using the counter.  Then gathering the last bit of energy I stumbled onto my train seconds before it left, success!  Then slept all the way back to my station at College Ave.  Another prayer got me to my first floor room on Evans 1.  Then after a phone call to my mother making sure she knew that I had returned to campus safely I took another good long nap.

When I woke up, the feeling of loneliness didn’t end.  Even though I was now with my closed friends I still didn’t feel emotionally content; in fact, I felt drained.  I felt tired of putting in all of the effort to develop friendships that didn’t seem to matter when I really needed them.  Slowly, ever so slowly, the friends closed to me appeared to distance themselves from me, at the moment when I needed them most.  I couldn’t believe it.  I spent hours up arguing and pleading with God to make himself known:  why did he use my college experience to teach me one lesson, loneliness?  I could think of any other lesson than that:  learning to deal with incredible loneliness in the midst of throngs of people.  It bothered me that on a campus that was so friendly and so kind that the friends that I had made who I thought I could depend on for spiritual, emotional, and relational sustenance had, at the moment of greatest need, seemed to feel the most distant and ignorant of all that I was dealing with emotionally, spiritually, and relationally.  During the day, I put on a face trying to hide the fact that everything was in fact not even close to being okay; praying that one of my friends would ask me how I was doing so I could tell them the truth—none did.  At night I cried myself to sleep wondering what I did to deserve such pain and torment.

Then one particularly terrible night, I remember leaving my dorm so that I would awake my roommate and walking to a park bench on Blanchard lawn (an open field in front of Wheaton’s infamous Blanchard Hall), I cried even more.  In between sobs, I began an earnest prayer that God would return to me.  I confessed of my spiritual adultery.  I had spent years looking in friendships for what God could only satisfy.  Then at my moment of deepest repentance, God answered my prayer in the most unexpected way.  I still don’t know what to make of it, but at that moment, a skunk waddled up looked up at me with the most comforting eyes and put a paw on my leg, almost as if saying, “it’s okay, God is here with you; God has been with you when you felt most alone; and He will never leave you.”

After that moment, God slowly brought back each and every individual friendship and ever so slowly mended, repaired, and matured each friendship even as I began to learn the place in life that friends have when compared to theFriendship.  But now after learning yet another lesson on loneliness God as chosen to do the same thing, this time on another level: literal physical separation from all relational ties.  But even now when I feel so alone, I am slowly being revealed to small glimpses of God’s blessings:  I still have my aunt and her family here in Taipei, the Pastor that I’m interning under is has been Christ-like in his willingness to accommodate me and make sure I learn all I want to learn, and lastly and most surprisingly the only roommate that is present during the summer plays Ultimate Frisbee!!!  God is still active, though I am alone.  Though I mourn for past happenings, God is present with me past and future.  God is my present, this birthday.  What a gift.  I suddenly feel so unworthy of this gift.

                                                                                                        Living for His Glory and My Joy,

                                                                                                                                                  David

After returning from our family vacation to China, I've been thinking a lot about the vast differences that become so apparent as soon as you step off the plane at the airport.  I won't delve into the specifics of the perceived differences by nature that you should really see this for yourself, but what I will say is that there appears, at least to me, a surprising lack of common courtesy and patience when it comes to everyday interactions.  I say surprising because it really is surprising.  Considering that China is a nation that claims to be on the cusp of the 21st Century technological advances in both civil and experimental realms of development, it is still very much backward in reality.  Virtues such as love, patience, kindness, and self-control are all lacking when you sit and watch Chinese citizens interact on a daily basis.  For a country that recently announced it's first trip into Space it is quite disappointing that despite it's technological improvements, China still as much to learn when it comes to cultural maturity.

Contrast this with Taiwan, and the differences are startling.  Though its citizens are urgent, which modernized western influenced country isn't, they behave ever so calm and collected.  I've never seen another city more clean, more organized, and more courteous to newcomers than Taipei, its capitol.  Cities like Tokyo and Singapore come to mind, though Taiwan is different, and it's the people that make all the difference.  Here in Taiwan the people are so kind and patient.  They remind me of Chicago where the people, though seem urgent, always have time to help a lost traveler.  The same is true in Taiwan.  If it seems as though I'm repeating myself I apologize, but it's true the people here are just simply great.  Taipei seems way more mature and grown up than Beijing or Shanghai.  To me, China could be summed up by this analogy:  China could be likened to a neglected sibling, who spends much of his life being overlooked by an overachieving brothers and sisters (read: Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea--the Four Dragons of Asia), and after years of being ignored he is now trying to get the parents attention (read: the West) by jumping up and down in a fancy clown outfit.

Yes, China may have one of the strongest emerging economies in the World. Yes, China has the largest number of citizens that make well over 50 million dollars a year.  Yes, China has the largest number of large, wealthy, booming cities in the world.  Yes, in terms of technological advance, China is second to none.  China has all of these and more, but the one thing it has failed to achieve is a mature and active middle class.  While you could argue that life could be summed up as a conflict between the "have's" and "have not's," this is a better analogy of China, whose advances economically thus far have failed to improve the social and moral aspects of the culture as a whole.  Driving in any one  of China's major cities is like driving in Ghana or Mexico City not a modern developed city as it would appear.  China has all the riches, all outward appearances of success, all that money could bring to a society, but none of the virtues that  Greek philosophers waxed poetically that all advanced cultures must attain to be truly developed and mature.  As a result all of China's shouting and attention-getting is fast getting annoying, despite their best efforts.

This is merely my commentary on how China appears to me.  There are much more positives than I let on here, but this is the general trend, because of the unfortunate event known as the Cultural Revolution.  This could be best explain as the not-baby-boom-generations.  Whereas in America it received a period of societal and cultural growth after WW2 that led it to become the strongest most powerful and wealthy nations in the world, China on the other hand experienced the exact opposite.  Towards the end the 80s, Mao was losing some of his control and in an attempt to regain control he triggered what would be now called The Cultural Revolution in the youth and young people of China.  Everything of established knowledge--books, professors, societal professionals, learned scholars of all kinds--were captured and quickly destroyed (books) or put on trial and sentenced to life in labor camps or executed. During this time, Mao closed China's borders and expelled all foreign nationals, effectively isolating China from the rest of the world.  That was 20 years ago.  In the most recent 12 years, China's advances have become extraordinary, but the sad antithesis to all of this success is the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor, and wouldn't you know it China has on of the largest.  In a country full of superlatives this is the one that stands out to me.

Well this is all for now.  I apologize for not writing sooner, but well that's the past.  And I promise for more regular postings.  :)