I AM HOME :)

Yes I have made it home. Sorry it has taken so long to write. I have been thinking about you all and I am so thankful for all your payers.

I have to say that I love OMF. They take such great care of all of their missionaries short term and long term. In the beginning I was not sure why we had to do a weeks orientation before we even started. Now I know, You enter slowly and then when you leave you have to leave slowly. While I was there I was so comfortable. Of course the heat was something to be desired but you know you can't have everything!

Yes this is a long time coming. I feel like a bad missionary cuz I have not done an update until now. This blog was started on the 6th but am now finishing it on the 26th. Twenty days is not too bad :(

I am trying to take one day at a time. I have started reading the book "Dead Women Walking". It is such a good book so far.

I am looking forward to doing a movie with all my pics. When I get it done I will see if I can put it on here so that You all can see the pics. They say so much :)

Well I am going to get off now and publish this so that I can start another one about something else that is going on.

The Long awaited blog :)

Sorry it has been so long :) I wanted to do one everyday but God knows that that here there is just not enough time in the day.

Where to begin.....Okay so the last post I posted I talked about the Fu-Ming Community Center. What a way to get our feet wet in the culture and the kids. God really showed us the wonderful hospitality that these people have. There heart is soo big. One of the ladies Sophia gave me some spring tea candy. Uhh it was so wonderful

The women there did not want me to leave. One of them wanted to come home with me so that she could practice her English. I told her that I would love to come next year Lord willing of course.

One of the biggest challenges, of course, was the language. We took a taxi every morning to the center. It was very hard to communicate to the taxi drivers where we needed to go. We did alot of hand signals and laughed alot! One of the most memorable taxi rides was when the taxi driver started singing to us! It was great :)

I have a greater appreciation for teachers now. We had to prepare our lessons ourselves for class. That is something I have never done before. We spent a couple days preparing games and English lessons. We had a lot of fun coming up with games that the kids could learn English and have fun at the same time.

The weather has taken some time to get used to. When I first got here the humidity was just unbearable. I was not used to sweating all day everyday. I sweat in places that I did not know you could sweat :) I have now just understood that I am going to be sweaty and sticky and that is just part of life here. It gets up to like 98 or so everyday, with the humidity it is like 104 to 110. Every house has an air conditioner in every room! The air conditioning has helped keep it bearable inside. I have now become used to the humidity and am wondering how my body is going to acclimate when I get home.

We walk pretty much everywhere we go so I know that I am getting my exercise:) It is such a nice place to be. The people here are so very friendly and they take the fact that we are foreigners with compassion and they really help us learn the language.

One of the things here I really enjoy is the night markets. They are so wonderful and oh the smells of food. I have found that food here is not what it seems, and they eat EVERY part of the animal....cartridge, feet, ankles everything!!!!! I think the thing that I learned the most about the food is to always taste it before you say you want some and .............DON'T ask what it is .

Teaching at the Fuming Community Center

We have been teaching at the Fuming Community center for the last couple of days and it has been really nice. It is good to see that kids are kids no matter where you are in the world!

They are alot of fun. It is so hard to see some of the girls that come in with sca
rs on their legs either from bug bites or burns. It just breaks my heart!

I got to help yesterday with the grades 3 and 4. That group seems to be growing by leaps and bounds. They are picking up English quite easily.

It has been nice a group of students have dedicated their time to come and help translate English to Chinese, as none of us really know enough Chinese yet to know what these kids are saying.

The gentleman at the bottom in the green shirt is actually from the neighborhood. The neighborhood is the poorest of the poor and it is so hard to get out. It is like people don't want to come to this part of the city to help the people that need it so there is never really a chance to get out and possibly have a better life.

Today I had the chance to sit down and help some of the mothers and help them with some of their conversational English. It was very hard for me to leave. Just one day with them and I have grown so fond of each of them. We have decided that we are going to do a trade, they teach me Chinese and I will teach them English.

I know that it is going to be VERY hard for me to leave here. I know that one day I will return :)

Day One Two and Three in Taipei Tawain

The last couple of days have been very interesting. It is very strange to go to a different country where you don't speak the language. The first day was pretty much just getting acclimated and getting some sleep. The plane that I flew in was the biggest plane that I have ever seen, and the most comfortable!!! The flight was a little bumpy but hey nothing in life goes too smoothly!!!!

Day two was A LOT of walking around and spending time outside in the culture. We are praying for rain!!! IT IS SOOO HUMID here uhhh I have never felt anything like it at all :) I have sent a link out with Day one and Day two's pictures. Uh it is so amazing here. I found it to be a littlechallenging because I don't know how to speak Chinese but I am learning :)

Day three (today) was the most moving and it totally has made me stand firm in the fact that THERE IS Spiritual Warfare.... it is very real... I have saw a side that most do not see. We went to a very famous temple Longshan Temple in Wanhua and it is just amazing the things that people will do and how much money they will spend to please their gods. Walking in there you can feel the spiritual heaviness.

We also got to visit the church that is started there called The Spring and oh what a name. It is located in a dark alley that is known for prostitution and homelessness and to top it all off............a single woman has been praying for these people and has been serving these people for 2 years. It has been a very emotional night! I will forever be changed by seeing what I have saw today. The people here are tied up in such a spiritual darkness it just breaks my heart.

Alot of what I see is just so hard to put into words. I mean the people that I saw sitting outside of The Spring, they were older gentleman that were homeless, some were so skinny that you could see their bones it is kind of like they were discarded like garbage, like they have nothing to offer anyone. The women here that work in the "tea houses" are women that are trying to get way from abusive husbands or who have been kicked out of their homes. They have no education and the only job they can get is prostitution. The age range is like 40 to 50 years old. it just breaks my heart that these woman have to turn to such self demeaning ways to support themselves. I am so glad that God had touched someone to serve them. A question keeps turning over and over in my mind...... if God called me to serve here with these people would I?????better yet could I?????

I know that this is just the beginning of what God has in store. I can't wait to see the children in the church camp and the community center where we are going to go and hang. It is a lot to process so I am sure that I will be writing more in the future.