Me Again

I am starting to feel like our cat. If you've seen my picture lately you know I'm not talking about the fuzzy part, rather I speak of his infrequent visits with our family. If you actually stop by here now and again you know what I mean. Like our cat though, please understand that there is a deep and underlying love for any of you who come here looking for a morsel of my attention. PURRRRRR.

Anyway, I will be late for work now so I will say what I came to say.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
My honest resolution is to frequent this blog (your collective laps so to speak) more often in the new year and help my wife with pertinent posts on our other blog. Look for a new post on one of them by the weekend. I have so much drivel to driv it is almost insane.

Back In K-Town

So after a week back in the lala land of the north I feel like I have ruefully re-acclimatised to the spiritual atmosphere here. Like globs of mayo on the sandwich of life this town saturates my spiritual arteries with its insipid life messages and self promoting ad slogans. The familiarity bred over the years has formed a conduit that means I must constantly be on guard or slip down the slope into a generally cynical point of view. This is not to say that Hong Kong is a spiritual oasis, far from it. Kelowna is only a microcosm of Hong Kong's insanity. The familiarity is the key. You know what they say about familiarity.

I am filled with an anticipation for what lies ahead though, daunting as it is. We have a lot of money to put together in a short time to cover the costs of getting our family over to HK and set up in an apartment. Having done this before we are thankfully aware of some of the pitfalls and hidden costs. We also have friends living there who moved out over a year ago and know full well what is necessary. They found the rental market to be astronomically different from here. In fact to rent their 750 square foot apartment cost them $56000 HKD for the first month due to all the common fees charged by landlords and agents. They will recoup a substantial portion of that when they move, but ouch, what a welcome.

There are also the hurdles of getting some extra schooling while still working so that the government will be satisfied that we are not there to steal their jobs. I will be doing Tuesday evenings and two Saturdays a month from November until March to get my TESOL certification. On top of this education we will tackle, once again, the task of learning Mandarin Chinese and teaching our kids until we can get a tutor in the spring.

Some folks do this kind of thing naturally and may see this as a pretty easy schedule, but we are fairly laid back people so this is quite a change for us.

In my next post I will go more into what the Zheng Sheng school is about and what role we will lay there. There is also a video that I will try to embed which gives an excellent and brief account of the school in its current state. I may even get this done before the weekend....will wonders never cease?

Oh yeah there should be pictures of my trip up very soon on our Flickr site.

Hello From HK

Hey all, this is me from Hong Kong. It has been a crazy 10 days here being with friends and checking out the Christian Zheng Sheng school on Lantau Island where I will be working in a year or so. I flew out here on Wednesday afternoon Kelowna time and arrived Thursday evening HK time after a 2 hour layover in Vancouver. First thing the next morning Mr. Chan whisked me away to go to Cheung Chau Island where we would catch a sampan to the school. We toured around and met a lot of the students and some of the staff members for about three or four hours and then returned to Cheung Chau to see the area where we may end up living when we come here. 

After that day I also have gone to the church my friends attend on the Kowloon side of Victoria Harbour and had a great time worshipping there. They have a great pastor, Sam Song, who is Korean and schooled extensively in the US. If you want to check their website it is at Solomon's Porch HK.

I have has a chance to see many sights here and I will post a link when I get back to a Flickr set from my trip. 

One of the cooler things (not according to the thermometer though) was staying for three days and two nights at the school. I had a great time connecting with the kids and meeting the staff. The facilities are very spartan so it added a new dimension to roughing it and I finally feel like I have tasted a small slice of the missionary life. I will give some more details in two separate posts to come, one on HK and one on the school. I need to go now though as I am meeting one last time with Mr. Chan and his boss Mr. Lam.

See you again soon.

Days Like These

I used to sing the tagline from a John Lennon song quite often just because it fit so well into my life. The line goes 'Nobody told me there be days like these/Most peculiar momma, whoa'. Most of the time I feel adrift in the waves of days going by wondering if the tethering line will ever tug me back and hold me in place for a season. Doesn't seem to happen that often though. It's not that I don't have aims or dreams, but it doesn't seem that I'm the one that shot the arrow at the target, rather I am the arrow. I rocket along through a life that passes quicker each day looking around to see what on earth I am supposed to hit. This shouldn't come as a surprise to me since I long ago left my life at the mercy of a God who is notorious for leaving out what I deem to be pertinent details and schedules. My wife and I both chose to submit our lives to the Father and let Him lead us rather than living our lives as we saw fit and hoping God would stamp His Okee Dokee on it all at the end. This has left us with a constant meandering as we try to descern His leading in the midst of all the flotsam and jetsam of our days. I know He will work it all out, it's just a little disconcerting at times.

Just a quick post to let you peek inside. I gotta get back to work.

(More later)

One Day At A Time

Sometimes it is so hard to just keep it simple. With all the stuff that comes at us every day it doesn't take much to set everything off balance. It may just be a case of taking on one more thing than is necessary or perhaps reaching too far in one direction. The reaching usually happens in one of three directions, forward, backward or up (down usually results in a seated or fetal posture so I won't include that here). From the off balance position things usually proceed to a full on falling position because if the situation is not rectified it is impossible to stay off balance for any length of time. Most of the time, for me, I feel as though I am falling forward. I reach out to try and take hold of the future and end up flat on my face. Lately it has been the whole dream of returning to China that has me unravelled. My boss even asked me how I would handle it if the teaching job falls through. I told him I would probably go into some kind of withdrawal for awhile.
Thing about grabbing for the future is that there is nothing of any substance there until it becomes today. There are things in the realm of faith that we can grab, but they are rarely to do with our schedules and expectations.
That is where I am at right now. If you hear a loud thud, that was just me again.

Can't Wait

Well, the time is drawing near for my trip to Hong Kong and I am finding that my mind is easily wandering off to all sorts of interesting places. It seems to show up a lot at work where I have to try and guard against mental meanderings all the time. It gets really bad when I am going to a job that is a 45 minute drive on the other side of the lake. It never seems to happen just before the last exit but rather just as I am pulling up to the customer's house. I am getting better at making myself busy and tying up loose ends I never thought of before, so perhaps there is an upside.

We just went to the airport today to say farewell to my buddy's wife as she was heading back home to Athens while he stays here to visit a few more days and that obviously got my brain going again. It is hard to keep it here.
We ponder quite often what it will be like to live on Cheung Chau island and walk a path so different from where we are now. There have been dreams, words and signs that God has given aplenty and yet it all seems so hard to believe.
I will write soon about some of the cool things that are pointing this out as the right direction and let you weigh them for yourselves.
Gotta run. Friends from Indonesia are arriving soon. So cool being part of the missions community.

New News

Alman Chan

Hey All, long time no blog. There has been some very cool rumblings happening in our lives lately so I thought I would blog them down.

As some of you may know we have had a strong desire to return to China since we left there in '04 to come back to Canada. We believe more than ever now that this desire is actually the call God has on us. The time to see it fulfilled seems to be drawing very nigh, and our excitement may finally surface from under the weight of caution.

In October of last year our friends who moved to Hong Kong met a gentleman who appears to be connected to both our destinies. His name is Alman Chan and he is the principal of the Christian Zheng Sheng school in Hong Kong. This school was founded 20 years ago by a man named Jacob Lam who followed the Lord by faith into a ministry of helping those ravaged by life on the streets and in gangs. There are many God stories surrounding this ministry and the faithfulness of our Father has been displayed daily. After hearing of this from our friends they also said that they had told Alman about our desire to return to China to work with the people there. He was excited about the possibility of having me teach carpentry skills to the boys at the school. He also thought my skills would be useful in helping to build and renovate the school and the orphanages they have on the mainland. With this vision in mind he was able to meet with us in Vancouver on the May long weekend during a promotional tour he was on with a group of his students. The meeting was absolutely wonderful and I was convinced that we had met a dear friend and most sincere man of God.

Since then we have awaited news from Alman regarding the possibility of us coming to work there in the near future. As we stayed in touch it became clear that we should arrange for a trip to Hong Kong for me to meet again with Alman as well as his boss, Mr. Lam. Alman agreed this would be best and so we set out to raise funds for the trip. The overall cost would be about $1800 with flight and food, etc. We sent out a support letter to friends and family to try to raise awareness, finances and especially prayer. This began the process of getting the funds in place to book the flight, but there was still a substantial amout we would need to cover ourselves.....or so we thought. God had other ideas. A couple I know from outside my normal relational circles got wind of our desire to get to Hong Kong and asked me if they could help. They suggested that if I did what amounted to an hour's work in their garage they would pay for my flights. After getting my mandible off the floor I enthusiastically agreed that this would be doable. Their generousity has continued to blow me away as they even offered to drive me to Vancouver if this would help keep the costs down for the trip. Now that the funding is in place and God has so clearly shown His enthusiasm for this undertaking I will be heading to HK in the early part of September for about 11 days. This trip will also include a trip to the mainland to see (and possibly assess) one of the orphanges there. This part of the trip will be with my buddy Steve who is very excited to have me out there. He said he would cover my costs for the flight to Fujian province so how could I say no.

So there it is in a nutshell. I will try to keep this blog a little more current and give some updates on what is happening with us so you don't all of a sudden find out I'm blogging from China again.

Cheers

It's A Small World

The sound of the neighborhood kids playing filled the air this afternoon as our new friends across the street entertained a small mob to commemorate their daughter's first birthday. The alley and the street were filled with cars and kids on bikes, a combination only so fluid on a day like this. There was so much fluidity about the afternoon there, and indeed our day as a whole.
This morning was spent with a dear friend as he said his last goodbyes to his mother at her funeral. He stands now as the last of his family since the passing of his mother, father and brother has occurred all in the last two and a half years. There was a gentle peace about the proceedings as the Lord had reassured our friend in several ways that his mother was safely home. At her internment, as they lowered the coffin into the ground there was a subtle scattering of sunlight, like a kiss, on an otherwise cloudy morning. It passed as quickly as it came, but it's memory will remain.
The funeral was read in German as well as English, and brought a few memories for me of my grandmother and grandfather and the community I knew so little of. It was nice to hear another language being spoken.
At the birthday party it was the same thing except the family there is from the Philippines. I was very touched by their hospitality and genuine enjoyment of each other and their kids. Normally these occasions are ones where the parents drop off their kids and enjoy a little free time on their own, not so here. Whole families were represented in this little back yard and everything moved and danced with life. So many smiles and so much laughter it was healing. I laughed the first public belly laugh I can remember in some time and it felt good.
I look forward every day to the time when we will return to a culture that is not our own, but for now I celebrate the fact that there is so much cultural diversity all around us and especially our kids. These days we cannot give our kids much materially, but there is such wealth seeded in them in their openness to others and their cultures. This makes me glad.

Fireplaces and Old Time Radio

My wife burned some Cd's for our trip to my Mom's place which takes about 3.5 hours. She chose some old time radio shows like a Family Home Theater production of Tom Sawyer. If you are familiar at all with these shows you know that most of them have been re-recorded off the old vinyl recordings from long ago. As we listened to the closing of the second story my 6 year old son piped up from the back seat with a question. He asked us why all these old shows had to have a fireplace in them and I immediately started to laugh because I knew exactly what he was talking about. Being a child of the new millennium he has never heard a CD that has those old pops and hisses from the days of vinyl. I love how his ears heard all that 'noise'.

Is It Today Already??

Sorry about yesterday. I was going to do a quick post before our Interloc meeting, but there were emails regarding the meeting that needed to be read first. Oh well, still not bad for a first effort.

It may be for the best anyway because I had the morning from hell yesterday. I just could not get my head into what I was doing and kept making silly errors. At least most of them were silly and only required a 45 minute round trip to rectify. Those were things like forgetting simple supplies which even now I cannot recall. I had to run all the way from McKinley Landing to Home Hardware in town and then I think the next trip was to the shop out near the airport. I finally went to put in the very last thing which was a toilet paper holder and instead of finding a stud and anchoring the thing solidly I used the toggle bolt that came with it. That was a seriously dumb move because as I went to attach the paper holder to the fitting on the wall, which required a diagonal push down and towards the wall, I pushed a little too hard and ripped the thing right out of the wall; toggle bolt and all.

Today I returned to the scene and did the appropriate patching and painting so that I could reattach the holder on the stud which was literally 1" away from where I attached it the first time. The patch looked awesome and my confidence in my abilities as a renovator where restored. Maybe I am a professional after all.