Take a look around!

In case you haven't done so, I want to let you know that there are a few pages on my blog besides each individual post.  Right above this post you'll see a dark gray bar with a few links.  Feel free to click on them to see my testimony, my reason for being a missionary, information about LCMS International, and more.

In other news...

Friday marks a day I've been looking forward to.  No, not Groundhog's Day Eve, though that day will be quite exciting too.  I am excited to have members of the South Dakota team to Hong Kong come to Macau to see me, and to help with the Bible Study!  The team comes from a church that has been supporting me, and I am thoroughly excited to see them again!  I hope that they are excited to come to Macau, as their trip to Hong Kong is near its completion!

I'm also excited to Skype with an elementary school class to teach them a little about being a missionary!

If you have a group who wants to take a short-term mission trip to Macau, or make the virtual trip via Skype, please get in contact with me and I can either help you myself or get you in contact with the right person, depending!

It's 2am, though, and I have spent too much time putzing around my blog (and I admit: Facebook!) tonight.  It's time to get some sleep!

Temptation of Jesus

Today we are discussing the temptation of Jesus in Bible Study.  Since I have the young kids, I am not sure how brave I will be: one of the lesson plans that I have suggests to put a tray of food together: chocolates/candies in the middle with fruit on the outside.  Tell the students that they can only take a piece of fruit: no chocolate.  Then, I turn my back for a few minutes, and see what happens.

This would then lead into talking about temptation and what it is, which would lead into talking about how Jesus responded to temptation.

The English Children's Bible and our library of CPH books both do not include the temptation of Jesus, but the Chinese Children's Bible that I have does.  I will try to record a friend reading it so that I can play it for the kids to hear.  And I can pretend that I am reading ;) Sorry, the photo is turned sideways.

The basic idea is to get across that Jesus is true God, but also true man, and he was tempted to sin just like we are.  The difference is that He always chose to not succumb to sin.  He gave us some examples of how to say NO to temptation.  Hopefully that message will come across tonight!

Funny Moments

So.  Something that I have always found amazing is pronunciation.  Usually it's funny when English words are pronounced in ways which are incomprehensible, or sound like another word.  For instance, last night in my class, I had a student say the word 'harmful', but I would have told you with all confidence that she was saying a Chinese word.  I had no idea!  But it got cleared up later.

The one that I find most interesting, however, is when the Cantonese speakers read English articles with Mandarin words written out in PinYin: for example the name of the new president of China. They cannot pronounce it, so I then pronounce it in Mandarin, and they say, "OH!! Ohh, I know!"

PinYin isn't easy for all Chinese people to read, since they don't use it all of the time: they just know what sound each characters represent.  I just find it interesting that sometimes I have to explain the Chinese words to the Chinese people ;)

What's a funny story from your job?

Pronunciation!

I would like to share a funny moment with you.

I have a student who is studying to be a lawyer.  In our class, we had a debate on terrorism, and whether or not torture should be legal for those suspected of terrorism.  We both had a great laugh when we realized how close 'terrorist' and 'tourist' sound!  Let's make sure not to torture the tourists! ;)

I hope this made you smile as it made me smile!

Some other smiles from the past week include meeting up with another ministry in Macau for hot pot, visiting the baby orphanage with students to promote awareness and volunteer opportunities, going out for late night snacks with some students/friends, and many other translation errors, both by me into Chinese, and by my friends into English!

Speaking of Chinese, an interesting thing was brought to my attention: I wasn't told that I have an American accent, but instead that I have a Beijing accent when I speak Chinese.  I took that as a huge compliment, and passed the credit on to my first teacher who drilled the pronunciation into my mind.  She is from Beijing, so I guess that's where my accent comes from!  Thought my Chinese isn't that great, I am complimented on the excellent pronunciation quite often.  So thanks Cai Laoshi! :)

It's 2013!!! And busy!!!

I have to apologize to my followers and supporters.  I pledged last year to blog often.  I pledged that I'd blog twice a week... now I am lucky if I get to it twice a month!  On one hand I feel like I have failed you, my readers.  On the other hand, I have realized, and hope that you can see, as well, that it's actually a good sign when I find that I have no time to spend on the internet!  I definitely want to share with you what God's doing here, but I have found that lately I have been spending very little time on the internet outside of lesson planning and other work-related searches.

Life's been busy. New Year's was great.  I had the opportunity to spend some time with some friends (pictured above left), and it was a great time singing karaoke, eating hot pot, and counting down to the new year! My New Year's resolution was to stop drinking Coke. So far I've held true, but my friends know about it and have been tempting me!! AHH! :)

My birthday (January 3) went well. One of my friends surprised me with a ukulele and a birthday cake!  It was a lot of fun!  Later that day, I was surprised with another birthday cake and about 12 of my previous students (currently Serena's students) standing around a table singing happy birthday to me!  It was overwhelming to be able to have so many students and friends spend the day with me to make it very special! :)

The photos on either side of this paragraph were foods that I cooked for some students after we went to the orphanage. We've been collecting some clothing and toys for the kids at the orphanage, and we delivered them this week!  We then went to Serena's house and ate lots of food!  On the left you can see a Chinese dish that I made: hot and sour eggplant and pork.  On the right you can see a more familiar dish: enchiladas (minus the sauce!! It was added later)






On the left here you can see a picture of a creation wheel.  During Bible study on Friday, the kids and I learned about creation.  We talked about what happened on each day, and then we created a wheel.  They didn't finish, so we'll finish it this week!  It was fun to see their excitement about making a craft telling the story of creation! :)  And yes, I wrote the Chinese!  I had to get it checked and double checked before I actually used it during class, though!

These things are only a few of the many things that I have been doing in the past couple weeks.  Classes have started up again after the 'break', and we have many new students!  I was able to go to hot pot with some of my students (they had invited me to go out to dinner, which I was super excited about!) and I met up with a group of Christians in Macau, and was able to get connected to a group that I can easily relate to to help me get uplifted through Christian fellowship! :)

So many changes have been happening in my life in Macau, and I am excited.  It's great!  Change is good!

I have a guest coming soon: she is from my hometown, and I am stoked to be able to host her for a week!

Hopefully I'll get back to you sooner than February! :)

If you have any questions, please ask me!  And feel free to comment!  I love hearing comments and knowing that people are reading the posts! ;) That helps encourage me to write more often! :)

Christmas!

Christmas time was great.  I was able to spend time with my friends and together we could celebrate the birth of Christ!  We travelled to a city about an hour and a half away by bus.  It was nice to be able to get away from Macau for a while while still being with my friends from Macau!

We ended up finding a local church that was having a Christmas celebration, and we watched the performances as the church members sang and danced and performed skits.  It was a lot of fun!  We also listened to a speaker (speaking in Mandarin, translated to Cantonese) talk about how Jesus came to the world to save us!  The book that I am 'reading' right now that teaches me Chinese Christian characters really helped me, because he used almost all of the new vocabulary that I've learned!  So I was happy that it was in Mandarin because I could understand maybe 30% of what he said, as opposed to the 1% I would have understood in Cantonese!  (My Chinese isn't quite that good yet, but when it comes to Christian things, I understand more, because that's the vocab I am studying!)

We also got to go up and sing a song that basically translates as: "We Love because God first loved us".  It was sung in Mandarin, and I knew 90% of the characters, so I was able to go up and sing with them while reading the music.  I felt VERY proud of myself for knowing most of the song.  There were a few words that I stumbled over, but it was ok!  They never gave me the microphone, so nobody ever knew! :)

I was able to relax a little after the performance.  3 friends and I went to the spa while the others went to bed.  I had gone to get a massage before, so I figured that we'd be gone for about an hour and a half or so.  No.  We were gone for about 3.5 - 4 hours.  Turns out this is a fancy spa.  We got in, and were separated ladies and gentlemen.  My friend and I went into the lady's room where we showered, relaxed in a pool with various water massage features, went into the wet sauna (where I spent less than a minute because I couldn't breathe!) and then showered again, after which we were given special clothes to wear for the massage.  We were then given robes to put over the clothes, and went upstairs where we met the 2 guys.  They had been playing pool to kill some time.  We were then taken to a buffet.  After eating, we went into a waiting room where we each had our own TV and could relax.  Then we were taken into the massage room where we were given a 2 hour Thai massage.  Now, I don't want to tell you this to show how pampered we were: the massage actually wasn't all that great, and I was super tired haha.  But I want to show you that this is not something of high-class in China.  This is something completely normal to do.  The total for this entire 4 hour adventure (that could have lasted another 12 hours had we wanted to spend the night there) was 168 RMB per person, which translates to less than 30 USD per person.  That is so much cheaper than you would ever find it in the States.

The next day a friend and I walked around in the morning and we found an arcade, where we played some basketball, air hockey, and completely failed at the extremely difficult chinese version of DDR.  (They go at diagonals instead of straight left/right/forward/back, and they incorporate the hands.  I also accidentally chose an advanced song hahaha!  And it was all in English too, so I have no excuse!)  We then met everyone else and went to eat lunch.  We were able to meet up with 2 other Americans (who are friends of mine) and a few Chinese who I hadn't seen in a very long time!  We had 2 large circle tables full of people celebrating together.  We then did a gift exchange, and were whisked off to the bus station where we caught the bus back to Macau.  We got there JUST in time to get out of our cars and onto the bus!

All in all, it was a VERY fun trip.  I am tired now, because it was a little busy (there were things that I didn't talk about that happened as well...it was very busy!).  Right now I am in the middle of cleaning my home.  Even though I am not teaching right now, I am still super busy, and haven't had enough time to keep my house clean.  I started cleaning last night, but I still have over half the things left on my to-do list!  Time to get back to work on my house, and then go in to the center to plan lessons for next week and to teach Bible class tonight!




I hope that you all had a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS, and that you have great plans for New Year's Eve/Day!

December 21: Doomsday?

For all of you who are not to December 21 yet: I did watch a UFO come and land in Macau. A dragon emerged and set fire to the city, and many glowing skeletons started dancing, following the leader. But then a white dove came and destroyed the dragon, the skeletons turned into fireworks, and Macau was restored. This is a true story. The only needed detail is that it was on a big-screen at a holiday celebration in a park/square put on by the city of Macau with lots of money. So, I must conclude that today will once again turn into tomorrow, and the world will keep spinning, because God is the one who will determine the end of the world: not the Mayans. May God bless your day, and allow this false prophesy to focus your minds not on fear and superstition, but on the promises of God.

Jesus IS coming.  Just not today!  We know what Jesus said here, in Matthew 24:

At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. 24For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect—if that were possible. 25See, I have told you ahead of time. 26“So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the desert,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. 27For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man....36“No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,^f but only the Father.37As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 

Taken from NIV translation found at this link.  Click the link to read more!