wowie zowie, I really should be asleep, but I'm NOT! I don't know what's wrong with my sleep schedule but I can't fall asleep before 2 AM. Good grief. I blame it on my nine o'clock bowl of Frosted Flakes. I should really stop that habit.
Let's see, what's new in Sharon World.
Well, last weekend I visited Jimmy's hometown of Kaoshiung. We rented a scooter and zipped about, visiting a very large art museum and little shops here and there, a big mall, and the beach. It was good fun. Got to stay with some of his cousins, that was nice.
We tried to visit a small island just off the shore of Taiwan on the China-side (south - west coast), the name of which has, of course, by now escaped me. I say tried, because that was a hairy experience! To get there, you have to take a ferry. Kaoshiung is a very large ( bigger than Taichung) city, and much nicer looking, cleaner, prettier layout, more parks, more trees and a river through the city, and lots of green everywhere. It's really beautiful. More than Taichung. So we scooter over to the ferry dock, and there's a huugee line of people waiting to get on the ferry. Also a huge line of scooters and bicycles. So we sit in the scooter line and after about 30 minutes, we get on the ferry. We sit on our scooter on the ferry with about a thousand (ok not really, but packed like sardines) other people on scooters, then about ten minutes later we scooted off on the other side. Not so bad..but on the tiny island, they were having some sort of weird Buddhist parade ceremony thing that we didn't know about.
It was like entering a different world, from the tall buildings and beautiful setting of Kaoshiung to this tiny, very traditional island. I saw more old temples while we were there in 20 minutes than I have since I've been here. I wish, wish WISH I could have taken some pictures (not of the awful Buddhist parade) but of the people I saw there. They really looked like pieces of history..there were so many older people, faces lined by years of hard work and you could see it in their eyes. They looked so...sad, and vacant. It was awful. I saw an entire family of about six, with tiny children, all on a little scooter pushing their way through the crowd while a tall thin father with a white goatee and a hard-working, tired sort of face navigated them through. Just so many little things I wanted to take a picture of, but I couldn't. There were too many people and also my camera was in the scooter seat.
The tiny island was packed PACKED with PEOPLE everyyywwhhhere, on foot, scooter, bicycle. I think it's a miracle Jimmy didn't run over anybody and nobody ran over us. Everyone was going the wrong way on the road and there were no rules. And, on almost every street, there was more of the Buddhist parade. There were about 8 young men in paint and blue shirts weaving a large scary dragon puppet above the crowd on sticks. There were many small temple looking things with statues and shrines on sticks that more men were holding and rythmically moving up and down to the beating of a large drum. There were people dressed as large Buddhist..deities, I guess, but not very friendly looking ones, marching through the crowd. Bright colors, Buddhas statues, dragons, red & gold was everywhere. Men with painted faces danced through the street. People were walking along in costumes, waving flags and incense sticks. The drum beat so loudly, and to top it all off they were shooting off fireworks right in the middle of all the people.
THAT I was actually not fazed by since my years of New Year's Eve days in Suriname have made the sight of firecrackers in streets and the smell of smoke and gunpowder pretty familiar, but it still stung my eyes and just made the whole parade that much worse.
Jimmy went up and down almost every street on the island trying to get away from the parade and find a quiet place to eat, but after about 20 minutes we gave up and got back on the ferry. "We picked a bad day" he said. He also told me that all this temple ceremony froo frah they do is organized by the mafia, who also control most of the temples and take money from people. Jimmy's family isn't religious and never did temple stuff so he wasn't real familiar with any of it either, despite having grown up here.
But, while that was an interesting cultural experience, it also really broke my heart to see all those people so blinded and misled by Satan, with no idea of the true freedom and joy they could have in Christ. None of them looked happy. Most of the people were coughing and trying to avoid being squished by scooters or cars. Each face I saw looked sad, upset, or generally uncomfortable. What kind of celebration is that? I know Taiwan is a Buddhist and Daoist country and I see the temples on my way to the store or wherever, but it's not quit as in-your-face as that was.
As we squeezed our way past on the streets and I looked into the faces of people in the ceremony and also watching the ceremony through the safety of my helmet visor (which hid my foreign eyes that people like to stare at and that bothers me), I was thinking how much things like this must break God's heart. And I was thinking, although not as blatant as that particular ceremony, this is the kind of thing some of my Bumblebees are exposed to in their families. Some of them come from Christian homes, but most of them don't. They are familiar with the "praying hands bowing pose" people do in the temples here.
One little girl in my class lives with her grandparents because her parents don't want to take care of her. Her grandmother is a Buddist priestess (I think) and "translates" messages from "ancestors" spirits for people in the temple. She always comes into the school smelling like incense and Candy's clothes smell like incense sometimes in class. But the grandmother did come to both Christmas programs at JacksonFive the past two years and told Jackson she's never felt peace like she felt while at our church. It made her curious, and she has become good friends with the Chinese staff at our school. I don't believe she's made any kind of change in her religious beliefs, but she knows something is different for us and I think it's planted a seed for her heart.
We teach the kids about the love of Christ at JacksonFive, we bring it up as often as we can, and they all know the Gospel message, they know that Jesus died to take their sins away, they know he rose again to give them eternal life, they know all they have to do is believe. But then they go home and for some of them, their parents take them to temple and put incense sticks in their hand for them to wave around at ancestors. They give them paper money to burn in temple barrels. So..what do they believe?
It hit me more than ever how important my job at the school really is.
So with Easter just past and I told again the Passover and Good Friday and Easter message that they heard last year from a different teacher, they answered all my questions correctly, they know the story. Most of the kids in my class have made a verbal commitment to the Lord last year. And we learned John 3:16 and talked about how the reason for all of it was love. Because God so LOVED the world, even despite how the world treats Him. The Bumblebees all worked together to make a big awesome banner that says "LOVE" real big in the middle and is covered with John 3:16's and crosses and "Jesus is alive!" and things like that, and put it right in the front window of our school facing the street. But I hope that each and every one of my kids really, truly understands what that means., and doesn't see everything we do as just another "English school activity". That their relationship with Jesus Christ is real and true, and will continue to grow throughout their life, strong to fight against potentional parental opposition or judgemental family members and friends.
Next year I will continue teaching Bumblebees in year 3 along with a new first year class, brand new to English and most of them will be brand new to Christianity. I will get to tell them about Jesus for the first time. What a great, important responsibility! So my fellow blog readers, if you could help in prayer for me and for them... I hear it all the time here, that China within the next 50 years will be a major world leader and Taiwan along with it. These kids are potential next generation leaders. I think God is opening my eyes to how important the job He gave me here really is.
I'm seriously tired right now and this turned out to be a really long post. But I hope it all made sense what I wanted to say. Zai jian!
