Taiwan

I'll start by first explaining the title to this entry. A few days ago we stopped to get some ice cream (they said the three things that always make Americans happy are: ice cream, McDonald's, and Starbucks). I went with plain old chocolate, but the people with me both got vanilla... topped with red beans. I thought it sounded pretty crazy, but I didn't try it so I can't say if it was good or bad. There is a picture at the link that I gave in the earlier blog.
Sorry, I am a few days behind on my updates. I have been going here and there and everywhere the last few days with barely enough time to think! Thursday morning, I went to a nearby village to A Kernel of Wheat. It is a place where older people from the Amei aboriginal tribe come to spend time together, get some exercise, learn about some hygiene and health issues, and also do some crafts. Luckily, I got there in time for the exercise! It wasn't anything too strenuous. Then we all went in and I shared my testimony with them, and then they learned about some health issues, like diabetes and how to treat it. Most of the time I didn't know what was going on because they were speaking Amei and my translator couldn't understand it. After that, they all did crafts. It was a lot of fun, and its really an amazing ministry because the Amei and other tribes are very lost people, they have extremely high rates of alcoholism, domestic abuse, and various other bad habits. I saw this a lot my first year here because we were working with the Truku tribe, which has many of the same problems.
After that, I went with the Pastor and my translator Mei Chin to go to a kind of boys ranch for troubled youth. We have similar things in Oklahoma and Texas I think, but its basically a place for kids who have come from abuse, have runaway, or maybe even committed a crime. Instead of going to jail, they get a second chance to come here and they got to school and have lots of other activities. Most of the children have very low self-esteem and have very little education. So they start by teaching them things like how to play the guitar or ride a unicycle so that they can feel better about themselves. It was a lot of fun. We also went to see a minimum-security prison. It didn't have walls and the people worked in the fields around it all day (except for their afternoon nap). It was more like a hotel though, they had basketball courts, tennis courts, a swimming pool, and even a vip cottage for the best prisoners!
Friday, I head to Taipei, which is where I am now. I took the train with Mei Chin and my first stop was McDonald's! Haha! Big Macs taste a lot better after you've been eating things like pig skin and chicken feet! We spent most of yesterday in the very rich district of Taipei, home of the Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world! The Taipei 101 has a mall in the first 5 stories, and so Mei Chin said it would remind me of the malls in Oklahoma. In reality, it was much nicer than any mall in Oklahoma. It was full of stores like Cartier, Louis Vuitton, and pretty much every other high dollar store you can think of. We went to the top of the 101, well, not quite only as far as they let people go. You take the world's fastest elevator up. It went up 89 floors in less than 30 seconds. The view was quite amazing. It is very different than the Empire State Building because New York has a very high skyline, but Taipei has a very low skyline most buildings less than 10 stories, so the 101 gives you a view for miles.
After checking out the 101, I went to Pastor Tony and his wife Esther's house. They used to live in Norman, but have moved to Taipei to be full-time missionaries. Tony is in China right now, and so Esther picked me up at the subway station. They had an adult small group meeting at their house which I had the privilege of being a part of. A lot of the people were OU alumni so we had a good time talking about OU.
Finally, that brings us to this morning, where I was able to sleep in till 9 am! I was very excited because most days I have been getting up before 7!
Another thing that you can pray about is that the church in Hualien (a nearby city) is having some very great doctrinal problems, which I witnessed on Thursday, and so they need our prayers! I hope that myself and the team coming can help them find their ways back to sound doctrine.