Indonesian & Cantonese Angels in Church

It was an extra bright morning with 6 Indonesian graduate students arriving at my door at 8:30 a.m. to leave for Truth Lutheran Church, Ma On Shan.

At church the crowd seemed to be sparser than usual... it's a holiday weekend (Chung Yeung... another fine opportunity for grave sweeping... and picnicking... and - since this is Hong Kong, after all -- shopping)

but this did not hold the students back from singing their hearts out, nor did it hinder Pastor Rospita Siahaan -- (the beautiful small person on the right, standing next to her Cantonese translator) -- from preaching a BIG message on thankfulness. She later told me it was the first sermon she had ever preached in English. 

After church I got to go along with a few of the Chinese members who were taking communion to one of the elderly members of the church:

My own 89 year old Mom is in the hospital this week back in the USA (kidney stones, sorry to say it runs in our family, and she had a gigantic one!!) and since I am 18 hours of flight time away, it was just great to hear this 93 year old Chinese Christian promise to keep her in his prayers.

1. What a friend we have in Jesus,
   All our sins and griefs to bear!
   What a privilege to carry
   Everything to God in prayer!
   Oh, what peace we often forfeit,
   Oh, what needless pain we bear,
   All because we do not carry
   Everything to God in prayer!
2. -- Traditional Christian Hymn

Back to school at LTS Hong Kong

Chapel flowers during Mid Autumn Harvest Moon Week.

Wayne and I are back in the saddle at LTS Hong Kong, and my jet-lag is totally, finally over (only two weeks later :) So we're back in Hong Kong where --

--we have daily chapel:

(This one led by a recent group of Hong Kong students who did an intercultural exploration/ mission trip to Cambodia and Thailand)

--where I, Christa, at the advanced age of.... oh never mind, let's just say at my advanced age, I have just been accepted into the Doctorate of Ministry program at LTS (part time student, my goal is to graduate before I turn sixty :)
and am taking a course in Diakonia:

snapshot of my class - two Mainland Chinese students (for whom Mandarin translation
is provided) two from Hong Kong, one American (me!), one from Myanmar, one from
Nepal, one from Cambodia. Talk about diversity! 

and one very cool teacher, with years of theological/practical diaconal experience in Hong Kong and Norway
(one of the best teachers I've had, and I've had some good ones)

and, lest we forget that we are in Hong Kong,
 there's THIS, discovered and filmed on our way home from seminary last week:

(My Hong Kong friends assure me that the snakes will soon be in winter hibernation. This Red-necked Keelback snake seems to have a mouse in its belly, if you look closely.)

Happy Mid-Autumn Harvest Moon Festival Everybody!

It's great to be back!

Praise the Lord from the heavens;

3 

...Praise him, sun and moon;

   

Praise the Lord from the earth,

    

10 

wild animals and ... creeping things... 

13 

Let them praise the name of the Lord,

    for his name alone is exalted;

    his splendor is above the earth and the heavens.

Jet lagging in Hong Kong

I'm back in Hong Kong! Where the rain, it raineth everyday.

Here's the view from my office at the seminary, in the New Territories of Hong Kong. (Yes, those are more rains, on the way)

One benefit of jet lag is it's the only time I get up early enough to run as the sun is coming up (It's been a week now and I'm still waking up between 3:30 and 4:30 a.m.)

Yes, this is along the canal,  the view on my running path just this morning. I'm lucky enough to live near one of the only places in Hong Kong where you can run a 5 mile route without hills!

One of the best things about being back in Hong Kong? Ma On Shan Truth Lutheran Church, where I'm the "sacramental pastor." Here is a snippet of the men's group singing yesterday:

Ah, blessings upon blessings. It's good to be back in Hong Kong!

Stay tuned for more about the amazing students at LTS in upcoming posts.

19 out of 19 visas approved!

Flower arrangement courtesy of my friend Carol
who helped me clean, cook, and then
gathered this glorious bouquet
for the table in our
Wisconsin home.

Just received word this morning: the nineteenth international student visa has been approved! Joy!

Meanwhile, the international students have been arriving at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Hong Kong... they just experienced the annual Student-Faculty retreat, and for sure some of them are deeply homesick and wondering what they've gotten themselves into.

My husband-the-professor reports having a "welcome back to Hong Kong" stomach virus which thankfully didn't attack until after he'd nearly completed the retreat...

 and I'm packing to rejoin him in Hong Kong... where I'll at last get to MEET those 19 students whose names we've been keying in over and over again, whose lives will be changed by studies and the relationships they'll be building at LTS.

Still, it's hard to say good-bye... again... to our three sons -- one of whom just moved to New York City... one suitcase and one job offer in hand...

A last breakfast of Al Johnson's Swedish Pancakes

and it's always hard to say good-bye to my 89 year old mother... plans for a big celebration are underway for her 90th birthday party next summer.... something to look forward to!

Changes are in the air... maybe a good time to remember that none of us belongs wholly to any particular place - not Door County, Wisconsin, nor Hong Kong, China, nor New York City, nor Yangon, Myanmar, nor a village outside of Phnom Penh, Cambodia (two of the places the new international students are from)... 

Maybe a good chance to think about these words (paraphrased) from St. Paul nearly 2,000 years ago:

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. 

Romans 12:1-2

The Message (MSG)

Pray and fax. Fax and pray.

The great news is we have 18 of our 19 new international student visa applications APPROVED!!! Yee ha! Only one Laos student to go and I do hope our final pleas for her will have been heard by the end of the coming week. "Fax and pray" has been my and my co-workers motto for the summer months... a play on the (Catholic Christian) Dominican's motto of Ora et labora (work and pray... the two go hand in hand)

Please indulge me a moment as I explain a little bit about the kind of work this has taken:  about five months worth of mind-numbing paper and computer screens work. Dozens of faxes. Hundreds of pages of paper files. Folders within folders of scanned documents. Dates, student transcripts in eight different languages, extraordinarily complicated names including:

Simorangkir

Lervaag

Nghilh

Xaychou

Touch

[ BONUS: Can you identify the above names by nationality? Hint: Nationalities at LTS include        Cambodian, Indonesia, Chinese, Myanmar, Norwegian, German, American, Laos, Australian. Answer on  the bottom]

One of our professors, watching me carry a stack of folders to the scanner inadvertently sent me into a near mild seizure when he told me how glad he is there are people in the world who just thrive on this sort of detail work, implying (I thought) that I was one of these people.

I'm not. 

I did very occasionally remember the following quote from the seventeenth century Carmelite kitchen worker, Brother Lawrence:

“We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.” 
― Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God

I certainly didn't send all these faxes with love, although the colleagues working with me may have. But, I did and do remember that there are real students, real lives being impacted by these visas, giving precious permission for (in most cases underprivileged) pastors and Christian teachers from Southeast Asia to experience (and enrich!!!) the inter-cultural Christian community life and solid theological education to be had at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Hong Kong.

Here's my anecdote about Z. D., one such student, from Myanmar:

-- he came to a Mekong Mission Forum meeting last year in Yangon (the largest city and former capital of Myanmar) and it took him FIVE days to arrive from the northern part of Myanmar: bikes, motorbikes, mini-bus, overnight bus. "Oh, but that wasn't so bad," he said, "it used to take us almost two weeks. But then we got those bikes."

That's commitment, eh?

Z.D. is the guy in the middle, and he should be landing in Hong Kong this week to work on a doctorate in New Testament.

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord..."

-- St. Paul writing to the Colossians 3:23

ANSWER to Bonus Quiz:

Simorangkir   (from Indonesia)

Lervaag   (from Norway)

Nghilh   (from Myanmar)

Xaychou   (from Laos)

Touch   (from Cambodia)

Colours of the Spirit during Home Assignment in USA Churches

Home Assignment has been going well in the good old USA! We've been thrilled with the birth of our grand niece (first grand child of my late sister, Karin, first great-grand child of my mom)

Great Uncle Wayne with cutie pie,  Ella Luise

We've thoroughly enjoyed visiting over a dozen sponsoring churches in the USA... the Church is alive and well, our sharing about God's work in Hong Kong and the Mekong was celebrated with food:

Ah, the pie social. SO yummy!

We were treated to an old fashioned quilt making demonstration (LWR Mission quilts made by loving hands in church halls all over America, sent to wherever they are needed most in the world, as a "tangible symbol of God's love" within the global community)

And we challenged children (and adults) with a game of "Spot the differences/similarities" between your church and some of the churches we work with in Hong Kong and in the Mekong. For example, what are the similarities and differences between these three photos?

Wherever we are in "God's Big Backyard"
we are in awe of God's Spirit which brings new life in countlessly colorful ways...

but specifically, and dependably, and gracefully,

through Word and Sacrament.

4 

There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. 5 There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. 6 There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.

-- I Corinthians 12

overdue post: Conference in Yangon, and waiting for 19 visas

This is a way overdue posting about the 2013 MMF JOINT THEOLOGICAL CONSULTATION in June

An annual event sponsored and coordinated by the Mekong Mission Forum (MMF)

 in co-operation with the Association of Theological Education in Myanmar (ATEM)

 and the Judson Research Center of the Myanmar Institute of Theology (MIT)  

and which yours truly, that would be me, attempts to plan and coordinate from Hong Kong, together with some fantastic people from Myanmar...

2013 Theme: SUFFERING: Eyes to See, Ears to Hear: Walking with Those Who Suffer

Newly refurbished conference room... 

SO impressed by LTS alumnus Dr. Saw Christopher (Wayne's first doctoral student)
as he gives an insightful lecture on IDP's (internally displaced persons) in Myanmar. 

The chance to visit with the wife of a current LTS HK student - her husband is coming for a home visit this summer.

A total of forty-four  pastors, theologians, and seminary alumni took part in the Consultation, a majority from various regions of Myanmar, but also including international participants from Cambodia, Thailand, Hong Kong, and even as far away as Norway!

Informal fellowship time, meals, and even an excursion to the beautiful Shwedagon Pagoda allowed participants to talk, network, share concerns, and in some cases, clear up misconceptions.

Small group discussion proved enlightening, challenging, sometimes sobering.

We had invited a wonderful speaker, Rabbi Stanton Zamek from the United Jewish Congregation in Hong Kong. It was the first time for many Mekong participants to meet a real live Jew, not to mention a Jewish rabbi! Oops, except of course, for Jesus. Remember? Jesus is a real live Jewish rabbi, too.

Among the attendees at the conference was the woman in the center, who has been accepted at LTS Hong Kong for a one year diakonal ministry program starting in Fall 2013... which begins with orientation at the end of this month. However, we are waiting for approval of her student visa from the Hong Kong Immigration department!

Nineteen international students are awaiting visas. Yours truly has spent hours and hours and weeks and months (since January!!) organizing & filing papers for these 19 students, copying, scanning, faxing, telephoning, even going to the immigration dept. in person.

I am hoping, really hoping these 19 visas will all be approved in the coming two weeks. 

Even youths will faint and be weary,
    and the young will fall exhausted;
31 but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
    they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,    they shall walk and not faint. -- Isaiah 40:30-31