Pray for Hong Kong

  

The Lutheran Theological Seminary suspended its classes on Monday and Tuesday due to demonstrations and protests for true democracy in Hong Kong. A prayer service was held on Monday and the candle lit chapel remained open for prayer on both days. 

Oct 1- 2 (Wednesday - Thursday) are public holidays in Hong Kong. During this time we, along with our students at LTS, are learning about the Church and its engagement with democracy, as prayers are lifted up for students, society, government, police.

Last night one of our colleagues organized a night hike/prayer walk for Hong Kong.

Arrival to Hong Kong Island by Star Ferry on Monday night.

Various professors have been accompanying small groups of seminary students to witness the actual protest situation.

Wayne took this photo Wed night, Oct 1, impressed to see even
children and young families engaged with this peaceful protest

Tomorrow (Friday) our seminary President and Dean have arranged for continued prayer and discussion of Hong Kong churches' engagement with the protests, including presentation of a paper "Civil Disobedience - An Impact on the Hong Kong Churches, " written by LTS professor, Dr. Pilgrim Lo. It provides a little history of the pro-democracy negotiations and then discusses the value and possible application of Luther's views to the situation (we are a Lutheran seminary!). 

On the one hand, Wayne and I find ourselves wondering  if the world has ever in its history seen such a peaceful way of protesting. We've followed the reports and also seen first hand how food and water is being distributed, contingency plans are in place to help any first aid or emergency vehicles to get through the crowds - protest signs and speeches seem remarkably polite and positive. I found myself behind this guy on Monday night -- fanning not only himself but reaching out to fan other demonstrators and bystanders, including me!

A moment later he fanned me - a welcome second of relief
in the Hong Kong heat.

water bottles ready for distribution in heat indexes reaching over 100 F.

On the other hand,  many of our Chinese friends and colleagues here are worried. What may happen if the students decide to stay after Thursday, when a "normal" work day should resume?  What will happen if the leaders of the students and Occupy Central and the current Hong Kong administrative leaders do not go to the negotiation table? The terrible shadow of Tiananmen Square 25 years ago hangs heavy over Hong Kong.

Wherever you are ithe world, we invite you to say a prayer for beautiful Hong Kong and all of God's beloved people here - students, Occupy Central demonstrators, government, police, and especially the leaders and emerging leaders in Hong Kong and Mainland China.

May God have mercy to allow this peaceful witness to continue - some how - into a peaceful resolution.

As Wayne is a Reinhold Niebuhr fan, he suggests one of his favorite Niebuhr prayers:

"O God, in whom there is no darkness at all, we thank you that though we walk in darkness, you have give us enough light in which to walk.  As the sun dispels each morning the shadows of the night, so your mercies,which surround us, pierce the shadows of sin ever again, and help us to see the meaning of life.  Give us grace to triumph over the confusion of impulse, in which we are so easily ensnared, and to walk in the way of wisdom disclosed by your wisdom.  Grant us clearness of vision especially when good is intertwined with evil, and duty conflicts with desire, so that we do your will this day and always.  Amen" 

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.

What NOT to do if you're attacked by monkeys

A photo from another, more innocent day,
 when I still considered monkeys cute
rather than menacing...

So there I was, walking down the hill on a Friday night, quitin' time. Down the 121 steps from my office at the seminary, down the winding road past To Fung Shan, past the circle intersection, and just passing the cemetery, when I saw one solitary monkey on a papaya tree. 
Then I saw two or three, maybe a dozen. 

I'm cool with that. I'm not new to monkeys on my walk home. I avert my eyes (everybody knows you shouldn't look a monkey right in the eyes, right?).  I really didn't think a thing of it.  In fact, I was talking on my cell phone with Wayne, discussing the ever important question of what we were going to have for dinner.

I hear screaming behind me.  I turn around to look, and it's a big monkey screaming at me! Coming at me!

I turn around again, and there are monkeys pouring onto the road. There are monkeys overhead on the trees. They are all, inexplicably, looking at ME!

I try the aggressive dog thing where I stop and say "No!" firmly.  Well, maybe not so firmly.  Maybe it came out more like a "Noooooooo!" 

Then I could see some big daddy monkeys coming at me.  Monkeys big and small coming at me, dozens and dozens of them. Then I could see a bunch of angry, red, open mouths with glistening teeth coming at me.  And then I did exactly what you should NOT do if you're attacked by monkeys:

"But whatever you do, don't freak out; those who scream, wave their arms, and run away are only going to make the macaques even more aggressive."*

I freaked out, I screamed, I waved my arms, and I ran full speed down the length of the cemetery, and around the corner, where, thank GOD, they did not pursue me.

(Not another human being in sight, by the way.  I'm in Hong Kong for Pete's sake, and not one other human being in sight, nor - since no one came to my aid - within sound)

Okay, so I wasn't mauled, I wasn't bitten, they didn't actually touch me, just came close enough with those nasty looking teeth, to feed another several decades worth of nightmares. My throat was a bit sore from the screaming, but that was the physical extent of it.

It turns out Wayne heard the whole thing (he was on the cell phone, remember?) and guess what, this is how much he loves me, he rose up from his table at McDonalds (McDonalds? That's where you were???) leaving his almost untouched burger behind, and started running to rescue me!!

After I got home I invited my neighbors over and we had an impromptu "Escape the Mad Monkeys" wine and cheese and board game party, and I WON at the board game.

So all's well that ends well, and yes, I've gone down the hill again this week, alone, and not a monkey in sight.  But if I DO see some more  monkeys and one comes screaming at me, I'm going to do the 

"...the open-mouth threat. Basically, form an "O" with your mouth, lean toward them with your body and head, and raise your eyebrows."

And maybe I'll also follow the advice of most of our international students here -- and carry a big stick.

To read the whole article from where I culled those bits of highlighted info, check out the 2007 Slate article by Michelle Tsai on How to Fight Monkeys (big thanks to New Testament visiting professor and friendly, sympathetic neighbor Dr. Robin Mattison for researching and finding that article for all of us for future reference!)

So, watch out for monkeys, and if a great big troop of mad monkeys does come at you, please do not freak out.  But even if you do, be sure to have a party to celebrate the great escape afterwards.

The Lord is gracious and righteous;
    our God is full of compassion.
 The Lord protects the unwary;
    when I was brought low, he saved me.

 Return to your rest, my soul,    for the Lord has been good to you.  Psalm 116:5-7

Getting Ready for Chinese New Year Part 2

The Year has just turned!  It's the Year of the Dragon in China now.

So our dear London-raised English teacher (aptly named "Rose", she's the one in red just right of center) invited the international students at LTS Hong Kong to a Chinese New Year's celebration.

See the dragon motif everywhere?  The year of the Dragon is supposed to be a good year! Dragons are strong, outgoing, and the local newspaper tells us the birthrates in Hong Kong and the mainland of China go up dramatically (more than 5%) as everyone wants their child to have a dragon year birthday.

We started the celebrations with... well, FOOD of course, including a large roasted pig, artfully carved by one of our mainland Chinese students (sorry to my tenderhearted vegetarian friends).

The international students then celebrated by singing a very robust version of "This is the day that the Lord has made," in 10+ different languages of the people who were present, including:

This is the year the Lord has made--
Mainland Chinese students sing in Mandarin

This is the year the Lord has made-- Laos

This is the year the Lord has made-- sung in Vietnamese,
with help from a Cambodian Uncle

This is the year the Lord has made-- one single American exchange student -
can you guess which one?!

This is the year the Lord has made-- sung in Thai

This is the year the Lord has made-- sung in the Karen language
by students from Myanmar (Burma)

This is the year the Lord has made--
sung in Danish by the Danish volunteers

This is the year the Lord has made--sung in Cantonese by our Hong Kong professor of Old Testament

This is the year the Lord has made-- Cambodian students sing in Khmer

This is the year the Lord has made- in the Chin language by more students from Myanmar (Burma)

This is the year the Lord has made --  sung  by some who actually  know how to sing -- Indonesian students

The evening ended with the distribution of red Lai-see packets to the youngest & cutest among us:

Scripture thoughts and a Christian Prayer for the Year of the Dragon:


"This is the [year] the Lord has made" -- Psalm 118:24

A characteristic of dragons: courage

"Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” -- Joshua 1:9

A characteristic of dragons: boldness

"Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold."  -- Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians 3:12

A characteristic of dragons: ambition

"Whether we are at home or away from home, we make it our ambition to please Him [the Lord]" -- Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians 5:9

Prayer:

Creator of all creatures great and small, including the mind of humans who have in turn created dragons,
This New Year of the Dragon, may your Holy Spirit
--fill us with courage to carry current projects through to completion, courage to tell the truth and stand up for what is right and fair.
--Give us boldness to begin new plans and projects for your purposes.
--Make your ambitions our ambitions, and let us move forward with the strength of a dragon to make those ambitions come true.

In Christ's strong name we pray,  AMEN. 

Getting Ready for the New Year of the Dragon, Part I

Flower market in Mongkok

Bright blossoms of all kinds - New Year means springtime in China!

Youngest son adores getting schlepped to the Flower Market each year.

The busiest shopping night of the year.

A Hong Kong Wedding and What we did NOT eat for Thanksgiving

Sunday we went to the first wedding I've been to in Hong Kong. One of the members of the Cantonese speaking church where I am the sacramental pastor was getting married.  Luckily for me, marriage is not considered a sacrament in the Lutheran Church, so I got to sit and enjoy the ceremony. The bride was beautiful, the church choir sang, and some of the children from the Ma-On-Shan grade school where I lead the Truth English Bible Club were present (the bride is one of our volunteers for this ministry)

A couple of other things that made this wedding different -- at the reception the bride changed her dress a whopping five times!  Turns out these dresses are rented for the occasion.  She was totally gorgeous, and the hoots and hollers were fun to listen to.

And then there was the thirteen course banquet.  Thirteen.  Courses.  We bravely tackled the first 5.  Slowed down on 6 & 7.  Slowed way down on #8 which is featured here:

Webbed goose foot.

Which is what we did NOT eat for Thanksgiving this year.

   She
 ¹ I am a rose of Sharon,
   a lily of the valleys.
   He
 ² Like a lily among thorns
   is my darling among the young women.
   She
 ³ Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest
   is my beloved among the young men.
I delight to sit in his shade,
   and his fruit is sweet to my taste.

-- From the Song of Songs, a popular wedding text from the Bible

I thought about quitting

No reason for this picture except that I like it.  The view from a boat out in Sai Kung last week.  Give me some of that inner peace which this picture conveys!

This week I thought about quitting.

After hours of trying to straighten out scholarship documents, hours of trying to scan, copy and file documents, hours of figuring out unfamiliar office equipment

[like hole punchers.  hole punchers are different here.  notebooks are different here.  filing system are really different here. or maybe they don't exist.  i'm not sure.]

hours of trying to decipher the notes and notebooks left by my predecessor [don't get me wrong, he knew what he was doing.  he did a great job.  but there was a several month gap between his moving on and my taking over.  Also, this is such a unique job I'm not sure anybody ANYBODY could possibly  explain it to somebody else. Or maybe they could.  Maybe it IS just me.

For example, most people would probably not need three hours to merge two lists of students only to discover that the carefully merged master list now alphabetizes people by first names.

So this week I thought about quitting.

I've been dealing with nine student visa applications: 2 from Myanmar, 2 from Cambodia, 2 from Laos, 1 from Indonesia, and 2 from Vietnam.  Other years, apparently things ran ever so smoothly, but THIS year, now that it's me doing this job, the HK government does not seem to be keen on allowing these students into HK for studies.

I now have a file about 8 inches thick (no exaggeration, I swear) of documents faxed back and forth exploring such fascinating issues as:

• letters of proof regarding financial support
• discrepancy in the spelling of the name Soumphayana Okomenokhe on one document and Soumpayana Okomenokhe on the other document.
• reference numbers in all documentation, such as: PT056000789721-11osd, formerly PT16270977312-270nso
• discrepancy in birth dates:  10-03-1978 and 03-10-1978.
• photographs which measure no larger than 55mm x 45mm  and no smaller than 50mmx40mm [yes, on that last one I was squinting thru my I-need-a-new-prescription-bifocals to measure the picture with my little plastic ruler, then running down to the lower floor to locate the paper cutter, which is also unlike any paper cutter I've used in my ahem 50+ years on this earth]

I really thought about quitting.  And it's not like dealing with these student visas is the only part of my job.  Oh no, no indeed.  There are also... lets just say LOADS of other things I should, could, need to do.

This week I got an actual phone call from an actual real live immigration officer.  It was a nice change of pace after all the faxes. He wanted to know why the student couple from Vietnam, who have a 2 year old, needed to bring their kid WITH them for the three years they will be studying in Hong Kong.  Can't they just leave him with a relative?

As a Mom myself, an American mom, that one kind of threw me.  Why not just leave the two year old behind for three years??????

But I contained myself.  I assembled letters of documentation from the scholarship donor and the young couple themselves,  carefully explaining that they had no close relatives who could care for their child, and yes, the scholarship money provides for housing and food for the whole family for their three years of study. And by the way, (I found this out myself through their letter) yes they had an older child, and that child died.  So this is their only child and they are both pushing 40. Is that a good enough a reason to explain why they want to bring their two year old with them for their study program?

Stories and real people are behind all this paperwork.

I dutifully faxed it all in.

We're still waiting on those last two applications, but seven out of the nine students have now been approved to enter Hong Kong, and they are beginning to arrive.

2 from Myanmar, 2 from Cambodia, 2 from Laos, 1 from Indonesia, and hopefully soon, 2 from Vietnam.

Can't quit now.  It's not a sprint, it's a marathon.

Two of the newest arrivals (on the right) from Myanmar, with their student guides. SO happy student visas have finally been granted!!!

A glimpse of the global church: here conferring with a visitor from Germany, LTS students from Myanmar, China, Indonesia, Cameroon, Norway

1 Corinthians 9:23-25

²³ I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.
 ²⁴ Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. ²⁵ Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.

Flat Stanley in Hong Kong

I've got a little interlude on this blog... an enterprising kid from my church in Hartland, Wisconsin sent us a Flat Stanley. Flat Stanley, for the uninitiated, is a school project based on a book about a kid who gets flattened through an accident but makes the best of the situation when he discovers this enables him to travel the world cheaply and easily by being mailed in a regular postal envelope.

Generations of 3rd and 4th graders now draw "Flat Stanleys" to send to distant friends and relatives for recording adventures. This makes learning geography a little more fun as the kids then make a school presentation of the photos taken with their own Flat Stanley.

What follows is Flat Stanley's adventures with us in Hong Kong.

Flat Stanley arrives in pretty good shape after ten days of traveling in his envelope. He then slept for a couple of weeks working off his jet lag.  The time difference between Hong Kong and Hartland, Wisconsin in the U.S.A. is 14 hours.

Last week, finally emerging from his jet lag, Flat Stanley took a trip on a Hong Kong bus to pick up friends from the Hong Kong airport.  Most people living in Hong Kong (including Flat Stanley's host family) don't have their own cars, so it's good for Flat Stanley to learn to use mass transportation.

Flat Stanley arrives at the Hong Kong airport to pick up his friends.

Flat Stanley makes his first Hong Kong friend.  It's mutual admiration at first sight.

Our friends have arrived from Wisconsin and Flat Stanley explains the Hong Kong subway system map to them.  The light blue line goes to his Hong Kong host's home.

Flat Stanley makes friends with German friends in Hong Kong.  He wonders if they will take him to the German Octoberfest a.k.a. BierFest held in Hong Kong every October-November.  They tell him, Sorry, he's a little too late.

Flat Stanley tries to make friends with the monkeys on "Monkey Hill" near Lion's Rock in Hong Kong.  They are not interested.

There are a lot of tall buildings in Hong Kong.  Flat Stanley tries to pose with the Hong Kong flag but the wind isn't cooperating today.  The Hong Kong flag is red with a white flower on it.

Flat Stanley in Hong Kong Park.

Trying to make friends with the long-tailed birds in Hong Kong Park's aviary.  The birds aren't interested.

Flat Stanley gets caught in a Hong Kong rain.  Good thing his friends have umbrellas.  It rains a lot in Hong Kong so people carry their umbrellas everywhere they go.

OOh, Flat Stanley takes an excursion to Macau.  He goes to the biggest casino in the world (the Venetian) but his host makes him stay in the backpack because nobody under the age of 18 is admitted into the casinos.

On his last night in Hong Kong, Flat Stanley goes for a pleasant boat ride in Sai Kung. He also checks out the sea food but after he takes a good look at today's selection, he decides he isn't hungry after all.

whoops I can't add the video just now... check back in a day or two and I'll try to get it attached here. GOT IT! click and watch to see why Flat Stanley did NOT order seafood tonight: