Students and gifts, and more than a wee little bit of jet-lag...

Myanmar coffee, Myanmar mug, Myanmar t-shirt
gifts of the heart help me to overcome my jet-lag!

I have TOO MUCH work and I'm still jet-lagging, which means I've been waking up at 3:30 a.m. and can't get back to sleep. But today been I made it until 4:30 a.m. so that's progress. It always takes me two weeks. I've tried all the remedies, thank you very much for your concern, it still takes me two full weeks!
But the students, new and old, are intriguing, beautiful, incredibly devoted. Just yesterday I spent time with these graduate students from Myanmar and Indonesia:

• --Two new  students who need to go to the hospital for medical attention - one with a huge boil on his face  who joked it's the devil attacking him trying to dissuade him from seminary studies -- neither of us is convinced that's only a joke!  Thankfully, two local Hong Kong students will help them to negotiate the intimidating queues and triage systems at the public hospital.

• -- A woman who told me about the last month of her mother's life this summer, and how hard it was for her, the student, to return to Hong Kong and give full concentration to her studies. How does one do that? 

• -- Another student whose 30 year old brother was in a terrible motorcycle accident this summer, which left him half paralyzed and unable to walk, talk, or feed himself. There's almost no therapy available for him in that part of Myanmar. So the hospital just sent him home for the family, mostly his ageing mom, to take care of him. 

• -- Another new student came to my office deeply worried about his scholarship fund, which is suddenly way reduced because it comes from Great Britain and the British pound has undergone a big devaluation since Brexit.

And all of that was in addition to the small mountain of financial documents I'm trying to cough up in time for my October meetings for the Mekong Mission Forum in Myanmar. sigh.
But as an unexpected grace to my work,  I've received a dizzying array of "welcome back!" gifts from students including: one bead necklace, one woven purse, two packets of coffee, an angel candle, two "longi" or pieces of cloth to use as a skirt, one bag of peanuts, and a bunch of amazingly delicious red bananas. 

So life is pretty okay back at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Hong Kong - 

Except for the getting up at 4:30 a.m. part. One more week to go.

New seminary graduate students from Myanmar exploring Hong Kong with one of our LTS faculty colleagues

Abundant Life Christian Church has recently become
one of our local sponsors and prayer partners with S/E Asian students

Launching out from Lake Toba, Indonesia

After a several month hiatus, Marathonangel returns with this guest post from Dr. Wayne L. Nieminen (a.k.a. my husband) returning to Hong Kong from an LTS faculty trip to Indonesia:

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Have you toiled all night near the shore in vain?

Push away from the shore, launch out:

Where the flood is deep cast your nets again.

Push away from the shore, launch out;

There a blessing waits your soul to take,

Haste away from the barren strand;

Toil no more where the surges break;

“Launch out’ is your Lord’s command. 

After June 2014 graduation celebrations, members of the Lutheran Theological Seminary (LTS) faculty journeyed to Northern Sumatra, Indonesia for our annual retreat.   We visited church leaders and LTS alumni who now serve a marvelous array of institutions within the Gereja Kristen Protestant Indonesia Church (GKPI – 355,000 members ) and Huria Kristen Batak Protestant (HKBP – with over 4.1 million members).  We were moved by these church ministries to the blind, orphans, Moslems and schools for teaching and preaching, training pastors and deaconesses.   A vibrant holistic ministry of Word, Sacrament, Service, Education and Song was evident to all.  

 One early evening we found ourselves on a passenger ferry crossing Lake Toba on our way to Samosir Island.   Lake Toba is the result of the eruption of a “super volcano” which took place about 75,000 years.  It is said to have been the greatest volcanic eruption within the last 25 million years of the earth’s history.  Samosir island formed from the cone of the volcano and is surrounded by a lake that is nearly 100 kilometers long, 30 kilometers wide and 500 meters deep.  This extraordinary geological event is said to have been responsible for changing the climate of the earth. 

 The sun was about to set when we boarded the ferry.  We faced a warm but growing headwind.  Our HKBP guides sung hymns as the captain navigated the choppy waters and the Southern Cross constellation seemed to travel with us above our heads.  I later read that the “crux” constellation was “circumpolar” – always above the horizon in the southern hemisphere.  Sailors used it as navigational aid – a guidepost.

I remembered an old hymn, “Launch Out.” written by Rev. James Bruce Mackay (author of some 60 hymns) who lived from 1861-1940.   It is one of the many nautical hymns composed in the missionary era.  Those hymn writers knew about capricious seas, rogue waves, incoming swells, gusts of winds, typhoons, as well as the sea’s calmness - The sea was a metaphor for the unpredictability and arbitrariness of life.

Nevertheless, MacKay believed that the Savior continually called his disciples to “push away from the shore, launch out.”  We, the LTS Hong Kong faculty, were witnesses to the Indonesian churches “launching out” through its many ministries.  The kingdom of God is emerging across the globe with men and women dreaming big dreams - reimagining the world.  And we, as teachers, felt privileged and grateful to have a (small) role in God’s movement in these churches and in this country.

  

The refrain for MacKay’s hymn is:  “Launch out, launch out; Push away from the shore, launch out;  God’s grace flows free, like a might sea, And the Master calls, “Launch out!”  May we as the Lutheran Theological Seminary – faculty, students and staff  together -  continue to “launch out” !!! 

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