Advent 4 - Peace!

I woke up this morning -- no water!
I went for a quick run -- still no water when I got back!
I have to go to work this afternoon, so I guess our bottles of drinking water will have to be used up for an alternative purpose.
 Informal poll... if you had to make do without running water or without electricity, which would you choose?  Me? This morning?   No electricity would be fine if I had running water.  Well, if I had WARM running water :)

 Mary & Joseph had neither of course;  neither on that dusty road to Bethlehem, nor in that stable where they had to spend the night. Maybe the star of Bethlehem shone brightly enough for light, but there's no mention of who did the washing up in preparation for the birth, not to mention after the baby was born!

Some of Wayne's seminary students here in Hong Kong will be going back to their home countries, and serving in places where electricity & running water are not available, or sporadic. 

It kind of makes us think, this last week of Advent, as I wait for the water to flow again!

Here are a couple of end-of-the-semester photos of "Dr. Wayne" with the students from his "Post-Modern Therapies" and "Pastoral Care in dealing with addictions & abuse" courses.

One more quick note... I'm considering making an Advent donation to a water project such as the one mentioned on this Advent Conspiracy site, which someone told me about recently.  What do you think?

Advent Peace!

“If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”  Jesus, as quoted in John 4:10

Advent 3 in Hong Kong - Joy!

 I don't think the road to Bethlehem is quite this hilly, but I did think of the pregnant Mary and (presumably) worried Joseph walking their weary way to the manger this week.

Wayne & I started among the monkeys of Monkey Hill, climbed up the 1,284 steps to Needle Point (yup, we counted them!), paused often enough to breathe deeply (well, to breath at all actually, and to quiet our pounding hearts) and admire the view.  Unfortunately we took a few too many stops so that our last 20 minutes were literally in the dark.  Good thing the path was paved with white rocks and had a railing for the more treacherous parts.

Next time, we'll get an earlier start.

(I wonder if that's what Mary and Joseph said, too?)

"The desert and the parched land will be glad;
the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.
Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom;
it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.


Strengthen the feeble hands,
steady the knees that give way;
say to those with fearful hearts,
Be strong, do not fear;
your God will come..."  -- the prophet Isaiah 35:1-4

/a/ is for Apple, /k/ is for Cake!

Thursday was Apple Cake Day at the Lutheran Primary School, apples chopped & cake lovingly baked from scratch by yours truly, for primary school kids learning English, and hopefully something about Advent and the Christian understanding of preparing for the birth of Jesus.

Unlike many American kids, these students don't go for super sweet, so I made an easy apple bundt cake recipe I found on the web, substituted whole wheat for some of the flour to make it even healthier, baked it for the THREE hours my oven takes to get anything done... and lugged it over on the metro, then walked through the warren of public housing buildings to get to the school.

I forgot to bring forks so the teacher handed out toothpicks for the kids to eat with (since apparently eating anything with your fingers is verboten in Hong Kong culture). ok.  But toothpicks?  I thought there was maybe some special Chinese technique for eating with toothpicks but the kids struggled with it as much as I did, and I wondered whether some may have thought this is an American way to eat cake, one toothpick crumb at a time. 

I did make a big show of washing my hands before handling the cake to cut it, carefully demonstrating and enunciating, "Now, I am washing my hands", only to be greeted by squeals and hoots as I began drying my hands on the towel placed above the classroom sink.  Turns out that towel is for wiping floors and... whatever else needs wiping in a classroom.  But not hands.

The kind teacher then gave me toilet paper to dry my hands with.  Toilet paper??

There is still lots to be learned about this world of Hong Kong.

 "People look east, the time is near
of the crowning of the year.
Make your house fair as you are able,
trim the hearth and set the table.
People look east, and sing today --
Love, the Guest is on the way."  -- Advent hymn (text: Eleanor Farjeon 1881-1965)

 

 

These are the towels NOT to be used for drying hands.

Just when we start forgetting we live in the tropics...

Wayne & Swedish colleague Dieter meet up with a python!!!!!

The red stuff is not blood... it's a red rope used to capture this beauty alive.

Actually it was Christopher, one of Wayne's students who met up with this amazing creature.  "I've seen bigger back home [in Myanmar]," he says nonchalantly.  The students dutifully called the Hong Kong police who turned the snake over to the wildlife management people... who did exactly what with it???

"Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a "Python spirit", by which she predicted the future..."   Acts of the Apostles 16:19


Acts 16:19 is the only mention of pythons in the Bible, to which my NIV Archaeological Study Bible says: "The python was a mythical snake worshiped at Delphi and associated with the Delphic oracle.  The term python had come to be used of the persons through whom the python spirit supposedly spoke.  Since such persons spoke involuntarily, the term ventriloquist was used to describe them To what extent this young woman actually predicted the future is unknown."

Advent and Founder's Day Celebrations at LTS-Hong Kong

"I delight greatly in the LORD, "

 2010 Founder's Day celebrations at the Lutheran Seminary where Wayne teaches pastoral care and counseling.  He and other international Lutheran missionaries join Chinese faculty in teaching, mentoring, and spiritual formation of Christian church leaders for  Hong Kong, Myanmar, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, as well as beautiful Mainland China itself!

As we enter the season of Advent, it's fantastic to see all these different students joining together here in Hong Kong, to celebrate God in a kaleidoscope of color, language, and song.



 "I delight greatly in the LORD

   my soul rejoices in my God.

"...before all nations"

For he has clothed me with garments of salvation 

   and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness,

as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest,

   and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. 

For as the soil makes the sprout come up
   and a garden causes seeds to grow, 

so the Sovereign LORD will make righteousness 

   and praise spring up before all nations.  -- Isaiah 61:10-11

"my soul rejoices in my God."

"I delight greatly"

"as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest"

"and arrayed me in a robe of His righteousness"

"as a bride adorns herself with her jewels"

"so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations."

"For He has clothed me with garments of salvation"

 

Hong Kong Hot Pot, Dim Sum, and Thanksgiving Pie

Happy Thanksgiving!  As my loyal readers already know, we've celebrated two more or less traditional Thanksgiving Dinners (more sushi, less green bean casserole :) ... but today I am thankful for...

Wayne's seminary colleague & wife who invited us for a traditional Hong Kong "hot pot" - what Hong Kong folks like to eat for family gatherings... cut up shrimp, fish, beef, mushrooms, greens, tofu which are boiled in a common pot of boiling water (hence the name - hotpot!) somewhat like fondue, minus the cheese and fattening stuff so you end up with a really healthy, delicious, sociable meal.

I'm also thankful for the church where I serve as "sacramental minister" once a month.  Last Sunday they invited me out for a traditional "dim sum" which is another very social way of eating... the food comes in these bamboo baskets and you order lots and lots of different things (so it's not worth it going with just one or two people, this is definitely a group event) and you kind of eat in random order... we had pigeon wings (yes, and heads) and shrimp dumplings and veggies and Chinese cake and lovely rice noodle things, and soup and beef dumplings and just when I thought we were surely finished, along came more bamboo baskets to fill up our bowls with heaps of fried rice to top things off.

So the grand finale was today, Thanksgiving Day itself, where I got to go to work (did I mention Thanksgiving is NOT a day off here?) and teach my adult students about American Thanksgiving.  It was pretty touching to have them share what they were thankful for.  None of them had heard the story of the original American Thanksgiving as a meal where Europeans and Native Americans sat down together.  I love living in a place where we get to, slowly, really find out about people who are so different from us... and in so many ways the same.  Most of them were thankful for friends and family.


They also completely devoured my home made pumpkin pie.  Made me happy!  :)

Blessed Thanksgiving to y'all!  (Since we are 14 hours ahead of folks in the Midwest, we're calling our boys in the morning... I'm thankful for modern technology and free Skype phone calls).

"Enter his gates with thanksgiving
   and his courts with praise;
   give thanks to him and praise his name.
 For the LORD is good and his love endures forever;
   his faithfulness continues through all generations."    -- Psalm 100:4-5

Too Much Stuffing but Just Enough Thanksgiving

Successfully cooked a full Thanksgiving Dinner on my tiny little stove and 1/3 size of normal oven. Invitees included Germans, Chinese, Thai, and Burmese friends/neighbors/students.

 

 

 

 Missed my sister though.  Of course my sons and my mom, too, but it's my sister and I who always laughed our way through Thanksgiving preparations -  a glass of wine in hand -- I was always the stuffing and pie expert, she's the "presentation" queen.  So this year my "presentation" left a wee bit to be desired, but oh well.

I was proud of my roasted carrots (in lieu of sweet potatoes) which had specks of the only thing I was able to harvest successfully from my Hong Kong "garden"  - dill weed! The easy recipe is here.

Only down side to this event -- I so stuffed myself with that fabulous (if I do say so myself) stuffing that I was up walking in the night.  Note to self: it's a bad sign when your 17 year old son stops eating before you do.