Last year on the race China was country number 4 for my squad, and it came just after New Year's. The first thing that struck all of us about where we stayed in Hong Kong was the silence while we slept. Now, I would not describe where I stayed as being quiet at night - there were always distant honks, occasional fireworks, passing cars, boats on the river, and any other usual city noises coming through my paper thin windows. But I'd forgotten until this morning what particular sound we were all suddenly surprised to be without each morning - the sound of a crowing rooster. No matter what country we were in, or how big a city, there was always a crowing rooster to greet us in the mornings, so after 4 months of hearing that it stood out when it was gone. Even in an airport once, I think it was here in the Philippines, as we waited for our luggage at a turnstyle out came a box amongst all the other suitcases that suddenly let out the most confused and indignant cock-a-doodle-doo I've ever heard a rooster make.

 

As you can probably guess, this morning I woke to the sound of, amongst other things, a rooster crowing. It brought back a lot of memories, and now I'm sitting at a table and on a chair that I helped move in here last December, remembering our coaches talking about brokenness over there by the couches, seeing photos of my squad mate Danny hanging on the wall, and talking with Christie about the inescabable necessity of peanut butter (a common topic for us on the race and now). I'm loving it.

 

I'm already realizing that God has me here for more than just a visit - already I feel myself debriefing (the act of reflecting, analyzing, assessing, and internalizing the lessons learned) all that's happened over the last 6 months. Knowing how busy I'm going to be when I get home on Wednesday I'm even more grateful for my time here, for some downtime in between culture shifts. I can't think of a better place than here for it, as anyone that has been here will attest to.

I apologize for the lack of posts lately. Over the last few weeks it seems there has been no end to the last minute things that needed doing, amongst other distractions, as I prepared to leave China. Now I'm just a few short hours from starting my journey home, and I'm not even sure I've allowed myself the time to reflect on what my time here has been for me. In any case, I'll cover a few things as quickly as possible to get you up to speed:

 

I was without a passport until this past Monday, and had no valid visa for a total of 28 days. I received my visa to allow me to stay my final month yesterday morning. I leave the country this afternoon. This is how my life works. Despite it being out of my control that my visa expired while not in possession of my passport, they still kept saying they would charge me the $3000 in overstay fees. I was praying the whole time I waited in line to pick up the visa - especially after they handed me a bill that read 16000 RMB (about $3000) and told me to go downstairs to pay it. The cashier lady only asked for 160 RMB (about $30) - they had forgotten the decimal and given me a heart attack. I was thanking God all the way home.

 

2. Paul

I may not have mentioned his name before, but Paul is the boy at the boys home who was applying to that special school that would better meet his needs. Unfortunately, Paul is missing some important paperwork, something similar to a birth certificate, so they could not approve his application. An attempt was made some years ago to find this same paperwork in Paul's home province,  but it was never located. The heads of the boy's home are trying again to track this down, so keep this in your prayers.

 

I never got around to telling the story of a student at my school that has been a focus for me for the last several months, so here's a nutshell version. I'll call him Stan for now. Stan is an extremely intelligent 11 year old that doesn't believe in God (even though he's at a Christian school), which I didn't know about him until I asked him something from a workbook one day (I don't remember what), and a few hours later we were still discussing some of the most advanced theology problems I can think of. This is an 11 year old with English as his second language asking questions that they base college level courses on, and rather effectively following and debating the arguments all the way through. I loved it. It was one of the most challenging and interesting conversations I've had in recent memory. At the end, Stan decided that he needed to know more about who God was before he would commit to following Him, and since then I've been sharing scriptures with Stan on a regular basis and hearing him out as he wrestles through the implications of each passage. Fluff answers just don't cut it for him, so we've had some great talks (again, he's only 11!). I see him becoming a great apologetic and a strong Christian leader one day, so be praying that God would be very real to him and that he would come to recognize the need for a step of faith.

 4. Philippines

Christie Albaugh, of team Seven:Eleven fame, moved herself to the Philippines not too long ago to carry on ministering with Kid's International Ministries who hosted us while in Manila last year. I couldn't pass up a chance to spend some time with her, so I found a cheap flight and will be spending the next 4 days in Manila with her before flying home to Vancouver on Wednesday.

 

5. World Race Wedding

When a World Racer gets married, as many people as can afford to come from our various corners of the earth make our pilgrimages across nations and oceans, as much to see one another as to see the bride and groom usher in a new season of life. It's always over too soon, but it's also a weekend of the best fellowship you can find. Next weekend Jenn Fancy, my fellow Canadian racer, is getting married in Vancouver so everyone is coming to my backyard this time. It's going to feel like one big homecoming extraveganza for my first week home, and I'm really looking forward to it.

 

A million things happened this week unexpectedly, and so instead of reflecting and properly saying goodbye to friends here, it's just been a rush from one thing to the next. I think a few important people don't even know I'll be gone today. There's a number of people I only just connected with after working beside them for months, and with the churches here I feel like I just started to get a vision for what's going on and what to do about it, how to strengthen each of them. So I feel like I've started things and walked away mid stride, which is normal for me if I've found or raised up someone God has chosen to carry on the work. But that hasn't happened here. It will take some time and talking it out with people to figure out exactly what I've just gone through, and maybe some of the whys.

 

In any case, while there will be more stories and thoughts on China to come that I didn't get the chance to tell or write yet, as far as blogs straight from the orient go this is the last of them. Goodnight, and good luck.

What a week! After spending several days arguing my way through red tape, paper work, and lineups full of angry frustrated people, I got an application together for a new passport only to be told it would take 15 working days to get it. Which means I'm an illegal alien for nearly 3 weeks, possibly at the cost of $100 a day in over-stay charges. I think it will all turn out after some more well placed arguments and my usual dose of stubbornness, but be sure to be putting that in Dad's ear for me.

 

In other news, I've been finding more opportunities to speak with a couple of 'house shepherds' in the area about encouraging and lifting each other up in a regular face to face manner that would help eliminate some of the denominational separation I've been seeing here. I don't know why I had this idea put on my heart so late in my time here, but now is when it happened and so I'm doing all I can to get this rolling. So far, people have been excited about the idea. I just hope they don't crumble when the hard parts get here. The other idea that seems to keep coming up in conversation is the idea of youth groups. Chinese culture, and a lot of Asian culture, is built up around individual achievement and study. The family unit is given a lot more importance than what we give it in North America, but community outside of the family is a foreign concept in many ways. Extra curricular activities are individual based activities, not team or group based, and trying to explain organized sports leagues took quite a bit. But there's a need amongst the youth here for peer groups, I can see it in their interactions with each other. Chinese society is as plagued by the 'Fatherless Generation' as we are in the West, though it's roots are different, and young men here especially have no idea what it means to be men, to take part in life rather than wait on an answer from a text book or mom. I've seen youth groups be extremely effective in raising up these types of youth, allowing for community to show them who they are and accept them for it. I just don't know what to do about it in only 3 weeks (yes, that's all the time I have left here).

So I need you to do what you all do best and ask that these needs be provided for. And if I'm to be part of it that I would know what to do, say, or be, and who to do, say, or be it to. I want to finish well here, and not get distracted with getting bills paid or renewing visas or whatever else there is to distract me (and there is plenty to be distracted by).

I would like to tell you about the amazing and adventure filled life of a good friend of mine. He's been through 15 different countries in which he's ridden on, in, and over oceans, lakes, planes, trains, cars, trucks, trailers, bikes, motorbikes, dirt roads, concrete roads, and no roads at all. He's seen minefields, sand beaches, rocky beaches, gone through jungles, up hills, sat in a desert, and has shaken the hands of a hundred people or more from all manner and walk of life. He's been stared at and scrutinized, marveled at and coveted. Everywhere he goes the first thing that happens is he gets labeled and told how long he will be accepted there. Five months ago, he saw the inside of a washing machine and lived to cross even more borders, but that washing machine was the beginning of the end for him. I'd like to introduce you to my passport.

 

Since the washing machine incident, border crossings have raised extra eyebrows and invited extra scrutiny, but since we were always allowed through, I didn't do anything about it. Other than my Cambodia visa now being blank, you can read everything else in there just fine (albeit a little faded in places), and my passport has 10 times the character it used to. However, I went to renew my visa on Friday, and they told me to come back when I got a new passport. Which brings on a whole lot of issues since by the time that can happen, my visa will have expired and they will expect me to have left the country. I think everything will be ok once I talk to the Canadian embassy, hopefully I'll get some kind of temporary visa while I get a new passport, but be lifting this up for me all the same.

 

And yes, it really is that faded in real life, it's not the angle or lighting, and those are threads coming off of it around the edges, not lint from my pocket. It's the end of an era trading this one in.

Just so you all know, the comments section of this blog is a great place for debate and letting me know how you really feel. I like feedback, I enjoy discussion, so don't hold back when you disagree. Anywho, some updates and additions:

 

Terry, who I told you about in my Lift it up! blog, continues to show great signs of recovery. She stood up a few days ago, and should be working on walking by now, and her speech is almost completely clear again. There still isn't much improvement with her arm, but that's always the last thing to recover with strokes like this, so it's normal. The family is doing fairly well by the sounds of it, they know the work being done here isn't finished for them so that's keeping them faithful. Keep lifting Terry and the family up!

 

On an immediate need one of the boys at the home will be doing an important interview today (Tuesday here, Monday night for most of you) at a special school. Paul is one of two boys that were here last year when I first came to China that are still at the home - he's been there the longest, in fact - so I feel like I know him best. He likes my card games, especially Crazy 8s. He doesn't have full use of his legs, which are underdeveloped, and has many motor skill problems, so getting around is a challenge (though he does very well for himself all things considered). The school he's gone to apply at is one specifically for people with disabilities - their facilities are fully equipped for wheelchair access - and focuses on life skill training. Their goal for their graduates is to have them running a business of their own or working in steady, rewarding jobs rather than the 'whatever pays the bills' mentality that most disabled Chinese are limited to. It's a great opportunity, and we hope he can be accepted as the boy's home isn't set up to give him these kinds of things. He will be missed but we REALLY want this for him, and so does he, so be lifting that up today!

 

Thanks for all you do everyone!

Often I find myself ministering to and encouraging other missionaries, pastors, and other believers or church groups more than evangelizing. This is largely due to the short term nature of my callings - I can build on what's there in a short time, but to build a whole new foundation takes more than what I'm usually able to do. Not always, but usually. I started feeling God's nudgings to a deeper calling in this last January and voiced it as God calling me to help heal the church, strengthening what's there and enabling others to reach out more effectively. In that vein, today I want to tackle most divisive subject I come across, in nearly every nation, because it's something we've let come between so many of us when it's actually laid out very clearly. It's speaking in tongues, and often comes hand in hand as an issue with prophesy. This has divided North American churches a lot, and I'm seeing the same thing happen here in China right now. It frustrates me. God hands out a gift by which we can strengthen our spirits, an amazing way in which to worship Him, and while half of us start calling people crazy for accepting it and using it, the other half call the first half spiritually dead! I'll lay it out as I see it, just so you know where I'm coming from, but defining how this should be viewed isn't the point of my blog - I'll get to what that is in a minute.

 

Before anyone goes labeling me, let me say that I (sadly) do not come from a church that practices or teaches on things like prophesying and/or speaking in tongues. We're a work in progress, like any other congregation. Once I started seeing how God works in people that don't have our preconceptions of how God works I saw that many of us (on both sides of the argument) were missing things in our relationships with God. Today, I have yet to speak in tongues myself, but I expect it to happen, and for the last two years I've prophesied whenever given the opportunity. But before all that I had to wrestle with what God's word says on the subject, since I always naturally lean to the intellectual and logical side of faith. I'm a cynic first, what can I say. What I found is that it all boils down to one simple verse: He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church. Everything else that's said on the subject breaks down that verse into everyday actions or defines differences between preaching in tongues and praying in tongues, but that right there is the heart of what the bible teaches on it. To deny the existence of these gifts is to deny scripture cause it's all over the place in there, and nowhere does it say these gifts stopped being given to believers. So, speaking in tongues is something by which we can worship God, and it is a practice that builds us up, strengthening us for God's purposes. What I want to explore is, since it's so clearly laid out and given as an amazingly good thing, why does it divide us?

 

When I was going into Morocco my first time I was going to be filming stock footage for our outreach television programs. When choosing what equipment to bring, I was advised that most North Africans think in boxes and to not take anything that would put me in a questionable box. This meant that using a tripod looked professional and using one meant being asked for filming permits, work visas, etc., while without it I'd be taken as a tourist. Even though amateurs often use things like tripods, larger cameras, microphones, or special lenses, any one of these would be from the wrong box to a Moroccan so I had to make do to avoid attention (using our van as a tripod instead). I thought about that a lot, and you know what? We all do this. We have different definitions of which box means what, but we all have them. And the sad part is we've all got a nice neat one where God fits. We either want to know what to expect and build a box, or we think we know what to expect and have a box. We either think that crazy isn't of God, or if we're the crazy ones then somber isn't of God. All it is in the end is a box, a limitation on what we believe God capable of because we're not comfortable with a God who does these 'other' things. The tongues issue is merely an indicator of where our hearts are. We want predictable even if what we can predict is that it will be unpredictable, and as soon as we put up our little box of what or who God is and what He does, those that have a different box for God are quickly viewed as anything from merely tolerated to outright ungodly. This is the division that is killing us, world wide, for when we don't whole heartedly support one another, when we look down on one another like this, the world sees it and rightly wants nothing to do with us. We are divided on this because we can't accept that other peoples worship is as acceptable to God as our own, and that God works in ways we haven't seen or experienced ourselves.

 

I'd never noticed this verse in Mark 9:24 before reading it a couple months ago, and it's been stuck in my head since: 'Immediately the boy's father exclaimed "I do believe; help me with my unbelief!"' I found it odd, claiming belief but asking for help with his unbelief, and had to think for a minute before I got it. See, I believe in God. You can sooner convince me I could not eat for a year and never feel hungry (I need to at least snack every few hours or my stomach mutinies) than convince me God isn't the God of the bible and that every word He's spoken is truth. Yet I do things contrary to that belief, like being uncertain of whether speaking in tongues is real, or that the word I'm speaking for someone is truly from God. He's saying, 'I believe this far, Lord; help me believe farther.' May this be our prayer as churches, that our different boxes would push us to seek more from God and each other and not divide us, that we would ask God to DESTROY those boxes we have Him in by simply not fitting into it any longer.

 

And we do have Him in a box. Even if that box is bigger than most of the other boxes we see out there, He's in a very small confining box for each of us when compared to what He really is. Are we willing to admit to our brothers from the church down the road that we've looked down on how they worship and ask them to teach us? Are we brave enough to really seek Him and step up to the responsibilities that come with knowing a God such as this? Can we ask for help with our unbelief?

 

Lord, I do believe. Please, please, help me with my unbelief.

Kevin and Terry are a couple that have been doing a lot of impacting work here through multiple short-term trips over the last 10 years. Their own house for Dad back in Michigan has helped start a house here, and they've been involved in bringing copies of His book to those that need it here too. I had the privilege of meeting them on their most recent trip, and even got to spend Easter with them over a hot pot dinner. On this last trip Dad gave them several amazing opportunities to expand and continue His work here, just prior to them heading home to Michigan. Last Saturday, less than a week after arriving home, Terry had a stroke that has left her paralyzed on one side of her body. Thanks to Dad, she's showing improvements, regaining some movement in her extremities, and we're thankful it happened after she got home and not while still here. Kevin and Terry have four sons (and seven grandchildren), the youngest of whom is just graduating high school and still living at home, so be lifting up the family as well as her recovery. We know the work for them isn't complete here yet! Thanks everyone!

 

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was going away for the weekend. Here's the resulting video that I finally got around to editing for you (real updates to follow soon, promise):

 

The thing about Chinese culture is that when they have a tradition (and there are more than a few), they make it a complete experience. There is a right way and many wrong ways to prepare for it, it takes some form of precision and dedication to master, and there is deep, profound (or at the least seemingly profound) life philosophy to be experienced and reflected upon during said tradition. Today I learned a new one - Kung Fu Tea.

 

In the partaking of Kung Fu Tea you use a special kind of tea set with, amongst other things, a small clay teapot and tiny espresso sized teacups (no handles though). The dry tea is placed in the clay teapot (clay to absorb flavor over time), which is only big enough to fill about 6 of these small cups. You drink shots of tea in batches, adding hot water to the teapot for each new batch. The trick is that you only steep the tea for about 30 seconds or so each time, and you go through 8 or so servings like this. Here's the why: the part in tea that is not so good for the body does not (supposedly) steep into the water as quickly as the flavor and aroma, so this is supposed to be a much healthier way of drinking tea. Also, each batch changes the flavor and slightly changes the intensity of the aroma, much like an aging wine except that the tea is not what's aging but the tea leaves are simply changing what they will lend to each new filling of water. You get an almost completely different experience with every cup. The philosophy, which is the point of describing all of this to you, is that each batch or shot of tea represents a decade of life. At first there is little flavor or aroma though you can detect these elements, like in children where you see the potential but not what shape it will take. As you continue, the aroma of the tea is strongest first while the flavor is not so smooth or as enjoyable as later on, becoming more so in the '30s and 40s' as the aroma seems to influence the flavor little by little. This changing carries on to the end which is usually around the 8th 'decade' depending on the quality of tea.

 

I saw one of those Nooma videos by Rob Bell awhile ago that was talking about the Hebrew words for breath - Yod, Hey, Vav, Hey - and how those words are the names for the letters which spell LORD, also translated as Yahweh or Yahveh. Rob talked about how the word for spirit and the word for breath is the same word, and how we come from dirt, return to dirt, and in between are sustained by the breath, or spirit, of God that Genesis tells us He breathed into us. What I kept thinking about while we drank the tea was how the aroma of the tea, while its intensity changes slightly, was the exact same all the way through to the last cup. How even through all our stages in life, our shortcomings and screw ups, our strongest and our weakest times, we still have that same breath in us just as the tea has the same smell. To God we have the same aroma from start to finish and He knows that if properly nourished the breath He put in us will seep into the flavor of our lives, mellow out the harshness, sweeten the bitterness, and smooth out all those finer edges we have as people. But it won't happen if that breath isn't nourished, if it's treated harshly or with disdain, if it's left without hope...We need to remember this. No matter what the current state of a person is, no matter what they've done or who they are, it's the breath of God that sustains them. Nourish it.