Day 57– Aug 25, 2005, Thursday: The ball is rolling

This is Daniel Lehman and his son leading us in worship. His son just cracks me up.

Every other morning either Ruth or I wake up at 6:00 and start coffee and then go have some time with God while the other stays home and attempts to have a little time to read the Bible but is usually interrupted by kids waking up. This morning was my morning, and usually I have a horrible time waking up. Usually I am lucky to get the coffee made and be on my way by 6:30 and get a half hour with God. In fact when I was at home, the only things I could ‘pop’ out of bed for were surfing or golf. I have had to rush to airports several times because I couldn’t pull myself out of bed. My old car pool buddy in Santa Cruz used to knock on my door every now and then to wake me up because I missed my alarm. You get the idea…I sleep WELL. This morning I woke up at 5:55 (before my alarm) and was just awake. I had the distinct feeling that God was waiting for me to have my time with him and watch the sunset together. I popped out of bed, made the coffee and went out to my chair. This was the first morning that I have actually seen the mountain before the sun came up. The reason I am telling you all this is because I was actually excited to get up and spend time with God and read his Word. To me, this is very exciting. I have known for a long time that the more time I spend with God, the better I will know him, but it has always been difficult to get the ball rolling. Part of the reason Ruth and I wanted to come here and do this was to get the ball rolling. Well, the ball is rolling. The bible says “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (Jer 29:13) What do you know? It works!

We had lecture with Don Gillman again. He is great. He spent a large amount of time talking about culture and how different we all are. He grew up in California and has lived in Taipei for the last 15 years. He speaks fluent Mandarin (Chinese), so he knows both cultures pretty well. He talked about little things like a handshake. In Western culture, a hearty handshake means you are happy or excited. In China they do the ‘dead fish’ handshake, and anything more than that means you are trying to overpower them and look down on them. In the West, we covet our space. We will not take a stranger into our bedroom, but we love to tell about our families. In the East, the family is private, but they will invite a stranger to sleep in their house without a second thought. In China, a good restaurant has excellent food, but you sit at a table with 10 strangers and could easily have rats and cockroaches on the floor because ‘you eat out of the bowls and they are clean’. In the US a good restaurant has ambiance and service and space. In Asia, people touch eachother as they walk by and crowd onto a bus because it is so crowded and you’ll end up standing on the bus if you don’t push your way in. It is totally acceptable. In the US people do not touch as they walk in a crowd and you wait in line at the bus and you apologize if you bump into someone. It was very interesting. I’ve experienced a few of these things, but just thought the people were rude, now I have a new understanding of them.

I mowed. It hasn’t rained in a while, so now when I mow my legs get dark with dust. I’ll have to take a picture for you. During dinner Ruth helped our neighbor make pineapple smoothies to sell because she is trying to earn money to stay in Cambodia for 6 months! I better stop typing and get to my book though, another book is due tomorrow and I still have 30 pages to read. Goodnight.

Me and my little girl