Thai-Dye goes to Taiwan!

In SE Asia there are approximately 15ish (I'm not sure the real number) missionaries in 3 countries. Sarah Longmire, Robin McCoy, and I are in Thailand, Seth and Shannon Hoeppner and Chuck and Jeanette Groth are in Cambodia. There are also folks in Vietnam, but it's a closed country meaning, they technically have to be called teachers according to the government, and we don't mention names.

That said, Jeanette, with the help of Taiwan missionaries, planned a retreat for all of us in Taiwan. This was a great opportunity, especially during Holy Week to have a chance to spend time in worship and fellowship with other English speaking Christians when for many of us that is non-existent in our own countries. All the missionaries in Taiwan work as ESL teachers in a Lutheran school there and attend church together.

Our first day was spent relaxing and sightseeing in Taipei, the capital city. We went to the National Palace Museum which has quite an extensive collection of Chinese art pieces. This took up the morning and early afternoon getting there and touring. Our next stop was a visit to the Taipei 101 building which is now the 2nd tallest building in the world, with the biggest one being in Dubai. It doesn't look that tall looking at it but I'm not going to argue. On our walk there we experienced the Taiwanese diagonal pedestrian crosswalk, meaning that all traffic stops and then there is a huge mob of people that take over the intersection before traffic resumes. No one actually went to the sky deck, instead we all ate lunch and the went shopping, before we headed to catch our 3 hour van ride to Chiayi.

Our lodging for the remainder of the trip was at the "practice hotel", so named because it used to be just that for students to learn how to work in a hotel. This was mission control too where all our bible studies and fellowship time took place. On Sunday morning the parade of scooters started, as the Taiwanese missionaries were recruited to take all the SEA people to church. My escort was Matthew, and I got my second ride on a scooter (after getting breakfast with Beka). Church was so wonderful. It was in Chines but we had these cool earphones and Matt Wasmund translated for us. After lunch we had fellowship with the church members and I got to meet all the other Taiwan missionaries over lunch.

Highlights of the next few days included a new game of "Bang' with Mark, Kevin, Ray, Emilie, Anna, and Melissa, a pizza party with the whole gang, cheering on an ultimate Frisbee match, and movies at the Hanson house (dubbed after Carl Hanson who used to live there). The guys now call it the "handsome house". We also got a tour of Chiayi county with a man named Q. He took us to a Chinese temple, a stone museum, and the Tropic of Cancer. Who knew we were sitting on the Tropic of Cancer! We had dinner with the Wasmunds and were entertained by Lily their oldest daughter!

The last two days were spent observing the Taiwan missionaries in their English classes. I made it to see Ray, Heidi, Beka, Petrea, Amy, Michael and Ben. They were all great and I really enjoyed it.

The weather in Taiwan was cold (to the SEA people) which means it was 60's at night and 80's when the sun was shining. It was so nice though to walk outside and not sweat or sit on a bench and enjoy the cool breeze in a sweater. I came back feeling rather refreshed and so thankful for the new friendships and chance to worship and fellowship together with them. Here are the pictures. There were too many for me to add on this post