22 days till Santa comes...27 days till Jimbo comes!

Zao un! (Good morning!)

Weather
I hear that there have been some pretty bad bushfires back home lately (especially near Parkes!) and that it has been hitting over 40 degrees! Well the weather here has been fairly moderate (it's hovering in the 20's) but this week (for the first time since we have been here) we have seen rain! Apparently today though there is a typhoon forecast which should be pretty interesting. Puli is pretty sheltered from the full brunt of the typhoons but apparently it's still quite awesome to behold. I will try to get some photos if anything exciting happens!

Hospital
When we switched doctors, I was looking forward to having a more 'relaxed' program than before. When Pete had Dr Wally, he managed to be home by lunchtime without fail every day. So when I was assigned to Dr Wally for the second half of the term I was elated at the prospect of having some time off. However, it seems that wherever I go, I am given more work to do! Yesterday I was shafted between doctors so that I actually ended up staying in hospital for longer than Dr Wally did! These long days are killing me! Argh! I'm never going to survive my internship when I graduate. Apparently the junior doctors and nurses have been joking about how Pete has so little work and I have so much work at hospital. Sigh...=(

Hospital Bible Study
This morning in hospital Bible study we looked at Psalm 65. Maybe Pastor Tsai is doing a series on Psalms or something because since we have been here I keep hearing message after message on the Psalms and I don't think I've heard one message so far that mentioned the gospel.Apparently this morning's message from Psalm 65 ended up being a talk about how Pastor Tsai used to be in the Taiwanese Olympic Weightlifting team and wore a belt. From this he drew some analogy about how Christians need to wear belts? And I think this is where I lost track of the logic. Then he showed us some pictures of the mountains and we sang a hymn in Taiwanese. It was a bit strange and I am not sure how much of what he is saying comes from the Bible and how much of what he says comes from his own personal thoughts on life. However, at the end of the study, Dr Nathan asked us what blessings God had given us (I've noticed a big focus on 'blessings' in Taiwanese Christian thinking - maybe due to the culture of prosperity and 'fortune' that pervades the society here - but so far I haven't heard anything of the suffering that being a Christian entails as we take up our crosses) and Dr Nathan said that he thought that blessings didn't always equate to material prosperity in this lifetime and so Pete and I shared our thoughts on the topic and Dr Nathan translated what we said into Taiwanese. Pray for the Christians here, that their faith in God would be rooted in the Bible and not in traditions or their own 'ideals' but in the simple message of the cross that appears as foolishness to the world.
At the moment, the hospital is conducting a competition/experiment between the wards to see who can decorate their wards the 'best' for Christmas. So now our once sterile wards have been transformed into bright happy places with Christmas trees and lights and little angels hanging from the roof. It feels weird seeing all this Christmas stuff around when the weather isn't that hot.

Early Christmas Surprise
Yesterday Pete and Jade surprised me with an early Christmas present. It was this CD of one of the major pop stars in Taiwan (Stefanie Sun) who we have all been watching on TV. It's a really awesome CD and she is a great singer with awesome songs, but what's even better is that now we can use the songs to learn Mandarin! One of the songs is called "Wor yair hern syung ta"which we have roughly translated to "I also miss him" and so I plan to try and translate some of the songs this weekend to help me in my Mandarin learning!

Half way
Today is roughly half way through the elective (1 month down, 1 month to go!) and it seems like only yesterday we arrived in Taipei. I am so thankful to God for the opportunity to come here are experience life in another 'world' from my own. I have learnt a lot about what God is doing in the world and how Christianity works in another culture. Although my Mandarin isn't as good as I would like, I think I will spend more time in the second half of the elective learning the lingo. I think we are planning to make a trip up to Taipei for the weekend soon and we have already seen so much of this unique country that I can't wait to see what this next month brings. Thanks to everyone who has kept me sane by emailing or phoning or praying. It's been so encouraging to be reminded of what's happening back home and I can't wait to see all of you!

Have a great weekend and God bless!

Jimbo