Here comes the bride... da dum da da!

Morning!

Concerto
On Friday evening Grace invited us to a concert that was being held in the hospital auditorium. We don't exactly know what it was for, but most of the audience was under the age of 10 and those few adults present were mainly supervising the paediatric population. The concert itself though was a collection of classical music being played by a pianist and a flautist and a opera singer. It was actually quite good, but I think after the first hour the novelty wore off and Pete and I became like restless kids in a church service. It was quite strange to see kids sitting in a concert with an intravenous line inserted with the drip hanging above their seat. I must photograph one of the 'drip-kids' before I leave!

Weddings
This weekend we were invited to the wedding of Mr Cow (I think that's how you would spell his name). Mr Cow was one of the aboriginal drivers who had taken us up to the mountains 2 weeks ago and although we had only met him recently he invited us along to 'experience' a traditional Taiwanese aboriginal wedding.
Now in Taiwan, the wedding focuses mainly on food (why am I not surprised?) and so we only attended the banquet part of the celebrations (apparently they got 'officially' married in a small ceremony beforehand). Apparently it is more 'prestigious' to invite heaps of people and you gain more 'face' by having lots of tables of people at your wedding.
Basically they rented out this huge restaurant and had it packed with a LOT of tables and it began with some traditional aboriginal dancers doing a dance thing that kind of looked like a cross between hip-hop and the Maori hakka. I managed to video some of the dancing and will put it into the email account later. Then came an aboriginal band, which was apparently composed of the local constabulatory. It was quite bizarre seeing aboriginal policeman seeing in a rock band at a wedding!
Then began the food! I used to think a 3 course meal was big, but we had a 10 course meal which included a lot of seafood (which I very subtly managed to avoid) and some kind of beef stew and duck and goose and fish and we just kept eating and eating and eating! I have finally learnt to pace myself when eating Taiwanese style and so I managed to get through the entire banquet without feeling like my inards were about to burst.
In Australia, we are accustomed to there being a lot of speeches about the bride and groom. Well in Taiwan, there was one brief speech about the bride and groom, but other than that, the bride and groom just mingled with the guests and visited each table. It was very informal but very loud!
Another notable presence at the wedding was... you guessed it! Politicians! This exciting election is going to be held this Saturday so what better way to dispense your election propaganda than at a wedding! Apparently it is quite normal for this to happen, although I feel if a politician crashed my wedding I would have not been as content as they were.
We were sitting on a table with Dr Tsai and Dr Lai and their families. During the banquet I was introduced to Dr Lai's brother in law who is getting married on the 19th December. We only met at the wedding, but by the time we left he had invited us all to his wedding. I can't say that I would be as hospitable as that, but the people here are truly generous towards foreigners.

Real food
After the banquet, we were all longing for some good ole Aussie tucker, so I whipped up some of Mum's famous Chicken and Potato Bake (which I cooked in a wok - sorry Mum!) which I must admit tasted really good and made me homesick!

Different church
Sunday morning we decided to go and visit another church in Puli and see what it was like. Fortunately for us, we did not have to travel far! 50 metres from our place is a church building across the road from the hospital. Apparently it was set up 15 years ago by a group of Christians who were meeting up as a Bible study group. Now it is a large church full of old and young people (including the founding missionaries) and many of the doctors who work at the hospital attend this church, including Dr Bill who is an anaesthetist who studied at UNSW (for his masters in medical education) and now his wife and son and daughter live in Sydney while he works in Taiwan. They were in Puli visiting him and so we were pleasantly surprised to meet people from Sydney at church. The church building itself had a similar layout to Parkes Baptist Church with the Communion table up the front with a set of big wooden chairs next to it and a baptistery behind the table and an almost identical cross shaped motif on the wall behind the baptistery. It was scary how similar it looked.
The church meeting began with a time of singing and we sang some old Songs of Praise classics like "Father, we love you, we worship and adore you; Glorify thy name in all the earth" and we even sang the Doxology "Praise God from whom all blessing flow". They also sang some Mandarin songs which seemed quite lively and the singing was led by a group of singers up the front and a piano player, a drummer, 2 recorder players and 2 violinists (grrr! - now I know why the Sheus play the violin - EVERY Taiwanese kid learns the violin here!) Then immediately after the singing the pastor got up and preached straight away for about 40 minutes. Normally I can handle a 40 minute sermon, but when you have no idea what's being said, you tend to get bored pretty quickly! After the sermon we celebrated the Lord's supper, which was really great! It was really encouraging to be united with these believers in Christ even though we couldn't communicate with them as freely as we would have liked. Then after church we were invited to go out for dinner with Dr Bill and Dr Benjamin and Pastor Yao.
We were taken out for dinner at this really nice restaurant which served 'Western food' and so I got to eat some delicious lamb chops for dinner. Over dinner Pete and Jade got to talking to Dr Bill about the Bible and Dr Bill was saying how he believed that the dietary requirements set out in the Old testament law were 'a manual' for how we should live today (i.e. we should eat what the Old testament Israelites ate because God wants us to eat that way). Pete and Jade were able to talk to him about what we believe as Christians (about the law and its relationship to us today because of Jesus) and he said he had never heard that before and is interested to find out more! Pray that we will be able to talk to him again and encourage him from the Bible.
During dinner whilst Pete and Jade were talking to Dr Bill, I was able to chat to Dr Benjamin and Pastor Yao about their experiences of Christianity in Taiwan. Both men became Christians during their teenage/college years and both of them are keen to see people know about Jesus. Dr Benjamin told me about how in his youth, there were many Christian doctors but now there seemed to be fewer around. He said that apparently within their hospitals they would regularly meet up with the other Christian staff (nurses, etc) for fellowship (kind of like the 'Hospital Bible Talks' in Sydney hospitals?).
Pastor Yao asked me what church was like in Sydney and so I told him about Unichurch and the work that happens on campus amongst students. He was amazed that 600 university students would come along during the week to hear the Bible being taught and to have fellowship. I think I sometimes take for granted the great privilege it is to have so many Christian brothers and sisters on campus at uni. I asked Pastor Yao what the church was like in Taiwan. He said that he struggled with getting people to be involved in the church and in evangelism. In Taiwan, people are 'consumed' by their work; something I think Australia is heading towards quite rapidly if we're not careful. Pastor Yao said that people were reluctant to come along to Bible study due to time constraints and that a lot of people who attended church didn't have a strong knowledge of the Bible. Pray for the Christians here, that they would come to a mature knowledge of the Son of God (Ephesians 4:13)
Apparently youth/children's ministry here is also very hard. In Taiwan, children are forced to study in their spare time (in order to get into a good high school so that they can get into a good university to get a good job to get a lot of money to look after their parents and bring 'honour' to their family) and so it is hard to get the kids or teenagers along to church or Sunday School or youth groups. Thank God for the amazing opportunities we have in Australia to tell the gospel to the youth of Australia and pray for Taiwan that they would be able to find opportunities to share the gospel in their 'busy' society.

Mountain Resorts
After dinner, Dr Benjamin took us to a local spa/resort place which apparently costs money to enter during the day but at night time is free. There are all these holiday log cabins in this green filled park and all around the park are these huge statues of people in various poses. Then Dr Benjamin took us up to the spa and he somehow asked the manger if we could take a walk inside so we got a tour of the spa which looked amazing! Apparently they use the water from the natural volcanic springs which is heated by the lava-stuff to make the spa water (but Dr Benjamin isn't sure if they use normal river water now instead).

Well that's probably enough ranting and raving for one day. I should probably go and have lunch now and leave you all in peace. Thanks for the emails and I hope you are all well and enjoying the heat of Australia (by the way, it's now cold here! But the mosquitoes still bite!)

God bless and 'zai jyen' (good bye)

Jimbo