At One Year

So here we are. One year later. Exactly 365 days ago today, we got off a plane and into a taxi that ushered us to our Taipei home. Home. It's still a little strange to both of us that it feels like home after only a year. We feel a deepening sense of homecoming with each overnight trip outside Taipei. We no doubt still miss our families back in Illinois (our "real home," we call it). But we certainly feel settled here.
We've learned a lot this year--not least of which how to be newlyweds in a foreign country. We kind of wish we had stories of how stretching and difficult our first year was--typical knock-your-socks-off missionary stories of how God came through for us in such an obvious and spectacular way that would encourage anyone's faith. But (and this is by no means a complaint) this year really wasn't too difficult. Sure, we got in the typical married fights under the stress that comes with any big transition; and we're much more familiar with the health care system than we planned to be. But all in all, God has provided much more than we ever would have expected.

It's been a great year. We've made lifelong friends, adjusted to a new culture, learned just enough Chinese to embarrass ourselves, learned a heck of a lot about each other as spouses and as people, and learned to laugh at our numerous mistakes as TV teachers.

We're standing on the one-year mark, looking back in gratitude and forward in anticipation. For one thing, now that we've officially worked for our organization for a year, we can finally start taking some vacation days! (Though I must say that for a former school teacher and campus minister, we've survived pretty well on a diet of weekends and holidays.) But ultimately, we're most excited to see how God wants to use us this next year. Is he going to use another year of prime time TV to hone our skills and prepare us for a successful future in televangelism? (Hope not.) Or maybe Sesame Street personalities? (Ah--that's more like it!) Whatever He has in mind, we certainly have a sense that He's preparing us for something. Not sure what. Not sure where. But until we know, we'll keep serving daily, praying continuously, and leaving the rest to Him.

A Catch up holiday

August 7th marks our 364th day here in Taiwan, and we're celebrating another typhoon holiday here in the comfort and security of our home. We figure it's the perfect time to get our blog caught up a little bit more, and fill in some of the blanks of that 4-month-long vacation from the blog world.
[Not only is Typhoon Morakot getting a lot of people out of work on a Friday, it's giving our island some much needed rain. It has been an unusually dry (and unusually hot) spring and summer for this tropical island, and the torrential rains of this storm are coming none too soon.]

July

Chip's birthday was in July, and among the many things he got for his birthday, this snail-mailed video was by far his favorite. (though the chocolate malt balls were an easy second)



And he did finally make it to the north coast to make the legendary leap off one of the northernmost points on the island: Yeilio. (Thanks for the great photo-work Allo!) Think we can get Mom and Dad up and off the point rock in August?

Grammy June's June

June in Taiwan was nothing special, but June in Clinton, Illinois was an event we really hated to miss: Grandma's 80th birthday party. Family and friends came from all over the country to celebrate her life and legacy via a reception thrown in her honor. Since we couldn't make it we decided to send her a couple of special little gifts to remind her that her grandkids halfway across the world were celebrating her too. Above is the Time magazine card we crafted for her. One of our graphic artist friends at work put it together for us. She was thrilled to receive it and called it the "best birthday card I've ever gotten." That made us smile:) We also put together a video of life here in Taiwan for her. Since we were headed to Korea to visit Courtney at precisely the same time we were doing the video, we were able to include some footage from her neck of the woods in it too. We'd love to post it here, but it's over 20 minutes long and would take FOREVER to load. Enjoy the pictures instead (thanks, Aunt Nancy!).

May

We knew that Dad would be preaching the commencement sermon at the LCCS graduation this year, which is indeed an honor to him. We hated to miss it, but were expecting to just listen to the podcast, maybe watch a DVD of it a few weeks late. The day before the ceremony, Dr. Estep explained that they were planning a big surprise for Dad, and that they'd like us to "be there" via skype. So after Tom Sowers and Ethan Hoinacki graciously connected their mic and camera on their LCC chapel end, we "showed up" in time not only to hear Dad preach a dynamite sermon, but also to receive the first honorary doctorate LCCS has ever given out. Way to go Dad--you make us proud!

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Also in May, Chip got to go hike a mountain with about 25 other people (mostly local staff) from our organization. Our destination was the summit of Syue Shan (Snow Mountain), the second highest peak on the island at 3886 meters (12,749 ft).

With a big group like we had, we needed to start super early. It was a pretty soggy morning...





...but it eventually cleared right up.
There where so many points on the trail where it was easy to forget that we were on a tropical island. The Black Forest was certainly one of these points.



No need to haul tents. After summiting, we came midway back down to use a mountain bunk house for cozy resting and hearty eating. Though temperatures during the day remained pretty warm, we did find a little frost on the ground in the morning, indicating a dip below freezing during the night.

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And before the end of the month, we managed to make the two-hour flight to Seoul to visit Courtney in Korea. It was great to finally meet up with her after too many months (eight) of being only one time zone away without seeing each other.



Two things shocked us about Seoul. 1) It's size. It's an absolutely huge city. As we could see most of it from the North Seoul Tower, it seemed to dwarf Taipei (not a particularly small city itself). and 2) It's foot-skin-eating fish. That's right. You can sip your coffee and nibble on a dessert while getting the dead skin eaten off your feet by a tank full of small, hungry fish. We're pretty sure they outlawed these little guys in the States (for sanitary reasons), but we were pretty glad to find them going strong in Korea.
At first, it's far more ticklish than the pictures suggest. Then after a few minutes, you get used to it.Here we are getting ready to eat some of that scorchingly spicy cuisine that Korea is so notorious for...

... and some of that Afro Cream ice cream that Korea will someday be famous for.

Chip was blessed and encouraged to be able to meet up with an old Christian Campus House friend, Tae Seop. Though we didn't get a chance to meet his wife, or see his newborn baby boy, it was still great to meet up with him.

And we were also quite blessed to find another old friend of ours in Korea:

March and April

So there weren't too many picture-worthy events in our March and April. But there was plenty of business as usual. Chip taught weekly English classes at the National Police Agency, Ministry of the Interior, and a university across the street from our organization. Chelsea wrote and edited articles for our organizations intermediate-level magazine and traveled around the island from school to school helping lead rallies (high-energy school assembly programs that promote our magazines and serve our students). Since September, we both have been teachers on the TV program that accompanies our magazine. As entertaining as it would be, we're of course not allowed to post any of those videos. But here's a picture to give you an idea of the virtual set that we film our programs on (also pictured: a touring class, and another TV teacher and good friend, Rachel):
And here's what you'd see on the TV set:
Throughout March and April, both of us continued to lead/teach a Bible study group each Friday night at our organization's weekly English Bible study. And Chip started to teach (Sunday school) and preach (for a Sunday morning English service) semi-regularly at our "home church" here in Taipei.