Made it okay!
Want to make it (kind of) brief so everyone won't stop reading halfway through, even though there's so much to tell. And in case you're wondering, there's NO PICTURE TODAY, so everyone will just have to take some time and sit with that one.
I arrived on Wednesday here, Tuesday back home. As many overseas flights are, this one was taxing. We finally reached our new home in Min Hsiung on the campus of Concordia English Language Academy (CELA) and for the rest of the day pursued one goal and one goal only: staving off sleep. This was difficult. In fact I think we're all just now emerging from the oppressive hand of jet lag. I'm reminded of a classic hit from the Monkees:
Once I thought that jet lag was just a fairly tale
And then, for someone else but not for me
Jet lag was out to get me
That's the way it seemed
Disapointment haunted all my dreams
That pretty much sums it up. Except for the dreaming part. Not much of that was really going on. Happily, now that we're all sleeping normal hours, we're blessed to find the greater joys and challenges set before us. (By we, I mean the team of nine of us from all over the US.) This past Sunday, we worshipped with Salvation Lutheran Church for the first time. As the service was in Chinese, one member translated while we listened with headsets. The new missionaries made up about half of the congregation. Afterward we all met for lunch. The woman sitting next to me offered to help me learn Chinese.
I realize more and more every day how inadequate I am on my own for this job. No matter if I spend every moment studying Chinese or planning for classes, I'm still going to feel this way. I'm still going to be this way. It occurs to me that without knowing it, I've had this feeling often throughout my life. Removed from the clutter of peripheral priorities, it's easier to see that I always have and will be inadequate. Jesus, though, appears in abundance again and again.
I'm starting to compare everything that Jesus has done to the infinite biodiversity one finds on this tropical island. Everywhere we look, something is living or growing. Geckos sneak into our houses at night. They make clicking sounds like a baseball card against the spokes of a slowly-turning bicycle. On every tree, some other vine also flourishes. My mind can't even categorize the number of new (to me) species of plants I've seen. I could make wings out of the big leathery leaves that grow on the tree right outside of my house. Every morning, we sweep up a veritable harvest of tiny, winged black insects who have flown into the bathroom and died; they're something like manna except, inasmuch as we can tell, far less useful.
The point of all of this is only to say what has already been said many times before:
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end."
