Thanksgiving

(written Monday November 26, 2007)
Right now we are on our day off at Jacob's Porch at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. Kristin from the Ohio State Mosaic Community based team from Youth Encounter works here. Eric Worringer, who is a friend that I have known since we were on TIM team together at Wapo and worked together there last summer works here as well. Last night we got to participate in their Sunday night worship service. We are an acoustic team and they had us plugged into a system with microphones and everything last night, so that was very different, kinda fun. They have a really neat ministry going on here. Jacob's Porch in on the Ohio State campus and has grown from 15 people that would come and worship to around 60 now. They have worship every Sunday with music, communion, a message, and they also eat together in the middle of their worship as a time of fellowship.

Last week we got to go back to Inez, Kentucky to the Christian Appalachian Project. On Wednesday Jenny, Ua, and I got to help out at the Child Development Center with preschoolers. They were so adorable and we had a lot of fun. It was neat to be back with the same people at the CAP house.

We spent Thanksgiving with Luke's family in Columbus, Ohio. We got to stay with them for 4 nights. (the longest we have stayed anywhere!) We got to meet Luke's parents, brothers and sister and spent a lot of time with them watching football, playing games and talking. We even had our own game of two-hand touch football in the backyard. On Saturday night we did a family night program at Epiphany Lutheran Church where Luke's dad is the pastor. We did some music and a puppet show and then got to watch a Christian magician/comedian. He was....interesting. He had a good message and a good heart but some of his acts were a little painful. :) The kids seemed to love it though! On Sunday morning we got to sing a few songs at the 8:15 and the 9:30 church services and then led most of the 11:00 service. The congregation was so welcoming and it was great to be with Luke's family.

Being away from home for the first time on Thanksgiving was very different. I have never called home and been passed around on the phone to all the members of my family before. It was good to talk to them all though. Being with Luke's family did make me miss mine more but they made us feel like a part of their family. It's been neat to see how our team is becoming like a family. We continue to get closer to each other and build those relationships. I couldn't ask for a better group of people to be traveling with!

A Busy Week

More links to pictures:

Martin Luther, Learning Mandarin Chinese, and staying with the Vandercar's

Parkersburg Catholic High School Retreat

This past week was pretty busy. After the Parkersburg retreat we headed to Inez, Kentucky where we did a program for juniors and seniors from a public school in the area. We were surprised that we were able to do that but our contact Taye said, "There's pretty much no separation of church and state down here." The kids really seemed to enjoy our program and it was a really neat experience. We also really enjoyed staying at the Christian Appalachian Project Johnson house.



On Saturday night we got to go to a Thrivent Financial dinner in Bristol, Tennessee and got to sing a couple songs. We learned that Bristol is a city that is in both Tennessee and Virginia. We drove down the street and one half was in Virginia and one half was in Tennessee. We also found out that Ua had been to the church that the dinner was at when he was on the Cross Fire team a few years ago. On Sunday morning we helped lead a worship service at Concordia Lutheran in Kingsport, TN. Next we headed to Oak Ridge, TN where we are now and did a program last night. During the program we have a time of prayer where we set up prayer stations that people can go around to. One of the stations is a map of the world and people put little arrow stickers on a place in the world and then pray for it. I was near the prayer for the world station and saw an older woman who I later met, named Lillian. She walked over to the map and knelt down on the floor to put her sticker on the place she was praying for. She could barely kneel down but there she was on her knees praying for our world. That was kind of a cool moment for me.



Today we are on our day off in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and we are all just relaxing at our host homes. I think this last week kind of wore us out and some of our team is not feeling so great. I think we have a cold going around our team. Hopefully we don't all get it at the same time. Tomorrow we head back to Kentucky with the Christian Appalachian Project where Jenny, Ua, and I will be helping at the Child Development Center and Luke and Dave with be helping repair some housing.

Parkersburg Catholic High School Retreat

Today we got to do a retreat with 36 10th graders from Parkersburg Catholic High School in Parkersburg, West Virginia. They were a really fun group of kids. We started off the morning at 8:45 with some fun songs with lots of actions to get them going. The video (which is not posting at the moment) is us singing one of our new favorite sing-alongs. It's a pretty silly song and it was exciting to see that most of the high schoolers were not too cool for it. :) Throughout the day we did some team building activities, a small group Bible study, some Taiwanese games, and we did our full program with music, some sharing time, and a puppet show. For a team building activity we gave them 7 carpet squares and they had to get the whole group across the room in one trip without touching the floor. This was very entertaining to watch and they did it!



One of the guys in my small group is from Taiwan and has only been in the U.S. for a little over a year. It was fun getting to talk with him a little about Taiwan. He even made a list in Chinese characters of some food that we should try when we are over there.


Tomorrow we get to do the same thing with the 9th graders! I think we were all a little tired after a bit of a long day today but we are excited to work with the freshman tomorrow. Here's a fun video clip from our sing-along rehearsal today. I think that Ua makes a good soprano!

More Pictures!

Here are some more photos that I posted on Facebook:

New York City

Farms, Beaches, and the City

Pennsylvania to Georgia

Savannah, GA to North Myrtle Beach, SC

Ua's family!

(written Sunday, November 11, 2007)
Tonight we had a program at St. John Lutheran Church in Seymour, Indiana. This is where Ua's brother, David, and sister-in-law, Whitney, are youth leaders. It was a pretty full house and a really good group of people. We did a cross-cultural program with songs in Cebauno (spoken in the Philippines), Spanish, French, and Mandarin Chinese. One of the songs has some fun motions in it that involve dancing, waving your hands, shaking your hips and turning around. Those people were really moving. :) Afterward we got to meet some of their youth that go to the Lutheran school there. Whitney is a teacher there and the kids seem to love her.

For the last couple days we were in Lafayette, Indiana staying with Ua’s family. It was his birthday on Friday so it was nice that he got to spend it with his family. Also, his cousin got married on Saturday so we got to meet some of his family.
We got to play with Ua's nieces, Emma and Eva. They are a lot of fun!


Dave was defeated by the missing puzzle piece but he and Eva enjoyed doing puzzles together.


Ua developed a new card game and we had fun teaching his family. We also got to play some dominoes and Dutch Blitz! So much fun! Last night we stayed up pretty late having a theological discussion with Ua’s uncle, Ed. This morning we sang a couple songs during a worship service at Ua’s church, Grace Lutheran. We also got to do a program with the adults during the Sunday School hour. It was neat to be doing a worship service with Ua's family there. They were so welcoming and made us feel right at home. It made me miss my family.

Learning Mandarin Chinese

Today we spent our day off in Blairstown, New Jersey. Jenny and I are staying with a couple that teach at a boarding school called Blair Academy. Susie is from Taiwan and Jerry spent 22 years there working as a missionary. Tonight Susie started teaching us Mandarin Chinese! She made little flashcards with the characters on them. We probably know about 25 characters now.

Susie and Jerry also helped us with the pronunciation of the words to two of the Mandarin songs that we sing. We even recorded them singing on my camera so that the boys could listen to learn the words. Susie gave us Chinese names tonight as I was sipping on Green Tea from Taiwan. It was so good and very fun that I now have a Chinese name! I also have a Hawaiian name that some of my campers from Hawaii gave me this summer. It is Keahu (pronounced Kay-how) and it means beautiful. My Chinese name is Tong Jia Li. The first character is my surname, which in China comes first because your family name is more important than your own name. It means child because Susie says that I have a baby face. :) The second character means excellent, exquisite, or fine and the third one means white jasmine (which is a flower).

Tonight made me very excited to learn more about the culture and language of Taiwan. It was so great to be able to stay with Susie and Jerry. They are wonderful people and we hope to keep in touch with them throughout our travels.

I am missing home now more than I have so far on the road. My team is amazing though and our host families have made us feel so at home.