Taipei 101: An Introduction

Hello Partners in Mission:

And as of about 2 hours ago, we have an internet connection in our apartment. So now we can blog excessively and post pictures with abandon.

We left Colorado with a few lovely send offs from our friends and family (Wednesday morning, St. Aidan's, Atonement, Canterbury, the Raymond and McCormick/Glover gang) on the morning of August 3rd and arrived in Taipei at 8pm on August 4th. We were just a little bit nervous about this arrival since the very last sentence in our final communication with the dean of the cathedral before leaving Colorado contained this message: "do not worry, you will get lost." Perhaps lost in Mandarin to English translation, but we met our welcoming party with no problems.

For those of you who pledged your support for us in our first few days in Taiwan, thank you. You were vital to supporting us as we saw the sights of Taipei. While to the casual observer we might have looked like tourists (maybe it was the camera and Lonely Planet Taiwan guidebook), but we were given the first few days "off" to explore the city and become acquainted with the metro system. We also took some great pictures of our neighborhood and Taipei. The pictures of the city are taken from the top of Taipei 101, which is currently the world's tallest building. If you look very closely in the pictures of Taipei, you can see some buildings and mountains. We live somewhere in that mass of humanity. I'm pretty sure our apartment is south of Taipei 101.

The first two pictures here are a great example of the city of Taipei. Although on a map it looks like an oceanfront city, in reality it is surrounded by mountains. There are a few major rivers which flow through the city, the largest of which is the Dan shui ("fresh water"). The last picture is the view from our apartment building. It is looking down into the street on our first morning in Taiwan.

Today we got down to work. We met with the dean of the cathedral, the Bishop of Taiwan, and a veteran missionary to discuss our place in Taiwan and the future of our ministry together. I have a feeling from this point on, our sightseeing will be limited to weekends (minus Sundays, which will be spent at the cathedral).

Anyway, instead of giving a minute by minute blow of our lives, we would like to share with you a thought about being patient and faithful. In our apartment we have set up an extra room as a special prayer space. We are following a modified Taize style prayer and using readings from the Bible and other books.

This particular thought comes from Henri Nouwen's "Bread for the Journey:"

"We belong to a generation that wants to see the results of our work. We want to be productive and see with our own eyes what we have made. But that is not the way of God's Kingdom. . . What is important is how well we love. God will make our love fruitful, whether we see that fruitfulness or not."

Please pray for us this week as we approach our work with patience and love, trusting in God to produce good fruit.


Many blessings,

Seth and Elizabeth