Cold, Cold Rainy Day to Bike 5 Miles to Church

Cold, cold rainy day to bike 5 miles to church. It was well worth it, however. We are now relocated to the new hotel. It is crowded, but next week we will be in another room in the hotel, which can better accommodate our 700-800 people. The preaching team has chosen to begin the school year with the book of Ecclesiastes. This is  a brave choice. It tells us that work, education, pleasure do not bring us fulfillment. Now, most of our international congregation are students getting advanced degrees at the most prestigious universities in Asia. It takes a bit of chutzpah to tell these students that their education is “vanity of vanities, all is vanities”. But it truly points us to what is eternally fulfilling.

On our long trek to the hotel this morning, I saw my first open air church service here. It was at a green space leading up to an underpass for one of the big “ring roads” that surround the city. In the rain, a group were out with mics and keyboards singing.  Considering the climate(on many levels) here now, this is also a very brave stand.  I wonder if they were allowed to continue? We biked on, as our presence would bring trouble, not succor.

Then on our way home we encountered one of our very few purposefully rude responses from restaurant staff. We were excited to at last find a fast food place on this new route. It was a KFC, which we do not normally go to.  We were trying to make our order,  but needed to point to the advertisements behind the cashier. (What are the words for specific pieces of chicken and nuggets, etc.?) We were ignored totally. We finally ended up with a drumstick and 5 nuggets all together. I was disappointed, particularly because it is so rare to encounter such rudeness here. I blustered a bit under my breath on the way home, but then worked out a polite way to ask for help next week and maybe shame them a bit because “we know how polite the culture is”. Maybe it will work. Trivial matter in the broad scope of things. We know that.

Remember us. Our internet issues are improved. In 2 weeks an admin person from our organization will bring us a new Stateside laptop which will help with all the functions in English. With the connection difficulties it has been hard to stay motivated to share on this blog.