May Update

May. Much has happened since I last wrote. I think the key to these blogs are short, fast entries that are frequent instead of every two months small paperback size entries. It’s tempting to try to catch up on the last few months with a War and Peace size novel (which I was told I will never read after I purchased it, could be true) but I will summarize the best I can.

So highlights: The biggest with no close seconds is the birth of our second daughter, Bethany Grace. She could have been born in a taxi but God was so gracious and allowed Katie to go into labor in the middle of the night so the 45 minutes labor would end in a hospital. Taxi ride during traffic to hospital – 45 minutes. Taxi ride in the middle of the night with empty highway – 25 minutes. It was, however, a long 25 minutes. Beth was born about a month early but she is growing as she should, putting on the baby chub and a very happy baby. She seems much quieter than Anna was at this age which at this point with Anna being a wild 18 month old climbing on anything she can, we are thankful. Curly hair is not in my family yet Anna has lots of it. Her hair curls and waves wherever it wants to no matter how much we try to restrain it with bows and ties and I think it is a forecast of her personality. She walks around the same way at the park, walking and exploring wherever she wants to no matter how much we try to restrain her. Hmmm. I will have to keep an eye on that hair.

Officially I am not supposed to give specific accounts of ministry life here in Asia online but I will say that we have made lots of friends and are encouraged by the community taking shape. Many have heard the good news and many believe.

Living here has taught me so much. With the overindulgence of life in a Christian subculture in the states it has been a great environment to live out life as a disciple of Jesus in ‘distilled’ form. It has served to reveal more clearly what God values as declared in the Bible and what other worldly values we can elevate too high to our own detriment. To expand on that would be another long entry for another day but I will say that how we spend our personal time is often the exact opposite of what we proclaim to be true of the Christian life. I will end with that zinger. Photos on the flickr page are updated far more regularly than this so check it out.

thoughts on culture Part 2

(this picks up right at the end of the first part)

The principle of measuring culture based on the Bible and God's standard is how we interact with other world cultures. Every culture, American culture in the south or in the north, latino culture, asian culture, French culture, all have parts of them that reflect God's plan of the perfect culture and have good elements to them because God's way is the standard. Every culture also has neutral aspects that are not good or bad because they do not detract from honoring God nor do they cause people to disobey Him. And lastly, every culture has parts of it that are displeasing to God because they dispbey how wants us to live, they go against they way we were created, and they lead others to sin. Here's an example:

Helping the poor and needy - any culture that helps those in need is reflecting what God desires for us to do. All throughout the Bible are countless passages that say that God cares for those who are afflicted, the orphans, and the widows. So any culture that takes part in helping the needy reflects God's design for how we are to live in the kingdom. It meets the standard set in the Bible and reflects the heart of God. One important note here: This does not mean that those who do this are IN God's Kingdom but that the REFLECT the values of God's Kingdom. We know that to enter the Kingdom of God you must be born again by faith in Jesus. We can still encourage cultural views and practices that reflect Bible because they still serve in giving attention to God.

Eating chicken feet - now this sound funny but this happens often where I live. I weekly get flyers in the mail from the local supermarket and they often have a big color photo of chicken feet to stir up my appetite and get me to rush over and buy some. Personally I don't have a taste for chicken feet. But what we eat and how we see food is part of culture. There are many reasons we eat what we do. Where I live people eat every part of the chicken and its partly because of economic reasons. If they spend what little money they have on a chicken they are going to get the most out of it. We did this in America not too long ago (not me personally but I do remember as a kid going to the grocery store and seeing everypart of the pig for sale - feet, heart, snout - at Kroger of all places) but we have stopped because our tastes have changed.
Some may place this on the good/bad culture practice but I think this is a good example of the neutral. There are things in foreign cultures that are strange to us because they are different but they are not wrong. They are just different. Our first meal here was chicken heart. It was an accident. I didn't like it. They are very chewy. But they are things in every culture that don't serve to reflect or diminsh the glory of God.

Pink lights - I debated using this as an example because its edgey but you need to know. About a block from where I live are little establishments that are known as massage parlors with their pink lights advertising their business. There about a dozen of them in a row. To do anything more than massage someone is illegal here. On paper. Across the INTERSECTION from these dozen businesses is the POLICE STATION! This would be an example of a part of a culture that does not honor God and is to be rejected. People will justify evil with excuses "they are lots of single migrant workers here, if we have these businesses they won't cause trouble" "if they agree to it then what's the big deal?". "There are other crimes for the police to deal with." All could be statements used to defend this but the truth is clear, man is to have but one wife and the marriage bed is to be kept pure. By rejecting what God has laid out as they way to live and making it easier to disobey Him by not shutting these places down is to promote immorality and a rebellion from God.

As those in the Kingdom of God we are to support what is good in the cultures around us and point out how they honor God, we are to reject what is evil in culture and point out how it displeases God and as a result is destructive. We can learn from those before us. There was a man in England, Wilberforce, who hated slavery and saw it as a wickedness that should be abolished. It became his life goal to erradicate it from the whole British empire. He did not say "It's cultural so its okay" By God's grace He succeeded and all those who fought him were proved wrong. They said the empire would financially collapse, it didn't.

As we interact with those around us what reflects what God values? What goes against what God values? We must search the scriptures and analyze our hearts so that we will be in line with God's culture.

thoughts on culture Part 1

Having lived in another country for several months now I have thought more about how to interact with different cultures. All of us have cultural bias which affects how we think about cultures that are different from us. Culture is a tricky word that has lots of connotations and subjective definitions. I will approach it as the way a group of people view the world around them and the effects of that view on how they live.

One of the things that often frustrates me is the assumption that the host culture is the highest standard. If a particular group of people have a distinct view resulting in a behavior that others may find wrong I have heard it said, "but that's okay, it's there culture". This arises from ambiguity on what is the highest good. What makes a worldview or action right or wrong? What is the standard?

The standard is the one set by God. He is the one who tells us how to live and describes for us the view we are to have of the world. The view He presents to us is one of a Kingdom. He is the King who made the world and rules with justice and wisdom. His people rebeled (the fall in Genesis 3) and were cast out of the Kingdom. In His kindness He promised that one day He would bring the people back into the Kingdom and they would live under His rule once again. So what does this have to do with culture? All culture is fallen because it is made of fallen people but has remnants of the way it use to be before the fall. So there is good, neutral, and bad parts of EVERY culture. As God redeems people we enter into the Kingdom of God through faith in Jesus and our view of the world changes which effects our actions. We are part of a new culture. This entrance into the Kingdom of God is not geographical or based on a ethnicity or a language like other cultures. This new culture is made by God and includes people from all nations, races, and languages. When one enters this new culture they carry with them 'baggage' from the old culture and as we grow in our understanding of how God wants us to live we cast out the bad from the old culture and accept the views of the new.

Imagine that the common practice for a particular culture is to brag about yourself. This is pretty common in the States from my experience. If you do something good you want everyone to know about it, you put it on your job resume, you talk about it on your blog ;). It can be seen as strange if you don't announce your successes and strengths. The issue at hand is if you are boasting in yourself it is to give yourself praise and look for praise from other people. That is an action that comes from a view that you need to elevate yourself above others to be significant and important. A view that says your worth is based on how others see you. That is not a view that is in line with what God desires of Kingdom culture. In the Kingdom of God, your worth comes from knowing God. He knows you and gives you His love through His acts of kindness. When you enter into the Kingdom through faith you are fully excepted and do not need to earn standing before Him. To try to earn position by boasting about yourself is to lessen the work of Christ.

So how are we to respond? When we know that there is something in our lives that does not honor God we want to turn from it and trust in faith that He will change us to live as he desires. So instead of looking for ways to boast about ourselves we look for ways to exalt the name of God and give Him attention. That is how we live in this new culture, the one made by God.

bike lessons in Asia

Observations on biking in Asia:

In America children ride bikes for fun until they can drive to work, in asia children do not learn how to ride a bike until they are adults and need to ride it to work.

To not offer to carry your friend on your bike is rude unless your friend has his own. So far the most I have seen on one bike is three people (three grown adults, not children).

Helmets are a luxury reserved for motorcylce taxis and not needed if you are merely pedeling your bike through intersate traffic.

You can ride your bike on the interstate and will not get hit as long as you don't look at the driver of the car.

If you cut someone off with your bike and they wreck their own bike it is their fault for not stopping.

When purchasing a bike you want an ugly, beat up, rusty bike so no one will steal it. I'm not kidding. The students who make the mistake of buying a nice bike that changes gears and looks great will be stolen in a matter of DAYS. At the beginning of the semester I met SEVERAL freshman who had their bike stolen the day they bought. Go for the rusty ones! Some students will buy a bike and then spray paint it so it looks old and ugly to prevent theft.

When locking your bike always use TWO locks. A bike thief can easily steal your bike if there is only one lock but they are too lazy to try to get through two locks. Unless of course your bike is sweet and nice looking then they make the effort.

You are not cool if your bike does not have a basket on the front.

It is okay for a guy to have a pink bike. It is okay for a guy to have a girl's bike. It is okay for a guy to have a pink, girl's bike.
If it's rusty.

free babysitting

Funny story. So we are at this restaurant and the waitress asks to hold Anna, not uncommon. So we hand Anna over to the waitress and she takes off, not uncommon. Usually they show her to all the people working in the restaurant and play with her while we eat which is actually very helpful to us. During the meal one of our friends goes to another place to get some bottled water (most places have four choices: Coke, Sprite, beer, hot tea) and while he is out on the other side of this big outdoor complex he sees the waitress walking around by the street! This is not normal. So he tells the lady that he thinks the parents want their kid back and she comes back to where we are. Our friend tells us how Anna got a tour of the neighborhood, unbeknownst to us so I go down (two story restuarant) and check out the situation. They had bought Anna cookies and a little box of milk and were trying to get her to drink through a straw. For those of you without babies let me tell you this - babies cannot drink through straws. Fortunately the cookies had not made it out of the package and into Anna's mouth. Another note for those without babies - babies should not eat cookies. I thanked them for their generosity of buying the food items for our baby but had to break the news to them that she could not have them. They were very disappointed and a little confused but I was unable to tell them what I just told you: babies cannot drink through straws and should not have cookies.

Don't stop now or you'll draw a crowd!

When Katie and I go to the local grocery store we have a plan that when executed will save us lots of time. The plan is this, before we go into the store we each know the items to grab so we don't have to stop and think about what we need or where it is. Why? Because if we stop a crowd will form. Really. It always starts with one person walking up to see Anna. They smile at us then kneel down and grab her feet to try to get her to laugh and look at them. Then their friend comes up to watch which is no big deal, right? I don't have a problem with two people looking at Anna. But the two people looking at Anna works like a billboard sign to the rest of the store, "Hey everyone come here! The Foreigners let us stop and look at their baby, everyone come and look!" Wham, 10 people are now surrounding us and asking us questions about Anna. Now I do take language classes but the workbook doesn't cover all the vocab needed to explain the answers they want. This means that I also don't know what they are asking either (there is a chance that it's not even in the national language but in the dialect which I only know a few words of).
So what do I do? I give answers to questions I do know whether or not that is what they asked. I have a few phrases that I will announce to the crowd hoping to satisfy their curiosity and appease the masses. "She is a girl." That ones comes first because for some reason the fact that she is always wearing pink, her hair is long and curly, she is holding a doll, and her shirt says 'Daddy's girl' the crowd always ask if she is a boy. I don't think this is a formality, the crowd really doesn't know. The next phrase is "She is 11 months." I think they ask this because they want to know if we are feeding her and that she is the right size. The truth is even though she is tall, Anna is on the thinner side and so we often receive the instruction from the crowd to feed her more. Part of the reason she is not a chunker is we don't feed her the 'protein' options of baby food that are offered here. Why? Sample flavors: Chicken liver and onions, Salmon, bone marrow and carrots, and my favorite chicken feet. Mmmm. Tha packaging is funny, it shows a child sitting on the front and underneath is the picture of the food. So there is this smiling baby and underneath him is a picture of severed chicken feet and vegetables. Nothing makes a baby smile like severed chicken feet. I don't think adding the vegatables helps it seem normal.

So you may be wondering at this point, what about the crowd of people? What do you do next!? After I have used all two of my phrases about Anna we say good bye and just start walking right through the crowd. We have learned it is the only option when you are limited to two answers. Otherwise you stand there a long time saying, "I don't know, I don't know, I can hear you but I cannot understand." And that doesn't really help anybody.

Student Life

I am a student again. Strange. I have a backpack and notebooks. I went to the store to find notecards and pens. I sit in a room with 17 and 18 year olds who are learning the language just like me. When I ride my bike through campus I don’t think about how I am close to 10 years older than those around me but rather I notice how I am the American that every person I ride by stares at. I played basketball with a group of students and afterwards they all posed with me for a picture. I felt like a cardboard cutout as each one took a turn standing next to me for the mobile phone snapshot.

Basketball is an obsession here. It is far beyond the fan base in the states as MOST guys play several hours a week and have basketball related clothing as their wardrobe. They all assume that I can slam dunk (I cannot) and are surprised when I don’t make every shot I take (which NBA stars cannot do either). Kobe Byrant is an NBA superstar who plays for the Lakers. Here he has been elevated to god-like status as they have an exclamation named after him. If you make a flashy pass or a difficult shot they yell, “Kobe!” as in the phrase “You made a Kobe pass” or “That shot was Kobe!”. Sometimes its just simply his name, “KOBE!” when someone takes a shot from far away.

The language is hard hard hard but we are getting some of the words. One of the fun things we have done is learned a few phrases of the local dialect which has gotten a lot of milage. Tazi driver doesn't want four of us to squeeze in the back? Throw a few local phrases out and its no problem. Great for eating out and bargaining too. Their favorite is when we say in their dialect that we are from this city - easy laughs.

The best though is the celebrity status we have because of Anna - I'll right about that next time.

The baby bag

You want me to put our baby in that?
So we arrived safely to our destination and have been settling in and meeting folks nearby. One of the big concerns Katie and I had was how Anna would do on the international flight because it was over 12 hours long and during when she normally sleeps. Before the plane took off we requested seats by the bulkhead which would give us more leg room and space for Anna and they kindly gave it to us. We had heard that they have bassinets for babies to sleep in and were counting on that being the key to a happy, sleeping baby. The stewardess brought us a plastic bag with the baby bed in it and I looked at Katie with a sly smile that said, “See, I told you that this would go smoothly. No problem.”
At this point I do want to give credit to Anna for doing fantastic on most of the flight, she didn’t scream very much and spent most of the time on our laps entertained by the toys we brought. I noticed Anna rubbing her eyes which is a clue that it’s time for her to sleep so we opened up the bag holding the baby bassinet and put it on the floor only to have puzzled looks on our faces. The ‘bassinet’ that Anna is supposed to sleep in on the floor of the plane looked like a duffle bag. It only held its shape when it was zipped up across the top. I’m pretty sure whoever designed this thing never had a kid because I don’t know of any mother who would put their baby in a duffle bag, zip her up, and hope she’ll sleep. Maybe they think it will keep the noise down if the baby gets fussy.
We set Anna down on top of it just to give a try and she just crawled right out into the aisle which the stewardess pushing the soda cart was not amused by. We ended up making her a little bed out of blankets and then held up a large blanket around her like a wall to block the light - it worked. She slept.
Next time, stories with students.