T6 - First Sunday at Holy Trinity, Taipei

Well today (actually its yesterday since I’m writing this on Monday!) was my first Sunday at the church. The day began with prayers in the chruch with some of the elders. The minister’s wife runs the choir and since she inadvertently heard me sing, she asked me to join the tenor section in the choir. So next was choir practice. Taiwanese is a great language - but it isn’t half difficult to sing! The music for morning worship is provided by a grand piano in the church. Thankfully the choir excused me wearing robes - I’m not sure whether they thought that I would swelter, or whether it was because I’m like nearly a minister, or whether it was because I’m foreign - either way it was a good thing! The reading for the day was Ruth 4 and Hsinte talked (so he told me afterwards) about a) Living thinking of others before ourselves; b) Living a life of worship; and, c) Living as God’s image in the world because the things he can do through us, like through Ruth and Boaz are amazing. The service lasted about an hour and half, and, after some general conversation, the choir had another practice for next week. They are busy singing an amazing arrangement of ‘Blessed Assurance’ at the moment, along with some other more traditional Taiwanese music. After choir practice there was a lunch together. Everything was finished by about 3 and then the afternoon we chilled out.

In the evening Hstine suggested we went for a walk. I thought this might be once round the block, but the trip last about two hours, including pastoral visits to those who owned shops. We stopped at an opticians to chat with one of the members, and then headed along the river path to a night market. The night market was a truly wonderful experience with lots of food, crafts and clothes for sale at very cheap prices. It was v v v busy. Heading back we stopped in at a website design shop (now about 10.30pm) to visit a family, the father sat beside me singing tenor in the choir earlier. After a half an hour or so we headed home to bed!!!

This entry was posted on 21/09/2009 at 10:42 am and is filed under Paul's diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.