T12 - same old, same old

Well today was a funny day - full of suprises, but yet funnily things that reminded me of church back in the UK.

I woke as usual around 7.30 for a quiet day of pottering before I headed on the train to Taichung on Sunday. In my half-eyed state I was sat waiting for prayers before breakfast in the living room, when Hsinte came in through the door to tell me that the Ladies Fellowship were going on a trip and that two ladies hadn’t turned up so there was space for me and him, but, we had to leave in 2 minutes. I was also told to take my swimming shorts. hmmm….

It turned out that we were going to health spa up in the mountains, about an hours drive away. Thankfully someone gave me a sandwich in the car, which I needed to complete the two hour trek we did in the morning up a mountain in temperatures 30+ (if you’re counting, thats three mountains in the space of a week!). The mountain path was well marked in steps with a rope to help you up the really steep bits. The jungle we were climbing through was just beautiful….

After the trek we had some fellowship time in a wooden hut, and I played a strange blow up piano, definately an Asian invention, methinks. It was funny spending time with the ladies fellowship, because it was really very similar to the ladies fellowship groups that I have known in England - all the women liking a good natter, a laugh and joke, and a good cup of tea (well the latter was Chinese tea, not good old Yorkshire tea, nevermind…) After fruit for lunch we headed to the hot springs. You’ll be pleased to here that I didn’t photograph the swimming attire, complete with compulsory hat. But it was very relaxing. After an hour or so, we headed back to the church. After an hour of packing and ironing, we headed to the young people’s Bible study/fellowship group. The discussion, centred around a book that I didn’t quite pick up, but it was all about finding space and time for God in a busy city life - again this is exactly the same things that we discuss in churches back in England. I had some really good conversations with some of guys afterwards, and here, in this group praticularly, it seems I can share with them and we can grow together, rather than me just being on the end of a translation. Here’s for the big moving day tomorrow…

This entry was posted on 28/09/2009 at 02:28 pm 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.