Missions

Small talk

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After a two week hiatus, I’m finally back in the blogosphere! We spent part of that time enjoying Family Camp at Camp Harmattan, the Church of the Nazarene campsite  located between Olds and Sundre in southern Alberta. Down in the valley of the Little Red Deer River, we had no access to internet and I must admit that it was a nice break.

While telling his story, one of the speakers at camp made a statement that startled me. Dr. John Seaman and his wife, Linda, served on the mission field for 27 years. The last 17 of those years were spent in West Africa. John said that when he was elected to his present position of district superintendent of the Michigan District of the Church of the Nazarene, he felt completely overwhelmed. West Africa had become his comfort zone and Michigan was not!

That got me thinking. Over the past several years, we’ve stretched our comfort zones until, at times, it feels as if they have no boundaries. As I’ve thought about this over the past few days, however, I’ve come to the conclusion that my comfort zone has nothing to do with geography. I feel completely at home walking the streets of Asia but there are times right here at home when I struggle to step outside my comfort zone.

That’s where the book that I’m currently reading comes into play. I can stand in front of a class of any age in any part of the world and feel at home. I have no problem with public speaking as long as I’ve had time to prepare and I can put on a costume, even a very skimpy one, and act on stage before a full house but I dread social events where I’m required to mix and mingle. I’ve worked hard to overcome my incredibly shy nature but I still feel tongue tied and wish that I could disappear into thin air when I’m in a situation that requires conversation with people I don’t know well. I’m sure I often come across as a total snob! That’s why I’m hoping that The Fine Art of Small Talk by Debra Fine will help me stretch my comfort zone in a new direction.

booksFine begins her book with a “Winning at Small Talk” worksheet. If you find yourself responding no to more than a few of the questions, this book is for you, she says. I answered every question with a no!

“If you generally wait for someone else to take the initiative in a conversation, you have been self-centered,” she says in Chapter 2. Ouch! That would definitely be me.

The book is an easy read but putting it’s principles into practice will likely take a lot more effort. Fine suggests having a repertoire of icebreaking questions to use to engage someone else in conversation. I can’t actually see myself using many of the ones she suggests but maybe I should try “Have you ever read The Fine Art of Small Talk by Debra Fine?”

Do you have any favourite conversation starters?

Two questions

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Whenever we arrive home from one of our overseas adventures, we face the same two questions and this time has been no exception.

  • Are you happy to be home?

My stock answer is “It’s always nice to come home!”

As much as I enjoyed China, I am happy to be back in Canada. We are so blessed and we take so much for granted here. I’m happy to be back where the air is clean. China burns roughly as much coal as the rest of the world combined and one of those smokestacks was practically outside our window. According to a recent study, pollution from burning coal has reduced the life expectancy of the 500 million people living in northern China by five years!

I’m very happy to have my kitchen back. Cooking on a single burner got old fast! I’m even happy to have extra people to cook for. We have a young family staying with us for a little while until their house is ready to move into.

Shopping at the street market was exciting at first but the novelty soon wore off and I’m happy to be wheeling my grocery cart through the aisles of my local grocery store again. I can read all the labels and I know where to find the things I want. Heck, I even know what everything is and I don’t have to look past the pig feet and the chicken feet to find the ground beef!

Of course, the best thing about any place is the people and we’re definitely happy to be closer to family and friends again. In fact, we already spent several days in Calgary with our daughter and her growing family last week. It was especially exciting for me to be able to accompany her to an ultrasound appointment where I got my first glimpse of our next grandchild! “Baby Pea”, so called because at just six week’s gestation he/she looked like a little pea with a heartbeat, is due in mid March.

And then there’s the other question…

  • What’s next?

People started asking this one before our suitcases were unpacked and we’d fully emerged from the fog of jet lag! The answer is simple… we have no idea!

We do have a couple of feelers out concerning possible short term mission opportunities but it’s far too soon to know if either of those will pan out. There’s a great big world out there and far too much of it that we haven’t seen yet so I’m sure we’ll figure it out. In the meantime, we’re off to Family Camp at Camp Harmattan next week where we’ll park the trailer beside the Little Red Deer River and enjoy a week of fun and fellowship. Then, toward the end of August, we’ll head for the BC coast where we’ll spend some time with my parents, our oldest son and our other set of grandchildren.

Home is a good place to come back to but as everyone in our small community knows, those DeBocks don’t stay home very long!

Our next big adventure!

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ENGLISH TEACHING IN CHINA. Just retired and seeking adventure and or change? Five cities to choose from: Beijing, Nanchang, Yantai, Dalian and Chongqing. Accommodation is provided. Half year and full year contracts (airfare paid). University students. Curriculum provided and full staff support. Chance to travel. Short teaching hours. Contact…

The ad appeared in the Fall 2012 issue of News and Views, the quarterly publication of the Alberta Retired Teachers’ Association. It caught my eye as I flipped through the magazine at breakfast one September morning. I pondered it for a bit before bringing it to Richard’s attention and asking if he was interested. He was and so a new journey began!

Everything was put on hold for awhile when Dad became ill and we headed off to Vancouver to put Operation Parent Care into motion. Now that he’s had his surgery and is recovering well, we’re moving on. We signed the contracts this morning!

We’re going to spend one semester (February 25 to June 30, 2013) teaching English at Liaoning Normal University, a teacher training university in Dalian, a coastal city in northeastern China! We’ll have our own fully furnished apartment right on campus and will have the option of preparing our own meals there or eating in the university cafeteria.

I know, college cafeterias aren’t known for quality food but I’m thinking that not having to grocery shop, cook and clean up  and having the opportunity to sample local foods while mingling with students and fellow staff members doesn’t sound like such a bad idea. We’ll definitely try it out.

In case you’re wondering, no this is not a mission trip. The People’s Republic of China is a communist country that has traditionally been quite closed to Christianity. In fact, our teaching contracts contain a clause that says The Teacher shall respect China’s religious policy, and shall not conduct or engage in religious activities incompatible with the status of a foreign teacher/expert. What does that mean? Upon inquiry, we’ve been told that we’re welcome to bring our Bibles with us and to read and study them in the privacy of our own apartment. We also know that there are Christian churches in Dalian and have been assured that we can attend one if we want to. While this isn’t a mission trip per se, I firmly believe that our mission field is wherever we happen to be; that God can use us anytime, anywhere. He’s done it before and I’m sure he’ll do it again.

Censorship is also an issue that we’ll have to learn to live with. According to Wikipedia, internet repression is considered more extensive and more advanced there than in any other country in the world. The government not only blocks website content but also monitors individual internet use. Facebook is blocked but we’ll be able to use email as well as Skype to keep in touch with family and friends. China has also been known to block WordPress blogs but I’m already looking at ways to get around that if it happens. I can’t imagine not being able to share our experiences with all of you this way! After all, that’s how Following Augustine started in the first place.

The next step and one that I hope goes quickly and smoothly is getting our visas. We’ve submitted the many documents that were required so that the recruitment staff in China can apply for visa invitation letters for us. Once received, we’ll take them to the closest Chinese consulate, which is located in Calgary, to arrange for the visas. Then there are travel arrangements to make and packing lists to be made!

I’m excited and just a wee bit overwhelmed but first comes Christmas! By the time the fun and family time is over my feet will be back on the ground and I’ll be able to begin seriously preparing for our next big adventure.

map_of_china

Five years!

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Tomorrow is the last day of school and also marks five years since I walked out of the classroom for the last time. It amazes me to think that we’ve been retired for that long already! Where has the time gone? For the past couple of days I’ve been doing some self-evaluation, asking myself what we’ve accomplished over those five years and whether or not we’ve done the things we wanted to do. Overall, I think the answer is a resounding yes!

We had some pretty specific goals in mind when we retired:

  • teach English in Asia for at least one year – done
  • travel – never completely done but 9 provinces and 15 states plus Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Macau, Saipan and Costa Rica are a pretty good start
  • short-term mission work – one summer in ministry has only whetted our appetite for more

Becoming grandparents was something we hoped for and though we can’t take any credit for that being accomplished, grandchildren have been one of the most delightful additions to our life since we retired. Four of them are firmly attached to the family tree and there are five others who also call us Gram and Grandpa. Four of those belong to two families in Japan who ‘adopted’ us while we lived there and with whom we’ve been able to carry on a relationship since our return to Canada.

The past few years have brought other unexpected surprises including becoming seasonal farm labourers! That definitely wasn’t part of the plan but we’ve enjoyed it immensely. For the first time since returning from Japan in early 2009, we weren’t involved in seeding this year’s crop. Louis, our 83-year-old ‘boss’ and very good friend, passed that part of the process on to his stepson and grandson this spring. He still plans to have us help him harvest the crop this fall though.

Surprisingly, we haven’t golfed as much as we thought we would since retiring. In fact, we haven’t golfed as much as we did before we retired! We’ve been too busy fulfilling our other goals. This year eight of the nine greens on our local course are undergoing reconstruction. The course is open but the temporary greens are pretty pathetic so the desire to play hasn’t really been there. It was a good year for us to take up a new hobby; geocaching. Though there are geocachers of all ages, many are retired. In fact, the activity is highlighted in the most recent issue of News and Views, the quarterly magazine published by the Alberta Retired Teachers’ Association.

Writing was always something I planned to return to in retirement. I thought I’d be freelancing again, sending my work off to publishers and waiting with baited breath to find out whether it would be accepted. Instead, I find myself blogging! Though I did experience the thrill of publication, in my early writing days I also received enough rejection slips to paper a small room! Blogging is so much more satisfying and I enjoy the opportunity to interact with some of my readers.

Do we ever regret retiring as early as we did? Never! Would we do it again? In a heartbeat! Have I enjoyed every moment of it? To be completely honest, no. Most of the time, I absolutely love being retired but there are moments, especially in the depths of our long Canadian winters, when I long to be doing something more meaningful with my days; moments when I join the writer of Ecclesiastes in lamenting that “Everything is meaningless, utterly meaningless!” Fortunately, those days are few and far between. I don’t think Richard has experienced them at all. Maybe that’s because he spends so much time playing Farmville that he doesn’t have time for such thoughts. His ‘farm’ is something else I didn’t expect to be part of our retirement but it keeps him happy!

As this school year comes to a close, I wonder what the next five years will hold. Our goals remain the same… more travel (we haven’t seen Europe yet) and more short-term mission work. I’m sure there will also be more unexpected surprises along the way.

 

 

A penny for your thoughts

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I don’t really like the government messing with my money and this time I’m not even talking about taxes. Worse than that, I don’t want them messing with my language! The budget announced by the Canadian government yesterday is going to cost us a pretty penny. See what I mean? That saying and many others will likely fade into antiquity now that the decision has been made to stop making our lowly one cent piece!

Benjamin Franklin told us that a penny saved is a penny earned but soon even the penny pinchers  won’t have two pennies to rub together!

English is full of idioms, meaningful expressions that can’t be taken literally, and a surprising number of them involve the penny. A bad penny is a person with a bad reputation, to turn up like a bad penny  is to arrive at a time or place you are not wanted, penny ante is something of little value or importance and when the penny drops you finally understand something.

Yes, I will miss the humble penny but perhaps it’s outlived its usefulness. After all, it has long outlived penny candy. I vaguely remember the days when a child clutching a few small pennies could choose from a vast array of bulk candies that sold one, two or three for a cent.

 

It also outlived our one-dollar and two-dollar bills. The gold coloured one-dollar coin, commonly called a loonie because of the common loon that appears on the back, was introduced in 1987. It was followed by the bi-coloured toonie in 1996. Like many Canadians, I didn’t like those changes either because of the weight that carrying coins instead of paper money added to our wallets. I suppose that saying good-bye to the penny will have the opposite effect. My purse was seldom weighed down by many pennies though. Most of them went into the little Alabaster box that sits on top of the fridge.

We’ve all heard of pennies from heaven, money acquired without any effort, but in a sense these Alabaster pennies have been going in the other direction. Alabaster is a program of the international Church of the Nazarene. Taken twice a year, this special offering goes toward the purchase of land and the construction of churches, schools, medical facilities, and homes for missionaries and national workers around the world. Since the first offering was given in 1949, the coins that we’ve collected in our little boxes have added up to approximately $95 million! By the end of 2010, 3983 churches, 398 Bible schools and other school buildings, 537 mission and district centers, 37 hospitals and clinics, 1490 homes and 627 other buildings had been constructed! Perhaps our lowly pennies aren’t so insignificant after all!

See a penny, pick it up and all the day you’ll have good luck.

What’s next?

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That’s the question we’ve been asked most often since arriving home on Monday evening. One friend and former colleague who’s known us for a long time added “One mission trip won’t be enough, will it?” No, Ian, it won’t! We have no idea what lies ahead but we do know that we’re willing to go wherever God sends us.

In the meantime, there’s lots of catching up to do here at home. Melaina, Aaron and the children are here for a few days so spending time with the grandchildren is our first priority. We appreciate the neighbour who mowed the lawn for us while we were away but the gardens clearly need some attention. I’m pretty sure there are flowers hiding amongst all those weeds! Of course, the golf course also beckons. In fact, Richard and Aaron are out there right now.

We’ll also have a crop to harvest soon. Yesterday, we went for a drive to look at the fields and the grain is beginning to ripen. It won’t be long before I’m out on the combine again.

I’d also like to find time to go camping before winter. After spending the past two months on the other side of the sea, I’m not thinking of a long trip but the trailer hasn’t been out of the driveway since last summer and I’m yearning for at least two or three nights in a campground; perhaps somewhere with a lake and a golf course.

So, in answer to everyone’s question, we don’t know what’s next in terms of missions but for now, I’m enjoying living in the moment and not concerning myself too much with what lies ahead.

Mission to MARS!

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We’ve been on a Mission to MARS this week. I bet you didn’t know that Saipan had a space program, did you? Well, actually it doesn’t. Mission to MARS (Meet A Risen Saviour) is the theme of the Vacation Bible School that we’re directing here at Living Hope Church of the Nazarene.

At 9:30 every morning the big church van rumbles up the driveway and spills out its load of children. I’m not sure how many passengers the van is supposed to hold but it doesn’t seem to matter how many kids there are, there’s always room for at least one more!

We started Monday morning with 19 kids and the number has grown each day. We start the fast paced morning with prayer, action songs, and announcements at Mission Control. Next we follow the zany adventures of Zoom Aerospeed and his sister, Twila, on an interplanetary space adventure, via video, of course! After that, it’s time to split into groups and head off to the four centres: Story Station, Bible Memory, Cosmic Crafts and Galactic Games. We meet back at Mission Control to wrap up the morning and then it’s time for a snack.

Feeding the kids a hearty, healthy snack/lunch is an important part of what we do here. During the school year, they get breakfast and lunch at school but many come from very poor homes and though they aren’t starving, we know that some of them are pretty hungry. Like all kids, they’re also hungry for love and attention and what a joy it is to give them that as well!

      

Bird Island hike

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With this morning’s hike to Bird Island, we crossed the last item off our Saipan Bucket List today! Yes, we actually did write one! I wanted to make sure we didn’t miss anything.

Bird Island from the viewpoint

According to the atlas, we’d drive to the end of Bird Island Lane and then hike down to the water’s edge. It didn’t look very far.

Isn’t this where you’d expect Bird Island Lane to begin? Me too. Pretty easy. No yellow shorts this time. The only problem was, there wasn’t a lane there. No road of any kind. There was the beginning of a trail though so we guessed we’d have to walk a little further than we’d anticipated and set off. It was an easy, well marked and mostly level path through the jungle. We knew we were going in the right direction because we could hear the ocean in the distance.

Suddenly, after walking for awhile, we came upon a road! Apparently, Bird Island Lane did exist, just not where the sign said it was! Weird! Sure enough, there was the actual trailhead too.  From that point on, it was a fairly steep descent but, like the trail to Old Man by the Sea, there were ropes to help us down the steep, slippery parts.

Soon, we emerged on the beach. The tide was high so we couldn’t get close to Bird Island itself but we walked the narrow sandy beach from one end to the other, explored a small cave at one end and climbed over rocks at the other. What a beautiful spot!

   

We’re close to the equator here and with the tropical sun beating down on us and it’s heat reflected back at us by the white coral sand, it was really hot on the beach! We cooled off with a dip in the Grotto on our way home. This time we had our masks and snorkels with us so we could actually see the fish and watch the scuba divers deep below. It amazes me that there are lots of people living on the island who have never swam in the Grotto and we’ve been there three times already!

Though this is a tiny island and we’ve explored it pretty extensively, I know that there are still more hikes that could be done and beaches that could be seen. With close to two weeks left, though, we’ve seen and done all the things we most wanted to do which is good because we’ll be busy with Vacation Bible School every day next week. Ministry is, after all, the main reason we’re here!

John in the Jungle

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Early in our stay on Saipan, we were involved in a Friday evening/Saturday teen retreat where we were introduced to a hide-and-seek game known as Sardines in the Jungle. The game is played after dark which basically means anytime after 7:00 p.m. here. One player is sent out to hide in the jungle and a few minutes later the rest of the players begin to search for him or her. When someone finds the person who is hiding, they join them. Over time, the group grows as more and more players find and join the ones who are hiding. Crowding closely together to avoid detection, they become sardines in the jungle! Such fun! Sneaking around in the dark, listening for unfamiliar sounds then crowding together and trying to remain silent.

As Richard and I planned the activities for today’s Family Fun Day at the church, we wondered if Sardines in the Jungle would work during the day. Probably not but the jungle all around us just begged to be used for some sort of hide-and-seek game. Rather than playing the traditional game where all but one person hides and waits to be found, we wanted something that would more actively involve everyone who wanted to play. What if we hid something in advance and everyone had to search for it? The initial idea began to grow and this is what we came up with:

I started with a couple of plastic grocery bags

and cut them into strips. The kids have been learning John 3:16 so I wrote one or two words of the verse on each strip, 20 in all. Then, yesterday, we hid them in the jungle.

  

That was fun. I hadn’t really explored our jungle during daylight before and was intrigued by some of what I saw.

  

Can you see the plastic strip hidden in the second photo? Or what about the one below? Maybe that one’s a little easier. Did you know that that’s how a coconut tree begins to grow?

After we enjoyed today’s delicious potluck lunch, it was time to begin the search. The skies opened and one of Saipan’s short lived but drenching rains began to fall but that didn’t dampen the children’s spirits any. We’d told them in advance to be prepared to get wet. We hadn’t expected that to happen until we brought out the water balloons later in the afternoon but they thought it was hilarious that God added water to this game too.

  

Jeran in the Jungle!

When all the strips were found (well, almost all, “perish” is still out there somewhere!) it was time to put the puzzle together and recite the verse. It was great to watch them all working together!

By the time that was done, the sun was out again and it was time for water balloons and the much anticipated slip and slide!

 

Interesting but also disappointing

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When we came to Saipan, we didn’t expect to be invited to meet with members of the Municipal Council and we certainly didn’t expect to see our picture in the local paper but there we are! Municipal Council Chairman, Ramon Camacho, is one of the prime movers behind the new Saipan Neighborhood Watch Task Force and it was his idea to invite the leaders of the various churches on the island to become involved in spreading awareness of this new initiative.

Neighborhood Watch is a program that is designed to reduce crime and to instil a greater sense of security by putting the “neighbor” back into neighborhood and involving individuals in making their community a safer place to live. Petty crime or “mischief” as Task Force adviser, William S. Torres, called it is increasing on the island. He attributes this, in part, to the present recession which has hit Saipan particularly hard.

Though bringing the program to Saipan has been in the works for some time, it’s introduction is particularly timely given the fact that the most heinous crime in the island’s history was committed just over two months ago. Early on the morning of May 25, 10 year old Faloma Luhk and her 9 year old sister, Maleina, disappeared without a trace while waiting for their school bus. The FBI were brought in to participate in the search, as was a search and rescue dog from Hawaii, but not a thing was found that would lead them to the girls. Their faces stare at us from posters and banners all over the island but the search has pretty much come to a dead end. People are definitely ready for anything that will make the island a safer place for their children.

Though it was neat to see our photo in the paper, we weren’t at all happy with the reporting. During the meeting, Rev. Pete Miral of the Christian Bible Church mentioned that it would be difficult to get people to report suspicious activity if they didn’t have confidence that the Department of Public Safety would follow through on those reports. He said that his church was burglarized a year ago but the DPS has yet to solve the case. Knowing that there is general unhappiness with the DPS on the island and knowing, of course, that headlines sell newspapers, the title of the article became “Religious leaders disappointed in DPS” which in no way reflects either the purpose or the focus of our meeting!

In addition to being unhappy with the reporting, we were also very disappointed by the poor turnout from the churches. We were particularly surprised to see no representation from the Catholic church which holds most of the islanders tightly in its grip. Camacho emphasized the important role that religious leaders play in the community and the powerful influence that they can have for good. I’m sure he was just as disappointed as we were.