Thanksgiving Update + Visa Approval

Just wanted to do a short entry to thank everyone who reads this blog, and especially those who comment.
Thanks for making November my highest traffic month yet!

Also, I am happy to announce that after much paperwork and weeks of waiting, I have gotten approval for my volunteer visa from Taipei. Hopefully my frustrating experience with attempting to obtain a religious visa and our subsequent solution of a volunteer visa will be a good model for future missionaries caught in this situation to follow, but it's in the nature of living abroad for these things to happen, and the whole visa situation never stops fluctuating. Either way, as I noted in a previous post, I have a lot to be thankful for despite the delay, and got to see God do lots of things in the meantime.

Finally! I think I lost two years' worth of stress-induced aging when I got the news...
(This picture is sort of a collage; didn't want to post the actual docs online)

Thanksgiving is much more than merely a day to overeat and watch TV to mark the commencement of the holiday season. I hope we can push back against consumerism and remember that a day to focus on how much we are blessed is not only a personal duty (gratitude to God), but probably would do something for national sanity in the U.S. A time to remember that societal instability and economic malaise may presently describe us, but need not ever define us.

The value of a "day of gratitude" is not lost on many Taiwanese people, and it seems that many churches in Taiwan are adopting the holiday as well! (The Mandarin is more or less a direct translation which backtranslating into English comes out to something like "Gratitude Day") Due to the previous visa delays I won't be spending this Thanksgiving in Taiwan to report on the festivities, but my family is certainly happy to have me for one more holiday.

As I don't have the visa itself yet and still have to negotiate that with the Atlanta office that's been quite difficult to deal with, I don't have a departure date yet, but looks like Christmas is likely to be spent in Taiwan. Last time I was in Taiwan for Christmas was in 2007. Taiwanese families typically don't celebrate it (unless they are Christians), but Taipei City was festive for the season:

Downtown Taipei after Christmas, Dec 2007

A little blurry, but you can see the super-tall Taipei 101 building lit up colorfully.
Expect better quality pics if I make it there for the Western holiday season this year.