Struggles Not In Common

A Carnival of Symbology

A trip to a night market in Taiwan is consistently one of the most memorable experiences for newcomers to the island. The barrage of colorful sights, music competing from different shops, smells of food cooking, of cigarette smoke, of flowing crowds like rivers of humanity, make for an absorbing, fascinating, and sometimes overwhelming introduction to Taiwan and "how things are" here.

Among the stalls you can find nearly everything; from delicate fruit, honey, and shaved ice creations to fried chicken butts on a stick, tacky souvenirs to designer handbags, discount kitchenware to silk ties... the only thing you're not likely to find is a spot quiet enough to make a phone call without shouting.

Among all this even a cursory examination of some of the smaller stalls will reveal a wide array of cigarette lighters, from led light-enhanced chrome zippos to cheap plastic bic-types, covered in random designs drawn from the global soup of symbology, everything from Snoopy to the Nazi flag.

An Arresting Symbol

Wait, the Nazi flag? You might be highly offended at this. It was certainly jarring to see on my first visit to Taiwan. But do you know the history behind the Nazi flag design and its instantly recognizable swastika? It's not a symbol the Nazis made up, but a very, very old one co-opted by Hitler, with his fascination for ancient objects and symbols of power, and exploited in the Nazis' self-serving reconception of history according to their twisted ideals.

The term swastika actually comes from a Sanskrit word, svastika, which denotes a good luck charm or mark, and the symbol itself is thousands of years old, found across the ancient world from Roman mosaics to Japanese clan symbols. It was used for thousands of years as a religious or lucky symbol with various connotations, and became closely identified with Buddhism. Across East Asia, including my city district, it still is:

Does this offend you? Do you wince a little automatically when you see it? What might go through a visiting Jewish person's mind? Should Westerners for whom the symbol is 100% synonymous with hate, racism, and death camps try to get Buddhist people in Asia to stop using it, when that's not what it means to Buddhist people at all?

In Taiwan, the symbol can be seen fairly frequently. It's one of the most compelling reminders that I am not in the West, that I am in a place where even symbology is different, where what "everyone" instantly recognizes as a symbol of historic evil is instead regarded as a positive symbol and displayed in various religious contexts, even used on area maps in the subway stations to denote the locations of Buddhist temples. (Christian churches are marked with crosses).

The emotional impact of the symbol having been co-opted by the Nazis is simply absent here, to the extent that at times the graphic being used is the actual Nazi flag. While some might simply be trying to borrow a recognizable or "rebellious" symbol to put on the lighters or other places, its use in some other situations convinced me that often it's just a case of someone thinking it was a colorful version of the normal Asian religious symbol. The horrible and unbreakable associations of the symbol for Westerners don't exist here, because this is not the West. Though there was frequently contact and a bit of overlap, for the most part Far Eastern history is not Western history, and Western history is not Far Eastern history. Many horrible historical incidents and times of suffering in East Asia are enshrined in the cultural consciousness of people here, events of which most Westerners have never even heard, and vice versa. Our struggles are different, and the legacies of history that affect us today are different. That is part of what it means to be a member of a different culture.

When Symbol Interpretations Collide, Identities Suffer

What we might call "symbol conflict" is just one of the many discontinuities one encounters and must endure when crossing cultures. And now the internet, with its vast resources of instantly accessible information, provides uncountable opportunities for these encounters with no context whatsoever. If you saw a bunch of monks with swastikas on their heads, and didn't know the history of the symbol, you might be incredibly confused. Your imaginative explanation probably could not be devoid of references to Hitler, Nazis, or white supremacy movements, because that's the only context you know for that symbol.

Globalism means that our symbols, our cultural memes and shared understandings of things, more and more often rub up against different interpretations and understandings of the world. Sometimes these are mutually exclusive. Sometimes one interpretation wins, as we've seen in the US with the recently revived debate over the Confederate flag. To a minority, it's a meaningful and important symbol of the heritage of their land and culture, something that ties them to their forebearers and unites them as a group. That race-based slavery was part of that culture in the past is not seen as something positive, but is also not the primary association being made, any more than the primary association of the American flag for Americans is the conquest and slaughter of America's indigenous inhabitants. To the majority, however, the Confederate flag is simply a symbol of racism and slavery, and that interpretation has won out. Even as I write this, the flag is being taken down around the South in many official contexts where it was still being used, as Southerners in positions of authority decide that, rightly or wrongly, perceptions are not going to be changed by more explaining. (Whether demands to eliminate all symbols of Southern history will be taken seriously remains to be seen. There are many who desire, like a new Pharaoh, to have the names of old rivals chiseled away, erased from history itself.)

So the minority is being forced to abandon their symbol, because what it communicated to the majority outside the culture was not the same as what it communicated within their culture. And it may be that the majority is not particularly concerned with what the minority might think about these symbols as regards their identity, because any separate identity along those lines is also considered negative and desired to disappear. There are parallels to this in history. At the beginning of the Meiji era of Japanese history, when its rulers decided that Japan would become a modern nation and sought to imitate many Western ways and customs, many of the old feudal rules concerning the samurai were discarded en masse and new rules banning the distinctive samurai hairstyle and the wearing of swords put in place. Many samurai resisted to the utmost of their abilities, and there were large-scale rebellions; their very identity was bound up in these symbols, and their disappearance marked not only the end of their own role in society but the fading of an entire historical era into the past, never to return. No one likes to be declared a living obsoletion, socially undead. But the changes were inevitable, and the samurai were ended, and died off; victims, in a sense, of globalism in its early stages.

Samurai from the Satsuma clan, who initially fought with the Imperial Army
against a samurai army resisting the Meiji era government, then themselves
rebelled after realizing the new government would end the samurai way of life.
(This is the historical basis of the movie The Last Samurai, as described here)

Tolerance vs. the Will of the Majority

The swastika has not disappeared, however; it is a common sight in this part of the world. To be honest, I haven't gotten used to it yet, perhaps I never will. Perhaps I shouldn't, even outside of my home culture context. But I recognize that what it evokes for me is simply not what it evokes for the vast majority of people who grew up here. That's part of what it means to live as a minority in a culture different than one's home culture; in a nutshell, it doesn't matter what I think. It doesn't matter what the entire foreign expat community here thinks. If I began defacing every swastika I saw, I would be put in jail, and rightly so. It doesn't matter how it makes me feel, because my feelings are not those of the people of my host culture. I am not in the context from which those negative associations arose. Our historical struggles have been different; we've overcome different hardships and weathered different storms, and we've developed different symbols or have come to associate the same ones with very different meanings.

Truly accepting diversity means not pretending we are all the same. It means recognizing that some cultures and historical legacies are so different from ours that a powerfully negative symbol of hate in our culture can be a powerful symbol of blessing in theirs. If we understand this, we can accept it. But many people don't actually accept it. They simply abide what they can't change, but then change it at the first opportunity. "On earth as is best in my opinion." They can't accept any viewpoint other than their own, and so when they use the term diversity what they really mean is homogeneity; that there are and should be no differences between people, because lacking the supernatural love of Christ or even a culture of respect, which can stretch across wide barriers of creed or color, they have no means of handling real differences. Sometimes those who shout the loudest about diversity are actually proclaiming their inability to tolerate it. (They typically reveal themselves by trying to silence anyone who truly disagrees with them.)

A Struggle We Do Share

Everyone is not the same. Sometimes our worldviews are radically different and irreconcilable. Living and ministering in Taiwan means both trying to learn and understand the different worldviews of people in my new context, accepting what I can accept, and showing the love of Christ always -and respect where it is due- to those people who hold views I can't accept. After all, I still hold views Christ can't accept, and His love for me doesn't vary on that basis.

So our struggle is not whether we can love someone or not based on whether their ideas and cultural views are reconcilable with ours or not. The story of the Good Samaritan, told in response to someone asking Jesus who could be considered their neighbor (an attempt to narrow the love requirement down to as few people as possible), is about someone whose very identity as a "tainted blood" Jew was repugnant and unacceptable to Jesus' Jewish audience. The struggle is whether or not we can love our neighbors, whoever they might be and whatever they might think about the world. Tolerance can only accept differences, it cannot heal wounds. But the love of Christ expressed through we who know it can take the initiative; it does not need to pretend there are no barriers to leap across them and turn the different, into family.

That Time I Almost Fought a Hobo: 3 Stories from Taiwan

Doing ministry in Asia, one encounters all kinds of interesting situations; interesting both because the cultural context is not one's home culture, and because one's reason for living in that culture involves not just trying to make oneself as comfortable as possible "despite" the unfamiliarity, but immerse oneself in it to understand it better. That immersion leads to lots of interesting situations, which are not always pleasant at the time, but those always make the best stories later...

Today I'm sharing three random stories of life in Taiwan.

1. Southern Hospitality

Last summer I was down in Kaohsiung visiting some American friends, and they decided to take me to a certain beach near a university. (The night before we'd climbed a mountain with dozens of monkeys surrounding us as darkness fell and took pictures of Kaohsiung's nighttime cityscape from the Martyr's Shrine, but that's a story for another time) We took a short cut which ended in a locked metal gate, with various warnings about not going that way, but also a very obvious wallowed out spot under the door where everyone had been going underneath it. We hesitated, not wanting to trespass, and asked a Taiwanese man on his scooter whether there was another way. He looked at us kind of funny and said we should just go under the door. Going by his seeming confusion that we would be considering other options, we decided it was established practice enough that we could "do as the Romans." So, we did, and I was happy I'd lost a good bit of weight since getting to Taiwan, as it was not much more than literally a human-sized gap, and not an especially large human.

Once we were through we quickly descended to a nice beach, which was "maintained" by the people who used it. They regularly picked up trash, and had constructed a little walkway down to the beach (from the main road, if you were coming from the opposite direction we had been) made only of driftwood and scraps, which led down from a path that led through some woods and then dense hillside foliage.
There was also an artificial basin that held water from a spring, clear and cold, which wasn't for drinking but could be used to wash the sand and saltwater off. People had also constructed a changing booth and a couple of beachside huts, again from mostly scrap materials, wire, and some boards and bamboo poles, sheltered from the wind behind large boulders/rocky outcroppings. (It was well and efficiently designed; as an engineer by trade, I approved.)

I don't have many pics from the beach, but here's one showing the scrap-constructed walkway

While at the beach we met a Haitian student who'd been studying in Taiwan for a while and seemed to find solace in the beach from her loneliness and culture shock in general. There was also a random streaking incident by a young lady we were told was mentally confused  ("Whelp, guess we'll have to go find her again," said the older lady who'd brought her). There was a pack of dogs roaming around too, but they were not quite wild, more like beach community dogs, who would bark a little but just to make sure you knew it was their beach that you were borrowing and didn't bother you otherwise, but appeared to be greatly enjoying themselves in general.
It was an interesting day all around.

As we were enjoying the ocean (though siltier than usual), we bumped into some students from the Taipei police academy. After chatting with them for a while, they invited us back to a small gathering which had convened in one of the beachside huts. It seemed to be a family and some friends, and they kindly offered us a spot to sit and cold drinks they'd ordered a lot of, not even thinking of accepting payment. Though they spoke on English at all, it seemed perfectly natural for them to have a few foreigners drop by and chat, eat some snacks, and then wander off. (Southern Taiwan especially is like this, I am told) The hut was constructed so that the breeze could easily blow through, yet it was sturdy enough to apparently withstand typhoons (or had been repaired since the last one). We chatted until more people came and we felt we should let them have our seats, then thanked them and took our leave. It was a friendly and laid-back sort of encounter I rarely have up in the hurried north, though sometimes one merely has to get out of the city to find them.

2. Attack of the Belligerent Hobo

Over a year ago now we had our Winter VBS for the community kids. The community center where we held the VBS has an outside courtyard and little park alongside it, a great place for a VBS in our area where community centers are usually small and cramped or share a building with other occupants/businesses.
Having decided to take advantage of some good weather and this outside area, we let the kids go on a scavenger hunt, with a list of things they needed to take pictures of using their cellphones.

Where it all went down..

A couple days previous, a hobo had claimed a spot on the perimeter of the courtyard area. I call him a hobo because that's seemingly what he was; an older man with unkempt hair and beard in old but not filthy clothes, seemingly well-fed and not on drugs, but who was obviously homeless and carried his things around on a large cart. In the US someone noticing a hobo hanging out by a park where kids play would probably fear for their children and call the police, but in Taiwan the police won't come if he hasn't done anything specifically wrong yet (which I think is fair, being homeless doesn't make you a bad person), and also by the time they get there he's easily able to wander off, as he did on at least one occasion when the police did eventually show up to check things out.

They did show up in this case, later on, because he was what I'd call a belligerent sort of hobo. He seemed somewhat bitter, acted like having parked his cart there meant he owned the place, and had no qualms about angrily lecturing those using the playground equipment if he felt they were doing so improperly. He yelled at kids and made them cry for using equipment which was really for adults to exercise on, and when the mom asked him to stop since he was scaring her child, he scoffingly explained the reason the child was crying was not his warning but her own poor parenting.

So as the kids are going on their scavenger hunt, they are mostly skirting the old man but aren't necessarily afraid of him. But one of the items on their list was "dog" and since the old man had two dogs with him, they skipped over and took a picture of one.

"Raaaargh!" -instantly the man jumped up yelling angrily, and began wrestling the camera from the child. I couldn't understand what he was shouting at the kid in Mandarin at first, but as I physically interposed myself between him and the kids, I heard him saying "delete it! delete it!" As best I could make out, he considered the dogs his own property and not a public display, and was offended that the kids felt they could take a picture without asking. Furthermore, he informed me as he calmed down (slightly), after I showed him that I had deleted the pictures in question, he didn't think a foreigner should be teaching Taiwanese kids anyway, as this was "educational failure" according to him. (This was a really great incident to occur right during the most difficult portion of my culture shock adjustment, let me tell you..)

Fortunately (and interestingly) the kids were only briefly startled and not terrified, perhaps since many of them were neighborhood kids and familiar with odd customers coming and going and grumpy old men in general. So "I don't like him"/"He's weird"/"What's his problem" was the consensus, versus the reaction I can only imagine a lot of American little kids would have had in that kind of confrontation, of stark terror. I was probably more shaken up by it than they were, as having to use my limited Chinese to half take, half talk the camera away from him was also a rather stressful language test (Hey, Mandarin pop quiz! Violent-crazy or just crazy?), and at the beginning I was beginning to physically intervene as I thought he might hurt the kids. (And though I was willing to drop him if necessary to protect the kids, being seen as "the foreigner who beat up that old guy" would be a terrible way to start out in this very aggression-averse culture. The really tough cultural hurdles are those when local moral sensibilities like "there is almost literally nothing more shameful than ruffianism like fighting publicly" collide with my upbringing of "if you had to fight someone off to save a child, you did a praiseworthy thing." In a pinch, I'd have to stick to my principles and take the consequences whether I was understood or not. So I'm glad in this case it turned out not to be necessary.)

Interestingly, the nearby moms (of other children in the park, not our VBS kids) stood by awkwardly during this incident and seemed not angry or indignant at the man so much as relieved the publicly embarrassing situation was resolved peacefully. (I'm guessing part of that really was embarrassment on their part, due to the fact that I was a foreigner and that was not a good face of Taiwan to be showing me) The man remained there for another day or two, with more angry lectures (we have a great word for this in English: "haranguing") but no more confrontational outbursts, until people finally asked the police to come, as they'd begun to threaten him to do if he didn't stop yelling at their kids. (He disappeared before the officers showed up, leaving his stuff, then disappeared altogether later) Massive cultural learning experience all the way around. But once is enough!

3. Chinese Mafia Noodle Soup

In the wider community where I live, there are a number of small restaurants, but fewer than in many parts of the metro area. So I was happy to discover, about seven minutes' walk from my home, a beef noodle soup restaurant. These are common in Taiwan, and beef noodle soup is a Taipei specialty, with nearly infinite variations on a few basic types. This place was run by an older gentleman, who looked to be well past potential retirement age.

He greeted me politely and after I ordered, suggested I try the tomato beef noodle soup next time, because "you foreigners all like that kind." (He was being friendly, and I wasn't offended. Nor would it have mattered if I was offended. Some people these days need to take the rhetoric down a notch.) He knew this was true, he explained, because HTC (the Taiwanese mobile phone manufacturer) main HQ is within eyeshot of the restaurant, and there a good number of westerners coming through on business trips who always liked the kind with tomatoes.

I said I might try it the next time (I still haven't, come to think of it, the kind I ordered was so good I get that every time), and enjoyed my meal immensely.

Now, there is a certain table in the back that's the sort of place and angle where I like to sit in restaurants, and I always try to sit there. I haven't yet succeeded, because the owner moves me every time. "No no, that table is too small, please sit over here, it's much better, you can see the TV," etc. Sometimes he doesn't even offer a reason, just apologetically moves me. In all the times I've gone, I've never seen anyone sit at that table, regardless of how many people are there.

Also, as I left that first time, and all the times since then, I've noticed the cook is a man of about the same age as the owner... with arms covered in triad-style (Chinese mafia) sleeve tattoos. I should note that tattoos (at least obvious noticeable ones) are still somewhat culturally taboo in Taiwan, partially due to gang associations. So when you someone in Taiwan of his age with the sleeve tattoos like that, it's more or less a dead giveaway.

 I also noticed that the cook and the owner seemed to be friends more so than boss/employee. So now I'm pretty sure I know what happened...
A mafia higher-up had a dream: He was getting too old for this nonsense, and one day soon, he would quit this life of crime, and open a nice little noodle shop. One of his mafia brothers joined him, and together they retired and settled down in a suburb of Taipei City to make amazing beef noodle soup.

One cannot simply leave the mafia, however, and there is necessarily a certain level of 'business' that still goes on. Those wishing to partake in it signal that... by sitting at a certain table in the back of the restaurant. I wonder if there's a certain dish you have to order. ("I'd like the beef noodle soup with the very special spice.") Like I said, I've never seen anyone sitting at that table, even with the restaurant busy, so maybe one day I'll have the chance to find out...

One reason it's an awesome place: So much meat! Some places only give you slivers

Hope you enjoyed these little anecdotes... Though most days aren't full of crazy situations, it's still true that when you walk out your door here, you never know exactly what might happen by the time you get back...

A Year of Missions in Taiwan - Part 2

< PART 1
So in Part 1 of my reflection on this past year in Taiwan, I compared this year with my previous year spent doing missions here, almost 7 years ago, and outlined some of the significant differences.

In Part 2, I want to look at whether a few of the lessons I learned over the past year could be profitable for other new missionaries going onto the field or thinking about doing so.

One could argue that, as a new missionary myself, I'm hardly qualified to give out advice. Perhaps, but I would argue instead that someone has recently been through the struggles you are undertaking or about to undertake can be more helpful than someone who experienced them long ago. One of my best language teachers in seminary was a (comparatively) young adjunct professor. She had written no famous books, and had zero name recognition even in some other departments of the same seminary, but she'd learned Greek recently enough that she remembered how to teach it to students who hadn't studied it before. My much more venerable and revered Hebrew professor, despite being a gentleman and a noteworthy scholar, and wonderful man of God, was nearly unable to teach Hebrew to us, because he simply couldn't reach back 5 decades to remember what it was like to not know Hebrew.

So I do this not from the prideful assumption that I have insights others don't, but from the perspective of wanting to share things I wish I had known a year or two ago. It's not comprehensive by any means; most major missions organizations these days will give you a lot of helpful information and training.
These are just a few things I've learned along the way.

I. Preparing for the Field

1. Long-term Network Building

A. If possible, start with a firm foundation

I am not with a denominational organization, some of which will simply cover most or all of your financial needs directly. (Though I'm given to understand this is becoming less common) That meant I have been responsible for building and maintaining my own support network. Though at times that was socially exhausting to the point of literal sickness (not illness) for an introvert like me, it was a crucially important experience as well, and a blessed one. God taught me a lot through developing those relationships with people and churches.

A missions-minded sending church is a huge blessing...
From the missions conference last year

I was very grateful to have a sending church that had a focus on global missions in its very DNA from the beginning, and to have spent many years there. So when I made the decision to become a full-time missionary, I began with a financial and spiritual support base which many new missionaries do not have. Also, and I don't mean this cynically, large churches simply tend to have more resources. Don't treat them like cash cows, but as collaborative ministry opportunities. Asking whether your intended ministry fits within their mission vision never hurts, and they might even give you a few minutes to share so that individual people can hear your vision for ministry and decide if they want to find out more. Finding a big church who is excited about ministry in your particular target area is great: they want to send, and you want to go.


So if you feel a calling from God for international missions, and understand Him to be leading you towards Going, I advise you to get plugged into a church that prioritizes the Great Commission. Don't bang your head against the wall of a church that doesn't think missions is important, unless you feel burdened to focus on changing the climate of that church instead of going on the field. It's very unlikely that you can do both of those things at the same time, and very likely that attempting to do so will leave you stressed and burnt out. I don't mean you have to leave your home church; I have (last I checked) three churches and another fellowship supporting me, and have enjoyed my interactions with all of them. Some are more missionally-focused than others, and some have more to do with Taiwan than others, and the combination has worked out fairly well.


B. Network inside the culture before you leave

That leads me to my second point, which is if you already know the culture you're going to, if possible try to visit and make connections at some churches with fellow believers from that culture. And not just to say hi. Try to spend visit there a few times, explain your vision for ministry in their culture, and make some friends. That may be impossible if there are no churches of that culture in your area, but you'd be surprised. I certainly was- in 2012 I didn't know there were any Chinese churches in North Alabama at all, and by the time I left for Taiwan in 2013, I'd visited three and one was helping support me.

A Chinese church I didn't know was in Alabama

One Chinese supporting church in Texas sends mission trips every year to Taiwan, so I'm able to keep in touch with them and keep serving together with them even on the other side of the world. It may not work out that way for you, but it's not unlikely that contacts you make in the US in a culture will eventually help you make contacts in that culture on the field as well. It's a small world after all.

Note: One must be cautious when visiting a new church. Having not (I assume) spent a great deal of time in your destination culture yet, there may be things going on you don't understand. Immigrant churches sometimes end up being composed of a certain subculture within a given culture, and if you come in excited about reaching people group A from country Z, you may be surprised to get a fairly hostile reception and discover that these people are indeed from country Z but are all from people group B, who were oppressed by A historically and are still quite upset about it.

In my own networking, for example the Chinese churches I visited in the US tended to be divided into Cantonese speaking, Chinese mainlanders, and Taiwanese, larger churches often having combinations of these groups, often with their own services and fellowships. So going into a Chinese church of Taiwanese people and explaining that I love Taiwan is an almost guaranteed enthusiastic welcome. Going into a Chinese mainlander church or fellowship and saying you love Taiwan and want to do missions there can get you a rather frosty reception, or people trying to convince you to go to China instead, both of which have happened to me. I also agreed to share at one church only to find that it had split from another church that was discussing whether to support me, due to disagreements, and there were still some bad feelings there. But I still shared in all of those situations, and most people were gracious and willing to listen even if they weren't interested in supporting me. Just be aware of the possibility you're not communicating what you think you are.


C. Some net-working is appropriate for fishers of men

Bad pun, sorry, but perhaps an appropriate one.
Global Missions today is an increasingly complicated venture, which I personally think is good and appropriate. The world is a complicated place, and one can't keep approaching world missions with one or two traditional paradigms and expect them to work in every situation. But even if your situation is different from mine, if you plan on tent-making on the field or already receive your support from some other source, you still need a network. Missions is not a one-way street; you can enrich and encourage the body of Christ in one place by communicating what God is doing in other places, and they can encourage and support you with prayer in your current ministry. They might even come and visit you, and get more interested in the needs of your field.

Missions is also impossible alone; missionaries are sent, and they are received. (that's true both cross-cultural missionary efforts both internationally and locally) Sending is a blessing, going is a blessing, and receiving is a blessing, and all three are necessary parts of the missionary task. Don't try to put all of it on yourself- Jesus didn't, and Paul didn't, both because the work was designed to be accomplished by many people working together to the glory of God, and also because working solo means you miss out on the chances to bless, inspire, and teach other people, let alone learning from and being inspired by them.

My final advice regarding networking is: delegate. Build a core team of people who trust you and are excited about what God is doing in your life, and ask them to help. Some people are really good at networking. They can access to other people and churches you don't, and might come up with ideas you wouldn't have thought of on your own. They'll also be informed about your plans, so if people have questions and you're not around, they can share your vision and also connect you with those people.

2. Visa Issues

And now for something completely different: the frustrating task of acquiring a travel visa.

"Were notarization procedures properly followed on the authorization form we need to begin the process
of applying for permission to begin the application permission approval process?"

I have had basically nothing but stress, trouble, and frustration in acquiring my visas for Taiwan. Others have related similar experiences, while others have expressed surprise, as their process went smoothly. And Taiwan is a very easy country to visit, it's just living here that can be tough to get permission for, partially because the stated requirements ultimately aren't the important thing. If the visa office (or someone with influence) decides you're ok, then you're good to go, even if you don't meet the stated requirements somehow. If they are suspicious about something (or want to reject your application for other reasons they aren't required to tell you, quotas or religious discrimination by the one person looking at your form or any other reason), they can simply say no and not explain. That's pretty normal for visa offices around the world; America doesn't exactly make the process easy either, because so many people want to come in legally and then stay illegally. (Yes there's lots I could say regarding that topic, but no, I'm not going there)

However, some of my missionary friends were trying to get into countries where it was not at all clear whether they'd be issued any kind of permission to enter the country whatsoever. Your target ministry area may be that kind of place, and your ability to remain there will be heavily dependent on political conditions and travel permissions for foreigners.

Some people understand this clearly. Having a paperwork disability, I confess I did not expect this portion of the process to be so troublesome or important. I was entirely focused on network building and getting ready to leave the country, when suddenly the entire process came to a crashing halt when the office decided that though I met every requirement for the visa for which I was applying, they weren't going to let me apply for it. I then spent two or three months in limbo while we figured out what to do. Well-meaning friends kept asking why I was still in America, people on the Taiwan side were confused why I hadn't arrived yet, etc. The psychological stress was considerable. I prayed a lot, and can only conclude that God had His own reasons for not allowing me to leave yet, because I missed several important events in Taiwan due to the delay.

All I want to say here is this: your visa/legal status is important and can't be taken for granted.
So my advice is simply to be aware of this, and start educating yourself early. Maybe the process will be handled by your organization, but it never hurts to understand it yourself anyway, you may find it necessary to do some things yourself, or your situation on the ground may change too abruptly for your organization to make those decisions for you. After running into all the problems, I did some googling and found other people were sharing their experience regarding visa acquisition problems (some of them because they'd been trying to do illegal things on purpose, making it more difficult for all of us...). You might find it helpful to do the same, though obviously you can't trust everything people randomly share online.

Also, make very sure the information you have is up to date. Forms can change or be updated without much notice, and using the wrong form can torpedo the whole process for these excessively bureaucratic procedures. Doing it right the first time is always safer, if possible. But our God is sovereign even over the mysterious inner workings of bureaucracies.

3. Expectations

I've written on this in previous posts, but I think it's important enough to mention here again. Expectations are impossible to entirely avoid, but they can be the source of much frustration and heartache on the field.

"Oft expectation fails, and most oft there
Where most it promises; and oft it hits
Where hope is coldest, and despair most fits."
   All's Well That Ends Well - William Shakespeare

My culture shock was a lot less severe my first time coming to Taiwan because I decided ahead of time I wasn't going to try to guess what things would be like, and would certainly not expect them to be like America and then complain when they weren't. I would just prepare a blank space in my mind and fill it in once I got to Taiwan. (So not "oh, that's weird," but "I see... noted.") It's impossible to prepare a totally blank space, of course; we're deeply and subtly influenced by our birth cultures and worldviews, but I believe it's a worthwhile effort.

But other expectations can be even more dangerous. Will you necessarily get along with your coworkers well? Will locals understand your unusual situation and take it into account? Will you have ways of spiritually nourishing yourself and your family without a church like you had back home?

And the most potentially upsetting expectations are the ones we don't know we have, the ones we're blind to. I wrote about "life shock" in Part 1, and that experience revealed to me some expectations I hadn't realized I'd been carrying with me this time.

In the end, I don't think it's possibly to track down and neutralize all our expectations. But I believe what we can do as believers is set our expectations instead on God's promises and truth in scripture. He who began a good work in us will be faithful to complete it. In this world we will have trouble, but Christ will give us His peace. God will redeem for Himself some of every tribe, tongue, nation and people. He will never leave us nor forsake us. Those are things we can expect, that are good and right to take as given and set up as a foundation from which to live and work.

II. Arriving on the Field

1. Riding out Culture Shock

Culture shock will happen, whether you try to get used to your new culture and surroundings by the 'dip your foot in the pool' method or the cannon ball method. (If the latter, be careful you don't accidentally mess things up with people you'll later be trying to minister to and/or share the gospel with)

I think most missionaries going onto the field are aware of culture shock these days, so I will just quickly suggest a few strategies for more successfully coping with it.

Culture shock? Shockingly delicious, I say.

A. Set yourself up to profit from it - turn upsetting or off-putting experiences into learning opportunities. "Why" is always a good question, even when coming out of frustration, because you're recognizing something happened for a reason. Ask yourself what God was teaching you through that experience, how it will equip you to deal with future problems. Don't imagine you can avoid it like an obstacle, think of it as an annoying but necessary set of steps that you are climbing, so you can see a little more clearly from the top.

B. React into the culture - One thing I figured out last time I lived here was that, when tired, overwhelmed, or upset from cultural stress, I could choose to retreat from the culture, doing something familiar that dispelled the cognitive weirdness, or I could react into it, purposefully doing something I enjoyed about Taiwan to make myself feel better that I couldn't have done in America. It's like the difference between reacting to tiredness during a workout by taking a break vs. shifting to a different muscle group instead. Neither is wrong, and rest is crucially important too, but the latter will build your endurance and strength much more quickly the more often you can do it. It will also help the new place start feeling a little more like home.

C. Give yourself time and grace - This is tricky, because there really are missionaries who need a little pushing at first, a little motivation to put themselves out there more and try harder. Sometimes I'm like that too. (Other times I feel like quoting Shakespeare: "Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more.") But just in learning the language you are literally changing neuron connections in your brain, reprogramming it. That simply takes time. The longer it takes, the less you're able to do in the mean time, but at the same time burning yourself out at the onset puts you on shakier psychological ground for the duration. (That doesn't mean you're being a bad Christian. You can fully believe and take refuge in the truth that God is good and you must love your enemies while the dangerous, stress-induced idea is slowly growing in your mind that these people might sort of be your enemies. That's not sin, it probably just means you need rest and some encouraging experiences to offset the stressful ones)

You also need to give yourself grace, because God does, but sometimes other people won't. Local people are sometimes very understanding and helpful, but not always. Sometimes your inability to speak their language makes them think you're just dumb. ("Why can't you talk like we do? Even our little kids can")
Again, that's not a culture specific problem. A family friend of some of my cousins adopted a Korean girl years ago, and a cashier asked her how they would talk to the girl when she grew up. There's a huge difference between growing up aware of multiple languages and growing up totally monolingual.

And sometimes people will be impatient with you not knowing things there's no possible way you could know. America is a low-context culture, things are usually expressed explicitly and there are fewer 'hidden rules' that everyone knows without having to say, behaviorally speaking. Other places are high-context, and you're just going to have to spend a lot of time figuring things out. Sometimes other missionaries can help you with this, sometimes well-traveled locals can, sometimes neither option is available. Sometimes there's basically no way to know how to react to a situation until it happens and you see how other people react to it, or until you make a mistake and someone finally loses their temper and says "don't you know you're supposed to..." and you think "aha, now I do!" Compliments will come in their time as well.


2. Eating Weird Things...

Where You lead me, I will follow;
What You feed me, I will swallow.
(Commonly cited "missionary's prayer")

I have a slight advantage here in that our parents made us eat things we thought were weird growing up (canned sardines, carob, etc), so the idea was instilled at an early age that one -can- eat the strange thing, you just have to see how far away you can push that part of your brain that cares about what you're eating. I'm also pretty curious, so I typically want to know what the strange thing tastes like.

Taiwanese culture is a food culture. Everyone will encourage you to try their favorite things and local delicacies, and most locales really do have their own special delicacies. I've eaten things like pig intestine, goat stomach, snake, brains (can't remember of what, but I made sure it wasn't a cow or deer), wood fungus, the infamous 'stinky tofu', duck tongue, rooster comb, pig spinal cord, (cooked-)blood rice cakes, bird's nest soup, jellyfish, sea cucumber, squid on a stick, river shrimp, fish eyes, and a kind of little salt water snail. Probably lots of other things people would think are weird too, like buddha-head fruit or pitaya/dragon fruit, coffee jello, or bitter melon (tastes like an aspirin) but at this point my weird meter is kind of skewed. Basically if other people are happily eating it, I will too. (Of the above list, the least tasty were the rooster combs, which were too greasy, and the sea cucumbers, which were not cooked with enough seasoning according to another person at the dinner party)

Some of our short-termers from a great group we had this Spring, trying Stinky Tofu,
an "aromatic" local snack. Not everyone hated it, just most everyone did.

If you really have trouble with culinary curiosity, or came from a background where even fish was suspect, you might try making a list of local dishes or types of food, and crossing them off the list. Especially for families with children, you could have a reward system worked out for being willing to try to new things. Some might unexpectedly become new favorites, but of course probably not if you've already decided you're not going to like them.

Being willing to try local food is often a quick way to connect with people, especially if you'll try things that most outsiders don't want to eat. It's sort of a little rite of passage to see how serious you are about adapting to local ways. Just be aware that in poorer areas people may be giving you their best and keeping little for themselves. Sometimes there's not much you can do about that except pay it forward when it's your turn.

Finally, on a very practical level, some of the weird food is also highly nutritious, and provides the local diet with nutrients it doesn't get from other foods. And you may need those nutrients too, living there.

3. Spiritual Warfare

If you are from certain church backgrounds, you may be quite familiar with this, or even wary of it due to people overdoing it. But at least in my experience, coming out of conservative evangelical churches, this wasn't really discussed. The truth is, though, that making a decision to serve God full time is putting a target on your back for the enemy, and in many parts of the world, especially the 10/40 window and 'global south,' spiritual darkness doesn't bother to hide itself like it does in the US (though it's increasingly obvious there) and some other places.

The reason for this is, I believe, that inside cultures considered Christian, seeing weird or frightening stuff, glimpsing some kind of supernatural reality, is more likely to drive people to church, to ask a pastor or priest what on earth is going on. That's counterproductive to the enemy's purposes, and so in those places he uses deception and distraction, seeking to steer people away from spiritual things into the bondage of the world instead. Out in the idolatrous and/or 'folk religious' areas of the world, there is no need to sneak around, and the darkness is much more obvious, from Mexico's Day of the Dead to Taiwan's Ghost Month.

For missionaries, your presence in an area considered enemy territory is noted and not welcomed. (I think of the chilling passage in Acts with the Sons of Sceva where the demons already knew who Paul was) In certain places, that may translate into oppression. Things go wrong more often than they should, you and your team feel stressed, anxious, or argumentative, temptation starts feeling less like a shoulder-devil whispering in your ear and more like he's calling for artillery strikes on your areas of weakness, etc. You may get sick more often than just a new environment or unfamiliar weather would suggest. Local people in spiritual captivity may be very unfriendly to you, even hostile. And specific incidents can sometimes get more intense than all that, but I think that's unlikely to happen to most new missionaries. Although someone did ask me a several months ago whether I wanted to go upstairs and help the church we were visiting do an exorcism. (I prayed while remaining downstairs, since the pastor hadn't asked me to join them, but the guy ended up saying he didn't need them to do it. I'm not sure if he was actually possessed or just a little mentally addled, though we were taught that's often not an either-or but a both-and situation) More recently, a student asked me if I wanted to go his house to witness his father call spirits into himself and do miracles. The darkness here is real.

Now, I'm not saying you might be under a voodoo hex and need holy water. You don't need a crucifix over your door on idolatrous holidays; we don't fight spiritual darkness with superstitious/folk religious ways of thinking, that would only enable it by playing into the fear the enemy seeks to instill in us. Scripture is clear, we have an enemy, that is not merely metaphysical or representative of our own internal struggle but a host of real entities, that desire to wreck God's plan to the furthest extent they are allowed. For reasons I do not entirely understand, but I suspect have to do with His greater glory and our own sanctification and reliance on Him and sharing in the victory of Christ, He has chosen to not restrain them entirely, but let us call on Him for help to overcome the enemy.

I think the two easiest mistakes here to make are a) to dismiss it all as make-believe (scripture is quite clear we live in a supernatural world) or b) to be unhealthily interested/attracted. (the deceiver is so-named for a reason; those who think they can intentionally interact with darkness and not take harm need a pride check)

In general, the solution to spiritual attacks/warfare is actually straightforward:
A. Pray, and confess any unconfessed sin.
B. Pray, and remember your identity in Christ.
C. Pray, and fill your mind with scriptural truth, not the enemy's lies.
D. Pray, and covered in Christ's protection and authority, rebuke the enemy in His name.


That's not a magical formula, it's just the basic points I was taught, based on scriptural principles, and it works. It's a testimony to our faith too. If Jesus is not who He claimed to be, why does darkness hate and flee from His name?

Let us never forget; the name of Christ has been exalted above every other name in heaven and on earth and under the earth. That name has authority over all evil. Let us neither misuse it, nor fear to use it appropriately.

On a more long-term level, we need to be continually praying for God's protection over ourselves, our ministry, our coworkers, our families back home and supporting churches (another way to get at us), and for those people to whom we minister that the chains of darkness on them be broken and God deliver them from bondage to the enemy in which they have lived their lives. He can do it and He will; it's been happening for thousands of years, and continues today all around the world.

The Light of the world has already come.

In Conclusion...

There are usually always things you can do to make your adjustment to the field easier, but often it's just a case of learning to live in a less comfortable environment than you're used to. Just keep finding joy in our God and the good work He has given us to do, love and pray for your coworkers, and you'll find a lot of shorter-term problems resolve themselves.

And I think that's enough for one post. Next up, a picture post, with some highlights from this past year and some of the interesting places I went and things we did.

A Year of Missions in Taiwan - Part 1

In a few days, I'll have been in Taiwan a year, again. The experience of my first year here -seven years ago now- and this one have been radically different. In this post, Part 1 of my look back over the past year, I want to outline some of the differences between that first year, a 'long short-term' trip, and this one, my first of many years here as a long-term missionary, Lord willing. It's been harder than I expected, in many ways, but He is good, and we see Him at work in our midst every week.

My previous year in Taiwan vs. This Year:

1. The Sense of Distance

Thanksgiving 2007... An unknown sea lies ahead

That year: Last time I lived in Taiwan, I had the fascinating experience of a whole year in which I felt the "coolness" of living overseas, in a culture very different from my own. Tolkien once described someone as having wandered into the remote distance of a certain place, yet retaining that enjoyable feeling of remoteness even after what had been distant was now his surroundings. That's how the first year felt, even after the initial adjustment. It never stopped feeling exciting; there was a little thrill every time I went outside, like someone had put a filter on reality that upped the contrast on everything, or caffeinated the air.

Early 2014...  A mountain has been climbed... but there are more

This year: This time has been exactly the opposite, so consistently that I was quite surprised. I haven't gotten the deeply excited, travel-y feeling even when it would make sense to have it (visiting little towns up in the mountains and pounding rice to make mochi, watching the World Cup with a bunch of other people at 3AM in a McDonalds in Kaohsiung, painting a paper lantern with Chinese characters and sending it up during the lantern festival, etc). I even wanted to make it happen sometimes, trying to close my eyes and get the feeling back, to help with the cultural adjustment. But other than a few brief moments (a dusty, late summer sunset over Taichung, a lone dragon kite on a rain-misting afternoon by the sea, white egrets in an emerald rice field glimpsed from a train window...), Taiwan has refused to seem anything but a perfectly normal place on planet earth in which I currently happen to be, which is in many ways much stranger than the opposite feeling. I don't have a good explanation for it, but I'd love to hear from anyone with a similar experience. (For some reason, I have the strong impression that passing the one year mark will make a difference, perhaps by making it undeniable that I'm moving into new territory in my Taiwan experience, despite the fact that this is already constantly true. The mind is a tricky thing.)

But when those moments do happen...

2. The Human Element

That year: My organization had an office in Taipei, I lived in my organization's housing in the middle of Taipei, and participated in a few different ministries with other missionaries, both long-term with my organization and other foreign teachers there for the medium or shorter term. I hung out with mostly expats in Taipei (foreign teachers and missionaries), but spent a great summer with my local friends down in Taichung doing evangelical summer camps, and by the time I left had a number of local friends in Taipei as well. It was pretty awesome.

This year: This has been the hardest thing, hands down. Both the organizational office and housing got sold a couple years back for reasons unnecessary to delve into, and no one else in my organization is up here anymore. Of the fun cross-organizational church-planting team that was here when I arrived a year ago, all the non-Taiwanese members have returned to America for varying reasons, and I'm the only foreigner left. (I'm single, so it's just me here) I definitely am blessed to have Taiwanese coworkers with whom I share "one heart and mind" in the Lord, but they are of my parents' generation and also not able to understand what it's like to live and adjust cross-culturally. I also discovered my friends in Taipei were 6 years further along in their lives, a few had moved abroad, and most didn't see each other often anymore. On the other hand, I have been very encouraged to find a few Taipei friends from before were excited to see me again, and to have made a few new friends here as well. But as it happens, all those friends, both old and new, are non-believers. It seems that, once we have a social circle at church, we stay inside it. I've been pondering this phenomenon and thinking it might be a crucial part of the reason we find it so hard to evangelize. (I could, of course, go to a church to meet Christians, but since I'm working on planting one, I don't have Sundays available to do that.)

So having lost both the expat and local relationship networks this time, working missionary hours (because when your work involves people attending optional activities, you are busiest when people are free and most free when they are busiest), and investing most of my time in lower-income community outreach and ministries that involve mostly young children and retired/elderly people, it's been a rough slog, relationally speaking. It's easy to say "go get plugged into new social groups, find churches that meet on other days than Sunday, etc." but hard to do so when you're an introvert and have invested most of your social energy in your outreach ministries, and also when you don't know at least one person in that group who can introduce you to the others, or even one person to go there with you. "Hey tonight let's go check out that group..." is very different than "Hm, do I want to be the random new guy tonight?" Not when I'm exhausted, no. Some coffee and a book, please, so recovery can start... not for socializing, but for the next day of ministry.

(If this section sounds like complaining, it's not meant to be; especially I want to emphasize that it's no one's fault. A wide range of factors all contributed to my current situation, and it will improve over time. It's just been especially difficult for this ending-of-the-beginning stage.)

3. The Work

That Year: Having quit my job as a computer engineer for the year of ministry in Taiwan, I still found a use for my skills in doing some work on the office computers. I participated in several English club programs, helped out at a local church, did a summer and winter VBS and eventually started an English Bible study there, and spent the entire summer working at evangelical summer camps.


This Year: Having recently graduated from a fairly well-known seminary, I receive a certain amount of respect here for having those credentials but I have not yet been able to use most of what I learned there. (It's ok, those kinds of opportunities will steadily increase if God chooses to prosper our church planting efforts here.) But we've done summer camps and VBSs and Bible studies, and we teach English in after-school classes and Bible stories and music classes to community kids and parents. I continue to meet with friends and students fairly often for English/Mandarin practice (with those conversations tending to be fruitful ones), and we've recently started a weekly house church meeting.

Being able to speak some Mandarin makes a huge difference this time, letting me jump into ministry right away. I still can't preach in it (I could "share," or spend a very long time writing a sermon and then read it from the pulpit, but I can't preach a full length sermon off of main points yet), but I can pray in Chinese now, and my current level lets me have lots of conversations (sometimes fairly deep ones) and be able to teach people who need everything except the exact English phrase or word being studied to be in Chinese, which is really helpful.

To use the common analogy, we've done lots and lots of seed-planting and lately some watering, and we trust that God will do with that as He wills, and we'll be able to see more fruit in time. The mission field is a long-term game, really a multi-generational one (whether you realize it or not, which is the scary part; everything you do has long-term consequences one way or another). We've also received a couple of short term teams who had great servant-minded attitudes and worked hard, which was as always very tiring for us as the receiving missionaries but fruitful as well, and our endeavor was blessed by the good work they did.


4. The Ministry Struggles


That Year: Language was a big struggle then, because without a translator I couldn't talk to anyone who didn't have at least some English, and definitely had to stick to English for any actual teaching or ministry. This meant I often struggled just to understand what was going on (A language barrier can be surprisingly easy to overcome when communicating one-on-one, but is more like a language cliff when lots of things are going on around you at the same time and you need to know what some of them are). Sometimes I struggled to understand what the Taiwanese people I worked with were thinking and expecting, and experienced some frustration both when I met with unexpected difficulties and when people seemed to expect me to know what they were thinking. It took time to learn that local people and even coworkers, unless they have spent some time as a cultural outsider in a new place themselves, can't really empathize with your difficulties in acting "normal" and communicating effectively. We might laugh at the unenlightened soul back home who says "why can't they just speak English like normal people," but people in other cultures don't necessarily think much differently. (This time in Taiwan I've had a number of people express surprise that I was a different kind of person than they thought I was. It turns out some of them hadn't realized I didn't talk about certain things because I didn't know how to do so in Chinese; they just assumed I never thought about those things or wasn't interested in them.)

This Year: Being on a church-plant opportunity, we continually seek to figure out the needs in our community and meet them as a testimony to the gospel and a demonstration of God's love. This area has barely been touched by the gospel, and while a few small churches exist on its outskirts, once you leave the main road it's only shrines and little temples inside the neighborhoods. There is poverty, not desperate but real. We recently discovered some kids that attend our community English class hadn't been eating lunch before doing so. One girl's parents are a man who lost an arm in an accident and now sorts trash for a living, and the wife he got from Vietnam. The daughter has a serious learning disability. She always sweetly shares her food with the other kids. Some of these people are just barely getting by. Some are not so badly off, by comparison, and comment that our English classes are too easy for them/their kids. Our classes are a mix of white and blue collar, working and middle class, kids who attend specialty school after school to get a headstart on their college exam, 12 years early, and kids who run around the neighborhood unattended after school because their single parents can't be away from work to watch them.

I have years of education in logic and apologetics, and a mind that is naturally equipped for critical and analytical thinking. I am not being boastful but simply stating a fact when I say that most of my friends and family would advise against trying to argue a point with me. And, those abilities don't go very far in this community, in this kind of work. That's not to say that logic and apologetics are not valuable, they certainly are, and have been helpful when I've had the chance to share the gospel with college students. But it's become clear that in a sense I've been trained as a world class sniper when what's wanted here is hand-to-hand combat in the trenches. A lot of humility comes with the realization those loving, but odd, and not very bright people that you once struggled not to look down on as an immature young Christian might run circles around you when it comes to being Christ to struggling people.

After grad school/seminary I could parse New Testament passages in the original Greek and explain the difference between nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive languages. In some of our outreach ministry, I am inclined to think someone who was good at hand puppets and doing silly voices would be vastly more useful. Yet God works through our weaknesses, even weakness we had in other contexts pridefully assumed was strength.


5. The Cultural Adjustment

2007... What -is- this?
Trying a new food with my Taiwanese friend Carol
('a-gae', in Danshui)

That Year: I'd done three short-term trips to Taiwan, so it wasn't a totally new experience coming to Taiwan, but living here certainly was. I still remember my first trip to the drugstore, my exploratory trips to local restaurants, etc. (I get a bit nostalgic thinking about how everything was an exciting adventure.)

I had a bit of culture shock, and was a bit homesick for the holidays (though I haven't ever experienced the really severe homesickness that some people do; we moved a lot growing up so I don't have any one particular place that is obviously home, and missing my family tends to be heavily mixed with gratitude for having a loving family to miss), but Taiwan is a fun and interesting place for a young person to live, and I enjoyed the process more than I got stressed out from it. It was the reverse culture shock that hit me going home that came as a real surprise and took some time to get over.


This Year: I had sort of assumed that, having lived here a year before, I wouldn't have culture shock this time. In general that was actually true. I wasn't surprised by much I encountered, was actually looking forward to the food that scares a lot of short-termers, etc. What I've found though, is that what we call culture shock is really a combination of a number of things. Some of it is displacement shock, which you get moving to any new place, and some of it is what I call "life" shock. Things happen to make you realize your life isn't how it used to be, and those kinds of changes can be unpleasant. Now I did have some culture shock this time too, mostly having to do with being immersed in the culture to a much greater extent than I was last time, and being in a different community. I can't recall getting a lot of frowning stares living in the middle of Taipei city, near a major university, but I get them in this community fairly often, that sort of thing.

But, for example, as I mentioned above, it wasn't that my friends spoke a different language from me (I could muddle along in it reasonably well by the time I got back here), and I already knew they'd use different -ways- of communicating (a deeper difference than simply using different-sounding words), but I wasn't thinking of the fact that 6 years for me had passed for them too. Upon arriving, I spent a confused month or two before rapidly discovering, to my disappointment but begrudging understanding, that things were "different now," "not like before," etc. (I don't believe any human being enjoys that realization, but denial only hurts yourself. In this world we will have trouble, but Christ has given us His peace, and not as the world gives.)

2014... I think I know what this is...
Trying a new flavor with the same friend Carol...
in the brownie shop she's now opened 7 years later

So here I can offer a bit of advice* to outgoing/new missionaries, which is: don't confuse all the 'shock' you experience for culture shock. That can lead to resenting the culture, which can cause all kinds of problems in both the short and long term, and greatly inhibit the depth of your ministry. So much of the discomfort is simply displacement shock- moving to an unfamiliar place, losing your relationship networks, encountering weird people (it's hard when you don't know the culture yet, but sometimes it really isn't your lack of cultural flexibility, they're just an odd person), going through legal processes that are hard no matter where you are, etc. And sometimes, as I found, life can shock us all on its own.

(*- Offering advice is always a risky business, but I'll try to do my best at providing some for new missionaries in the second part of my reflections on this year in Taiwan, coming soon.)
PART 2 >

10 Things I will Miss about America while in Taiwan - 6 Months In

So before leaving for Taiwan, I wrote a post about things I expected to miss about American while living in Taiwan. (Things, not people, so they're not on the list. I assume friends and family are a given) Now that I'm coming up on half a year over here, I want to take a look at those expectations and see what I got right, what I got wrong, and what I didn't find out until I got over here again.

So without further ado, let's check out my 10 previous things:

1. Driving (Confirmed)

Yes, I do miss driving. Living in this part of Taiwan a car would be more trouble than use (I don't need to haul things and people around much, and finding a parking space takes longer than getting to your destination), and I don't really need a scooter, though I'll probably want to learn how to ride one just to have that option.

But driving does other things too. It gives you time to yourself (valuable for introverts), and you can listen to your music turned up without earbuds and it doesn't bother your neighbors (and their neighbors, and their neighbors...). I also used to do a lot of praying and thinking while driving, and miss those quiet times.

2. Spring and Autumn (Partially confirmed)

We'll see. Being in the East Asian monsoon cycle, things don't exactly follow the traditional Western four seasons; Chinese culture observes more or less the same solar cycle but we're way farther south than where the traditional ideas about the seasons were developed, and also an island in the Pacific, so things get a little... tropical. Autumn remains to be seen, but since this winter was unusually cold it seemed quite Spring-like when it warmed up and the cherry trees blossomed. We've gotten unbelievable amounts of rain since I got here (which is semi-normal but it's definitely more than last time I lived here), both when it was colder early in the year and for nearly the entire month of May, with the arrival of the Plum Rains (梅雨).

Seattle gets 37" (950mm) of rain per year; Taipei gets 95" (2,400mm)
Could be worse.. nearby Keelung gets an incredible 144" of rain per year. (3755mm)

So far the jury's out on this one, given that Spring was pretty normal. I know from experience that there's not really a proper Autumn, however, so we're calling this partially confirmed until proven otherwise.

3. Being able to wear Dark Colored Shirts in the Summer (Mostly Busted)

(This one was kind of random. I wonder why I included this in the original post)... Having just passed Dragon Boat Festival it's only now considered early summer, but according to my weather app with the humidity it felt like 100F here (38C) a couple Saturdays ago. I haven't replaced my clothing to the extent I'd expected before getting over here. I should get on that, actually...some of these are pre-seminary shirts, they're getting to that really comfortable stage that wives/girlfriends seem to dislike. The good news is that as long as I don't need to carry a backpack, a dark-colored shirt does just fine hiding the sweat and I rarely get the serious salt mine action I mentioned in the original article.

4. Being able to Make Jokes (Partially confirmed)

Mostly right. My Taiwanese coworker is rather fond of what they call "cold" jokes in Mandarin (what we'd call a bad pun, the ones that make people groan and leave), and as I've knocked the rust off my Chinese and improved it here and there, I'm able to make some forays into Chinese punning. The tricky thing is to make sure you're not saying something inappropriate by accident (there are lots and lots of homophones in Mandarin), as your listeners usually remember to give you the benefit of the doubt, but not always..

5. Real Southern Food and Tex/Mex Food. (Confirmed, but it's ok)

Yes. I do miss both of these, but am encouraged that there are a couple new Mexican places to check out, and also very excited to have belatedly discovered the Taiwanese pork BBQ sandwich:

Guabao! In Chinese the name means "glory in a rice flour bun"
(Ok not really, but it could)

It doesn't look like what you're used to, and it's not hickory-smoked pulled-pork (nor sliced beef brisket) but believe me, it's amazing on its own merits, and somehow fills that dietary niche quite well.

Still miss the Southern food, but as I said in the original post, that doesn't even exist much in the rest of the States, so there's not exactly a sense of deprivation.

6. References (Allusions to things in wider pop culture) (Confirmed)

For sure on this one. Even more common references get missed, sometimes due to not knowing the Chinese name of something (which is not necessary just the translation of the English name), and sometimes just due to different growing up experiences.

It's always fun to discover when you have something in common with a Taiwanese friend, however, and can both appreciate the reference. And there are always the more recent references, things that happened after I moved here, of which I now have a growing stock and have used successfully a few times.

7. Arguing about Politics (Busted)

Well.. I had good intentions about staying 100% out of political discussions, I really did... then there was a historical first in Taiwan when protesting students took over the Taiwanese legislative chamber for three weeks, accompanied by the biggest protest rally in Taiwanese history. With near-heroic levels of self-control (I argued about politics with my second grade teacher when Bill Clinton was elected and she made us watch his inauguration, no joke), I managed to make (mostly) indirect references to it online and mostly post news stories so my American friends would be aware of the situation without interjecting too many of my own thoughts. I also took the opportunity to learn a lot about Taiwan politics in general.

What I said in the first post was true; I need to avoid this as much as possible. It's not worth losing a chance to witness over. But it's also very difficult to sit on the fence in these situations, especially when many of my friends feel passionately about these issues. (Once or twice I felt that it would have been less offensive just to go ahead and say what I thought, rather than claiming I didn't think I should say what I thought) I will keep praying for discernment in knowing who to share my thoughts with, and knowing if/when the appropriate time to do that would be.

8. No Garbage Cans (Confirmed)

Yes, it's a constant thing you have to work around here that you don't in America, and it's annoying to have to be home at 9:05PM when the trucks come rolling in (Blasting Fur Elise to let you know they're on their way) for just a couple of minutes, and keep food trash in your freezer in the mean time. But I don't generate all that much non-recyclable trash, and I can haul that down to the street and give it to an old lady who gets money for turning it in, so it's all good.

9. Not Wondering about Water Quality (Busted)

 

This one hasn't really been an issue, as I suspected at the time it might not be. It's better not to drink out of random faucets, but bottled water is slightly cheaper than in the US when needed, and I have a Brita filter to use in my apartment. (Hey, come to think of it, my filter needs changing...)

10. Blending In (Confirmed)

Yeah. I get stared at (or very conspicuously not stared at, which is kind of the same thing) every day. Goes with the territory, won't change during my whole life over here, so I wouldn't expect it to be any different. And no it doesn't make people racist, it would be the same if I were super tall or super short or super-whatever. I'm just easier to notice, and so people do.

 Some parts of Taipei actually have a lot of foreigners, though interestingly, (white) foreigners tend to not be American or Canadian this time around. I hear a lot of French and German, as much or more than English.

11. UPDATED: New entry

Ok, so in summary I think I did reasonably well in guessing which things I'd miss. But I forgot one of the biggest small things that I miss about the US:

Being able to flush toilet paper.

 

There's always a can beside the toilet... optimally it gets emptied often

I've heard various reasons: the water pressure isn't good enough to get it through the pipes; there are chemicals in the paper that aren't supposed to go into the plumbing system; perhaps there's no way to get rid of the paper once it collects wherever it collects. All I know is, the general rule is that you can't flush toilet paper here.

This may seem like a small thing (or maybe not), but put that together with no central A/C, a tropical climate, interesting changes in your diet, and the fact that the only legal way to get garbage out of your house is to coordinate disposal with the nightly garbage trucks, and it's one of the bigger small annoyances one deals with.

(Note: One of the biggest 'things' I miss about living in America is the churches and church families I've grown close to, both my sending and supporting churches, in Alabama and Texas. But I mentioned at the beginning that this list was for things, not people, and a church is not a thing, it's people)

Conclusion:

I love Taiwan, and any of these things I miss are very much balanced out by great things about being able to live here. (The most difficult things are mostly the same things as I'd deal with at this stage of my life doing full time ministry in the US) I'm very blessed to see God at work, and our ministries have progressed slowly but steadily over the past half year. It will be interesting to take another look at this once it's been a full year and see if my perspective has changed at all.

Unexpected Stories from the Field: When God Sees Your Struggles and Sends a Rock Concert

There are moments in the cultural adaptation process when it seems that things are hopeless. When you feel like you're never going to figure out how things work, or you simply don't have enough motivation to keep putting energy into trying. When the problem is not any particular difficulty or obstacle, it's that you're in a situation where the normal things you'd do to encourage yourself and push past difficult days and situations aren't possible, so your usual methods of overcoming are missing in action, and you're not sure what to replace them with.
And all that seems terribly unfair somehow when it was your desire to serve God that got you into this mess to begin with. Shouldn't His silences (if necessary) and blessings (yes please) line up properly with the peaks and valleys in our lives as we perceive them?


Then there are those moments which carry you forward, which keep encouraging you even when remembering them later, when sharing them with others. When God does things in your particular context that let you know He's there and He hasn't abandoned you.

A little over 6 years ago, last time I lived in Taiwan, after being there for a couple of months I was struggling inside. It was winter, and I was working through culture shock, had only had 4 weeks of Chinese lessons, was experiencing something like SADS from the endless cold rain in Taipei, and was not yet equipped to handle some of the psychological stress of the transition.

One evening, really struggling with my discouraged frame of mind, feeling beaten down and starting to have second thoughts about this whole year-in-Taiwan idea, I was walking down a street near Shi Da University, and on a whim stopped by a restaurant that had a picture menu up in the window which showed some tasty-looking meat. (picture menus are very nice when you don't know enough Chinese to order yet)
I hadn't randomly visited a restaurant on this street before, and in an incredible "coincidence" considering the number of restaurants in the area and the fact that she lived on the other side of Taipei, my Chinese teacher (who was only a year older than me) was also eating in that restaurant with some of her other students. Imagine you live in Manhattan and your friend lives in the Bronx and you randomly find yourselves at the same Subway in Queens. The odds of this happening are too low to bother trying to calculate them. God arranges meetings.

Anyway, fast forward through some other unlikely events, and a few hours later, I find myself running up concrete stairs, led by my Chinese teacher. She speaks to a guard who surprisingly gives permission for us to crouch down and slide under a slightly raised metal door. Suddenly I am assaulted by a stadium-full of light and rock music and roaring fans. I am in a Linkin Park concert in the Taipei Soccer Stadium, for free. As I am adjusting to the sudden explosion of stimuli, a drink is placed in my hand; "this is for you!"

Thanks to whoever took this pic of that concert, I didn't have a camera with me
(And our cellphone cameras were not very impressive in 2007)

It was a very good night. If you think God wouldn't arrange a very unlikely chain of coincidences that ended with one of His children attending a free rock concert to encourage them, you simply don't know Him well enough, or how much He loves you as an actual person (not a hypothetical "saint" who supposedly manages to be the holier version of a living sacrifice that only understands the sacrifice part), and wants you to grow closer to Him from wherever you are. I felt His abounding love that night nearly as strongly as I ever have.

I considered it an unexpected gift from Him, and was deeply grateful and not a little encouraged. I had not really been taught that God gave us these kinds of gifts, ones that were personally meaningful and not just spiritually significant. This was something I really enjoyed, not another lesson or obligation (you may detect legalism in my upbringing, you would be correct), did God give this kind of blessing too? Apparently so, if it wasn't somehow heretical to believe that God would arrange unlikely circumstances just so I could have a fun experience because He was happy to let me have it.
I was very excited.
"Ok Satan, my God saw you exploiting my struggling with your attacks of discouragement and countered with... a free Linkin Park concert. You just got totally outclassed."

In the days that followed I jumped into life in Taiwan and my wheels found some traction. I'm not saying I never struggled again, far from it, but it was different after that night. I just needed that little push from God at that critical moment, to remind me that He loved me personally, and was there, and would intervene when necessary, in unexpected ways.