Guo'ing another Nian, and a Volcanic Lesson from God

(Title: Guo (過) covers a range of meanings including "crossing/passing over/through" and having experienced something before, and Nian (年) in this case means "year." The phrase Guo Nian (過年) in Mandarin could thus be translated "crossing over to the next year," and refers to celebrating Chinese New Year. It could also be translated as "Enduring/Surviving Nian." According to ancient Chinese stories, Nian was a legendary monster that attacked villages once a year, killing many people. One way to survive was putting red paper on the door posts of your house. Nian didn't like the color red, so if your doorposts had red on them your house would be safe. Sound familiar?)

It has sounded like a revolution is underway the last two nights here, with mortar-style fireworks going off every few minutes. Last night included machine-gun-like strings of firecrackers throughout the neighborhood too. Having friends who have worked in real war zones, I can be thankful that in this case it is only celebrations for the Chinese New Year.

Burning paper money on Chinese New Year's Eve at midnight.
Paper money is burned in little firepots like this in front of homes and businesses
on spiritually significant days of the month (using the lunar calendar, like Jewish holidays).
It's an offering to ancestral spirits. Lots of people were doing this last night in my neighborhood.

A huge part of Chinese New Year is the shared meal on Chinese New Year's Eve.
The family I'm staying with graciously included me in their family celebrations,
which included this amazing supper.

And continued with lots of fruit and snacks.

I last posted on my little excursion to visit a Baptist seminary in Taipei for a church-planting seminar. (Actually now that I think about it, I suppose going to seminary for a seminar only makes sense...)
If you didn't read that (you probably didn't, based on what blogger tells me) and still want to know about me finding my way to the downtown area and finding what was definitely a hidden urban ninja village, read it here... it's a quick photo essay.

Since that day, our little team here in Xindian has prepared for and successfully completed a week-long, all-day VBS. That was exhausting, but went well and we had about 70 people in total show up for the week-end performance, quite a few more than we expected. In the end, lots of kids heard about God, and we made a few more connections in the community.

I have lots of pictures from this VBS, but I assume most people know how those go. (Games, lessons, crafts, food, etc) People seem to like pictures of people (not to mention cute kids), though, so if you want me to do a photo essay of the VBS leave me a comment and if a few people mention it I can throw those up on another post here very quickly.

2014 Winter Break VBS!
Behind us is the community center where we had the VBS and hope to have a church.

By the end of the week I'd also picked up a sore throat and fever, probably from one of the kids, and am just now getting my voice back today. In the meantime, some Taiwanese American friends of mine from Texas invited me to join them in climbing to the summit of Seven Star Peak, the central mountain of Taiwan's highest dormant volcano, Yangmingshan.

But I almost didn't get up there...
After finding out that the trail was less than 2 miles up to the summit, I assumed it would be easy. I didn't realize that it was basically stairs the whole way, becoming more and more steep. After about the first kilometer of stairs I told my friends to go ahead, I'd catch up. I should have, I was realizing, actually eaten breakfast that morning. (And later I realized I hadn't eaten supper the night before either.)

Taiwan actually does have some of the world's most venomous snakes, though I haven't seen one yet.

The innocent-looking trailhead...

Over the next half kilometer's climb, I berated myself for being so out of shape, and wondered how long I'd have to make my friends wait at the top, at the slow rate I was going. I had also drunk all my water previously, and was sweating it out pretty quickly. After vowing to never call myself a martial artist again if I quit, I pressed on until I reached a pavilion and asked the Taiwanese people resting there if they'd seen two guys go past. "Yep," they replied (except in Mandarin), "they went on up."

My friends then called, to let me know they'd gotten to the top. I assured them I would be there soon, as I only had a kilometer left to go. (haha...) I then tackled the next section of the climb, which turned out to be the steepest portion. I am extremely stubborn, but my body suddenly didn't have any water left to sweat out, and it had been 8 years since I climbed this many stairs in a row.
As I rested, a little Chinese lady overtook me, walking slowly but steadily upwards. I could only console myself with the knowledge that I outweighed her by a good 80-100 pounds. Finally, after a hundred more stairs or so, I "gave up," and called my friends so they wouldn't have to wait on me any longer.

But despite good signal, my call didn't go through due to "network problems." I decided I'd get water faster going forward rather than back down, so I pressed on a little further. After a few more flights of stairs, I found a nice rock to rest on, and called again, even praying that they'd answer, so I could get some water which I needed rather badly by this point.

The stairs started out in a friendly sort of way

One dozen stairs are nothing. One hundred stairs are easy.
Thousands of stairs are very tiring.

The call still wasn't going through. And I didn't feel much like moving. But I couldn't just sit there and let them wait on me until they finally decided to come down and see if I was ok. And the water was ahead, not behind. I struggled up a few dozen more stairs, then a few more, and suddenly noticed the trees had begun to part, and a panoramic view began to open up in front of me:

A glimpse of Taipei from above

I'd "given up" just a few yards from the view I'd been hoping for when I started the climb. Had my friends answered the call, I'd never have climbed just a little higher to see it. The lesson couldn't have been any more obvious had God sent an angel to spell it out for me with flashcards...

The previous picture was taken from where I'm standing in this picture.
The place where I had planned on stopping was that shaded rock in the middle of the picture.
Wouldn't that have been sad?

And just a few dozen steps higher...

Now with a cool mountain breeze assisting (And also carrying the rotten-egg stench of sulfur from the slumbering volcano's fumaroles), I climbed over half of the rest of the way. In the middle of a steep section I was feeling seriously dehydrated and about to really stop, when I heard my phone ringing, it was my friends. I told them where I was, and they said I was nearly there, but they'd head my way with the water and I could meet them halfway. I began to do so, when suddenly the trail leveled and the sky opened up overhead. I'd finally reached the top.

"And those happy climes that ly
Where day never shuts his eye,
Up in the broad fields of the sky..."

Highest dormant volcano in Taiwan, check.
Jade Mountain (Highest in Taiwan at roughly 13,000 feet), on the to-do list...

Taipei and the Danshui river.

I love Taiwan.

Friends from Texas

Some very active sulphur vents. Here's hoping this volcano never wakes up.

Some friends we made at the summit. Went to eat American-style burgers with them afterwards
and had a good conversation which touched on spiritual matters as well.

Lesson learned? I hope so.
I hate to think of all I might miss the next time I'm tempted to quit just a little too soon...

First, You've Got to Get There

It is widely acknowledged that the missionary lifestyle is not an easy one. Historically this was reinforced by things like missionaries packing their belongings in coffins when traveling to their ministry fields, knowing there was a good chance they'd be returning in them. Today the task is less dangerous in that sense (in most parts of the world), though it is arguably somewhat more complicated.

Cardboard boxes don't have quite the symbolic effect...

What is less commonly known is that one of the most difficult parts of many missionaries' work is getting onto the field in the first place. Ironically, one part that many people seem to consider the most difficult -actually deciding to go- was for me the easiest. God made it clear He wanted me to go; I could but say yes or no. (And saying "no" to God is not recommended.) Having said yes, I began to discover the truth that the difficulties didn't start once I was "over there," but began to immediately present themselves.

For many difficult tasks, it is possible to simply power through them. If asked to roll a heavy log up a hill, most people could do it if they had to. Simply dig down and refuse to quit, push as hard as you can, and get it up to the top by any way possible. Or for less difficult but longer and more boring tasks, like a pile of paperwork, one simply plods forward until eventually the whole thing is done. Unpleasant, but eventually overcome.

For getting onto the field, I found the complexity of the task to be that it's neither a matter of simply plowing ahead through any difficulty that arises, or waiting it out, but of accomplishing a number of things simultaneously, with a sort of default timer ticking beyond which people will begin to lose faith in either your calling or abilities. Going back to the log example, imagine being told to roll the log up the hill, within a certain time frame, and also to not crush any of the numerous wildflowers growing on the hill. Suddenly pushing with all your might is not an option. You are not allowed to "try as hard as you can," in the straightforward sense, and "try harder" is not an effective strategy. Nor can you do this task in small chunks with nice breaks in between; if pushed up only partway, the log will roll back down. (Thank God, sometimes He chocks the log for you, and moments of rest are supplied when He knows they are necessary.)

I did not write this to complain! God has called all of us to participate in spreading His kingdom to every part of the world, and He has given me a love for the field to which He is calling me. The labor in this sense is joyful. But I am trying to define the difficulty of a task which can't simply be pushed through, as it depends on the cooperation of volunteers on both an individual and a church level, nor always done in a logical step-by-step fashion, as the "next step" is often a preparation for something coming much later or a setback which forces one to rely on God and wait for Him to reveal a new and unexpected opportunity in another direction.

If only it were this straightforward!

In other words, the dance to the missions field is not so much "three steps forward, two steps back," as "three steps forward, five steps diagonally back to the left, a big jump forward landing on one foot, hopping there while waiting for a place to put the other one, sliding sideways, another step forward, two steps back, cha cha cha," etc. It's learning to trust God to provide the way forward through unfamiliar territory at the very time when other people begin to expect familiar-looking progress in exchange for their trust.

And it's a difficult thing for missionaries to be learning how to move along God's perfect but unpredictable path while many spectators expect them to be moving in the most productive, sensible, and competent direction (as an engineer by trade, this indeed makes the most sense by default, so I do fully understand this way of thinking). Put another way, it's like crossing a major street. People expect you to use the crosswalk in an inspirational sort of way, while it feels much more like God is calling you to play Simon Says in the heavy traffic.

If I can be very straightforward for a moment, it can be rather frustrating to be criticized from time to time by people who would themselves never dream of surrendering all hopes of a career and stable future in the normal sense, because of Very Important Reasons which any reasonable person would see prevent it from being an option for them. (Nevermind those reasons might have just as equally applied to you as well.) They expect you to overcome your unfamiliar difficulties as they overcome their familiar ones, and can adopt the attitude of making sure you "measure up," that support money is not being wasted on you. Unfortunately, this kind of judgmental scrutiny, while not helpful, is also not entirely unfounded. It must be recognized that there are career missionaries who are simply not up to the task, or who have gone onto the field for reasons entirely other than a calling or obedience to the Great Commission, or who spend their support money wastefully and accomplish little in their fields or even do great damage through willful sin. This is sadly the reality, and I believe accountability for missionaries is entirely appropriate. Exactly what form this could take in the sense of measurable goals is a great question which merits further discussion, but the willingness of someone to sacrifice what life they had to pursue God's call should perhaps merit good faith at the outset until proven otherwise, and indeed in most cases and churches it seems to do so.

But of course while having spiritual gifts which are appropriate to the task, cross-cultural missionaries have no special dispensation of knowledge or abilities from God beyond any other believer. God always supplies what is necessary to accomplish what He has called us to do, and so we are just servants of the Kingdom who have been called to exchange familiar neighborhoods for unfamiliar ones. And while the calling is sure (The Great Commission was not a suggestion), we're not always sure the best way to go about doing it. But the passion God has placed in me for His glory among the Taiwanese people compels me forward. That burning fire, lit by the Spirit, continues through the waves of spiritual opposition and temptation, the dark mists of disappointment or confusion about what to do next, or the storms of hardship and setbacks.

"Taiwan is still the only major Han Chinese population in the world
where a significant spiritual breakthrough has not occurred." Operation World

I have been very blessed to have many people trust me, even some people who are not naturally the trusting sort. I feel the weight of this trust very acutely, and pray that I will never betray it, the more so as I have personally been a witness to the grievous results of such downfalls. Yet I know that the ability to merit that trust is not in myself, but in the God who sustains me. He has promised to continue to do so; my task is to walk in obedience and communion with Him, down this strange road which has led through Huntsville, and Texas, and across the Pacific. May He grant the strength to do so, and if you have read this far, I would appreciate your prayers as well.

(And feel free to comment with any of your own prayer requests. I'm always happy to lift them up. It is becoming increasingly obvious to me that sometimes our insurmountable obstacles are not due to a lack of strategy, but a lack of time spent demonstrating our dependence on God through prayer.)