Soon I'll be closing my bloodshot eyes, turning down my fan, and pulling a blanket over myself, hopefully falling into a blissful sleep. I haven't blogged for over a whole week, which usually means I actually have more to blog about, meaning I have more of a life. My apologies.

Speaking of having a life, I thought I'd relate something from my English congregation. There was a sister there a while ago, a couple years ago I believe, that was on a contract. Many of the sisters in that congregation are on contracts with factories, usually 2 or 3 years. This pioneer sister was mentioned at an assembly, before I was here, she had 5 bible studies 3 were being baptized at that assembly. A brother was relating this to me Sunday as I helped him count money from the contribution box. Naturally the 3 bible studies who were baptized were appreciative of our dear pioneer sister. Amazing in itself, but the amazing, or the incredulous thing (I think he said they used that word during the assembly part relating her experience) is that the sister was on one of these 3 year contracts and she got one Sunday off every month, and worked 15 hours a day 7 days a week. Like I said incredulous. I think you need fancy words for people like that.

It's very common for the Filipino brothers and sisters, as well as other immigrants, to be under contracts like that, long hours (I think 12 is common), at least 6 days a week, 6pm curfews, weird restrictions. But what this brother told me was that when he needed someone to give a talk on Sunday (all the meetings are on the same day) he was never short of volunteers. He said what some of the sisters will do is call a missionary who has a computer and ask if they can print out some material for their talk and mail it to them. So then they can put the talk together in their small amount of free time later, after picking up the material at the post office. The brother, Craig, and I both marveled at this while we counted pink 100 Taiwan Dollar notes, it was easy that day because there was no change to count. Both thankful that we didn't have to go through so much trouble just to get material for a talk, and both in awe of such zeal.

The next day, the day after I counted money and heard stories of super-pioneers, I laughed with mixed horror and amusement at a story a young new English teacher was telling me. She was relating stories about dealing with misbehaving kids, ordering them out of the room for example, which usually seems to scare kids. She said she felt kind of bad after she ordered a particularly obnoxious 5 year old to leave her classroom. But then later she didn't feel as bad when she saw one of the Taiwanese teachers holding a little girl's hand up over her head with a big pair of scissors in her other hand saying that she was going to cut off one of her little fingers if she didn't behave. When I first heard this my reaction was to gape in horror and laugh at the same time. (I'm sick I guess) But now I remember my own Chinese teacher saying that she was going to cut my head off and throw it outside. Also as my friend said, the little girl didn't seem to be worried about it at all, she was yelling "I don't care" and misbehaving anyway. I also remember a mom telling her teen-age daughter she was going to hit-her-dead (one word in Chinese), which was surprising to hear at the time but an empty sounding threat. I don't agree with threatening children with death and mutilation, but so far I don't think these threats are to be taken seriously here. Although I can't help wondering if it makes realistic threats, like a spanking or being grounded, less effective. But these are the types things you learn about when you are far from home.

I've been taking nice hot showers for over a week now, so there's no hope of me becoming the tough man of steely ice tempered nerves that I could have become. I remember, vaguely, thinking to myself: "I should end every hot shower with a cold rinse to strengthen my immune system from now on, even though I have hot water now." I wonder how old I'll be, how experienced and wise, when I'll simply laugh out loud as these silly ideas pop into my head. Like "I'm going to go to bed early tonight so I can get up early and study ahead and drink hot tea." Someday that thought will tickle and delight me so much that I might even really do it just as a joke.