As the world turns each point on our beautiful blue and green globe passes through the horizon, from day into night, and night into day. Here in Taiwan we do it before you do it over there in the Americas, and some of us, over here in Taiwan, like to rub it in your faces in their blogs. Those people are childish, immature, and remarkably good-looking. As many of you Americans were sleeping in your warm beds on Saturday night, this American was listening to the final talk of the special assembly day in the balcony of an aging concert hall. Learning a language, as I've mentioned before, brings you back to your childhood. When you were a kid you didn't really get what the talk was about and time slows down the closer it gets to the time that you want it to be, like the end of the last talk in my case. I apologize as this may not sound encouraging, but to help you with this I'll add that I've already had this assembly in English. So it was really a chance to go to my first assembly in this country with my congregation here, shake hands, learn a couple words, and practice listening to Chinese speech patterns. And it was quite exciting during the session, from the back rows I saw a sea of the back of black haired Chinese heads. Other than that it was as every assembly I've ever been too, the movement of people in all directions, the roar of hundreds of conversations, children running and squeeling. As always I'm mesmerized by this. Yesterday I remained in my mesmerized state for at most 15 minutes before someone recognized me and tried to engage me in conversation. If I had been less mesmerized and less conversational I may have sat down and noticed a Chinese note on the back of one of the chairs in front of my chair. It wasn't until after the song that I noticed the little sign, I wondered for a second what it said, then looked around me and noticed that everyone around me was much older than me. I decided that I'd stay in the "Elderly and Infirm" section until lunch and then I'd move, but it did take me awhile to get over my embarrassment. A brother, before the session started, pointed to the end seat in my row and said in English "These seats are reserved for older people." I nodded and looked across the next aisle over and saw another end seat with a little sign on it. I thought "that's interesting, they reserve the end seats for the elderly, I guess they do things differently here. It makes sense though because those seats are easier to get in and out of." But they really don't do things that differently, it was the whole row. Just like back home.
There were 18 baptized at our assembly, they were baptized in a narrow tank outside behind the concert hall. The guys who do the dunking actually stand outside the tank it's so narrow, but they still wear white T-shirts, and there is a little stair case that goes up over the lip of the tank and then down into the tank so the baptismal candidate can feel self conscious for a second right before they are dunked, adding to their excitement I'm sure. But they didn't have to worry about shivering once they got out, that day it was 86 degrees outside.
Another thing I noticed about the assembly was the large number of foreign speakers, all spoke Chinese pretty well (as far as I could tell) so they'd been there a few years at least. But I think this shows you how young the territory really is when some of the original missionaries and need-greaters are still there. The work was legalized here in the sixties.
So that was the circuit assembly, soon we'll be having an English one in TaiZhong, a few hours south of here.
Saturday I forgot to mention something very important, something that I don't want to forget when I decide to reminisce and read all of these "blog" entries. I haven't had much Indian food in the states, I remember liking it. But the Indian food I had here was maybe the best food I've had here yet. It was kind of expensive though, I spent NT$290 for dinner, a nice classy little place. NT$290 is a little less than US$10 hahah, I love this place, but living here does change your idea of what you want to spend on food. I won't eat there very often due to the price. They even have a NT$200 minimum, 3 of the people at my table had to leave because they didn't want to order that much, which was a bummer... because it was sooo good! (edit 306) Permalink