Sharing the Real Christmas Message - Part 1

For the first time, Morrison Academy had a Live Nativity and invited people from the surrounding community as a special means of outreach. There was a good crowd, and it was a wonderful opportunity to share Christ's love to our neighbors.

   

 Live animals were brought in for this special event.

"Prince of Peace", a 29-minute DVD (Chinese version) about the birth of Christ

was shown to those who attended. 

 

After the DVD, a brief message was given.

We were invited to come on December 24th and share about Christmas (for about 50 minutes) with 6th grade students at Dong Xin elementary school, where our Chinese teacher's three daughters attend. We were told we were free to talk about Jesus all we wanted. Imagine that! We enjoyed preparing packets with candy canes, candy, homemade chocolate chip cookies, a Jesus Is the Reason for the Season Christmas card magnet, and a Christmas Tract for kids that clearly explained the gospel in Chinese. We praise God for this opportunity!  

Buddy putting our gifts packs together for the school kids                                                                                                                                                                     

               Dong Xin elementary school

Our Chinese teacher, Tian laoshi, has three daughters who attend this school. She told us that this was not considered a big school, but we considered it big. There are about 12 classes for each grade (Grades 1-6). The school surrounds this large track and playground area.                 

We first showed the DVD "Prince of Peace" in Chinese. Christmas is not considered a holiday in Taiwan.  Most of the students only associate Christmas with Santa Claus. It was great to be able to share with them the real reason why we celebrate Christmas. In the picture below, Joy was preparing to teach the kids some English vocabulary words that pertain to Christmas. Tian laoshi helped translate while Joy taught them the new words. Afterwards, she quizzed the kids to see how well they payed attention.  They did surprisingly well.

                             Grace's classmates and teacher.

Even though we weren't able to spend as much time in Maggie and Erica's 3rd grade class, we were grateful that we were able to show the same video to them, sing a Christmas song and interact with the students.

Buddy watching from the back of the classroom.                                                                                                                                                                       

Anniversary and Thanksgiving in Kenting

Buddy thought it would be a good idea to go away for a few days to celebrate our Anniversary (33 years) and Thanksgiving. He knows how much I (Joy) love the ocean so we headed south to Kenting. We stayed at the same place we did last Christmas - the White Hotel at Baisha beach. We like it because it is a quieter area away from the crowds and has a beautiful beach. Each room has a balcony outside where you can sit and enjoy the fresh air, ocean breeze, and all the surroundings. It's only about a 15 minute drive into Kenting where we usually eat our meals. It did seem a little strange eating salmon fried rice instead of the usual Thanksgiving turkey and all the fixings. It will definitely be a Thanksgiving to remember.

Making deep footprints in the soft sand at Baisha

Buddy at Baisha beach


Part of Kenting in the background

Cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean

Kenting National Park

A Visit to Sanyi Duck Treasure Shop

This morning I (Joy) and my friend, Leslie, made a trip over to Sanyi to what used to be called the "Sanyi Duck Factory". Even though Buddy and I had made a trip to Sanyi a few months ago, we did not visit this place. They have a showroom that has both items on display and items for sale. However, their "big draw" is their DIY business. The following article came from the Taipei Times archives. I think you'll find it interesting to read a little of the background about this place.

The predominantly Hakka Sanyi Township in Miaoli (苗栗) is surrounded by dense trees abundant in camphor. Once the world's top supplier of camphor oil, Sanyi turned to the woodcarving industry when demand for the pungent ointment took a nosedive. In 1963, three brothers surnamed Tang (湯) built the Shuang Feng (雙峰) woodcarving factory (now known as Sanyi Duck Treasure Shop) where they mainly produced wooden Buddha statues for export to Japan.

In 1973 the factory received an order from Dallas, in the US, for 30 wooden duck decoys. The ducks were to be carved and painted to look like common loons. Soon, orders for the ducks began to pour in from the US and Canada. However, the biggest business was yet to come. In the early 1980s cosmetics and collectibles company Avon caught on to the duck-decoy craze and ordered 80,000 green-winged teals, wood ducks, mallards and canvasbacks for sale as collectibles. Shuang Feng began to net about NT$60 million per year.

Following Avon orders, Shuang Feng began producing all sorts of wooden, duck-shaped items: telephone cases, match holders and more. The number of crafts-people working in the factory hovered around 80.

But, with the arrival of the year 2000, the orders started going to cheaper factories in Southeast Asia and China. With the high cost of labor and importing wood from North America, Shuang Feng could no longer compete and was moving towards bankruptcy.

But then Shuang Feng received some inspiration in March, 2003 from a Taichung group called Guan Shu Educational Foundation (觀樹教育基金會). The foundation helped turn Shuang Feng into the Duck Treasure Shop, where do-it-yourself ducks could be produced cheaply and sold for more than those made to fill oversea orders. Now, the three woodworkers at Duck Treasure Shop produce ducks much as they did before (only now in a wider variety of shapes and sizes) except they leave off the final touches. For NT$200 to NT$1,000 (depending on the item's size) customers can choose a duck, paint it, dry it, spray it with finish and then take it home to put on their porch, hearth or wherever.

"The best part is choosing the colors," said customer Ya-xun (雅薰), 18, who had just finished painting her duck in a pattern of pink, yellow and sea-foam green that resembled a can of Arizona iced tea. "Each duck has its own pattern, but I wanted to do something a little different from everyone else," she said.

The entire process of painting, drying and spraying takes approximately two hours. According to Lee, that's enough time to let kids and parents to work on one duck together, as the children will surely get distracted after 45 minutes and run out to play, leaving the parents to touch up their paint jobs. This way, she said, families can take home a finished product that everyone can be proud of.

And you don't trust yourself to create a duck that resembles an actual living creature, there are plenty of pre-painted loons and mallards on sale in the shop. There's also a selection of indigenous Taiwanese fowl, such as the Mikado pheasant featured on the NT$1,000 bill, and a variety of wooden bears, frogs and birds designed by Taipei-based artist He Hua-ren (何華仁). One visit to Sanyi Duck Treasure Shop and you may just catch the folk-art fever.

The ducks and other items that are created there usually are branded with a type of insignia showing that it was created there in Sanyi.

One of the main attractions is the DIY (Do it yourself) area. Individuals and groups can come and pick out their own unfinished duck (or other bird) and paint their own design on it. It was interesting to see all the different designs and creations.

Franklin Graham Festival

We wanted to give a quick update about the Franklin Graham Festival that was held in Taipei Oct. 30-Nov. 2. The total attendance was 183, 302 with 9,673 decisions being made. The largest one night total was Youth Night with 53,249 who were in attendance. Please pray that in the coming days as churches follow-up, that the Lord will continue the work that has begun in many hearts.

Morrison Academy's Junior Carnival

Even though the carnival is a fundraiser that is mainly designed for kids and their families, we enjoyed going to watch all the activities, checking out the different kinds of food they were selling, and meeting up with friends. The grand finale was a fireworks display.

Face painting was a big hit - for both the boys and the girls.

Levi Curlee and a friend really liked dueling it out with the "Hulk" gloves. As you can see Levi is pretty pumped about his victory.



Pictured below is our Chinese teacher Tiān lǎoshī and her daughters -Erica, Grace and Maggie.



Erin (on the left) and Paige (on the right) are daughters of fellow SEND missionaries Rod and Eileen Seib. They enjoyed dressing up and having their faces painted, as well as participating in some of the other fun activities at the carnival

A Visit to the U.S.

It's been quite a while since we updated our blog. As many of you may know, we left on September 29th (in the middle of a typhoon) to fly to the U.S. for a three and a half week visit. Our first stop was in Arkansas to visit with Anna, Jesse, and Leah. It was great having lots of "play time" with Leah. She especially was attached to her Papa. She always wanted to know where he was. Another highlight while we were there was getting to go with Anna to her ultrasound. We were all so excited to find out that Leah is going to have a baby brother!

On October 9th, we flew to Greenville to spend two weeks. It seems like we stayed busy every minute that we were there. We had the privilege of paricipating in the "People Need the Lord" Mission Conference at Greenville Christian Fellowship Oct. 17-19. We really enjoyed sharing about our ministry and reconnecting with fellow missionaries and other people in the church. Joy's dad grilled steaks for the family while we were there (there were 19 of us!) Even though the time went by quickly, we were very thankful for the time that we had to spend with our wonderful family, as well as many of our friends.

Typhoon Sinlaku hits Taiwan

Well..our third typhoon of the season has arrived. Today (Saturday) we were supposed to have our SEND Taiwan Annual Business Meeting, but the decision was made to postpone it.Yesterday afternoon it began to get a little windy and the rain started, but today we have started to have strong winds and rain. You can see (in the above satellite picture) the outer bands of the typhoon are just now making their way across our area. Taichung is located on the west side of the island in the upper central area.

Tomorrow is one of the two most important holidays in the Chinese calendar - Mid-Autumn festival (or Moon Festival) which is celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar. This is the one time a year when families get together and barbecue/cook out. Then later in the evening they will sit outside, drink tea, eat moon cakes and watch the full moon. There will be a lot of disappointed people tomorrow - not only will they not be able to barbecue outside, they won't be able to view the moon either. On a more serious note...these typhoons normally bring a lot of flooding and mudslides and result in casualties. We would appreciate your prayers. It looks like we'll be staying put for the next couple of days.