Do you ever just feel great for no reason? Today has been like that. I have every reason to be running around like a chicken with my head cut off, but I just can't get worried enough to panic. Tomorrow I'll probably realize that I've got 80,000,000 things to do in the next few days, but for now I'm content to listen to Alabama on my ipod and grin a stupid grin.

Wow! I just realized that I forgot to include two very cool things in the last post.

Ok, on the 29th I was teaching at Jing Who. Kiwi (the teacher) had asked me to teach a typical prayer that Amarican children might pray around Christmas time. I was really excited about it, but I was also a little at a loss as for what to teach until Lucas suggested teaching the 3rd verse from Away in a Manger. I taught it in 5 classes that day and in two of them the students were very interested. In one 6th grade I spent 10 minutes answering questions about prayer. They kept asking questions about all the actions involved in praying: do you have to bow your head? Do you have to make the sign of the cross? What if you don't say amen at the end? What if you don't pray? I was able to explain to them that prayer is simply talking to God: it's simply a conversation with a friend and you don't have to follow some sort of form in order to get your prayer accepted. They asked me if God had answered any of my prayers and I told them about the time God healed my sister Naomi.

All in all, it was really cool. I was standing in front of the class listening to their questions and just saying "Wow! God, this is cool!" I've never had a chance to share that much in a class.

The other cool thing involves our trip to Shoew Szteye. At first it was supposed to just be us visiting our friends on our own time. But then somebody at KingCar decided it would make a great chance to get us in the newspaper (something they are always trying to do!) and so asked some reporters to come. We were all very upset with that idea and let Sandy know we didn't want reporters. She said she'd see what she could do, but there is NO WAY that KingCar would ever turn away a chance to get media attention. The cool thing was, the reporters never showed up! We had a really great time with the kids (see my jjf blog for pictures). Although I kinda wonder...did the 8th grade boys really have to wear bikini tops and fake boobs?

On to this weeks requests...

---Keep praying for my Sunday school class. Pray esp. that God would help with my translating...most of the time I don't have a translator and Sarah (a 6th grader with really good English) will almost never help with translating. Mostly I manage to get my point across (and give the kids their weekly dose of really poor Chinese) but just pray that God would give me the right words to speak.

---Pray for Jennifer, a cram school teacher here. She's been working with Ginger a lot lately (Ginger is doing an English/Chinese exchange with her) and has been asking Ginger some questions about God and Christianity.

---Also pray for Jean. Jean is a good friend of Jennifer and her two kids are my students (her daughter, btw, is the cutest thing in Kinmen). I'm going to be doing an Chinese/English exchange with her next semester. When Dr. and Mrs. Henning were here she spent a lot of time with them and just about worships the ground they walked on. Pray that God will give me chance to water the seeds that they planted.

---And of course, keep praying for my Chinese. In a few weeks I will have been learning Chinese for one year. And although I've come a very long way from sitting in the computer lab in Nantou learning how to say "Ni how ma?", I'm starting to realize just how much I don't know. It really does make a difference when you guys pray for my Chinese, so please keep it up!

Ok, if you look down there *points at posts below* you can see something that's had me chuckling all day. Take a look at the comments. I looked at this blogger earlier today and found that. But that's not even the funny part. If you take a look at the site of one of the guys who replied (Click here) you will see some links on the left side of the page. Take a look at who is listed under "Creepy". ROFLOL! Yea, only 20 years old and already made it to "Creepy"! I also love the comment that mentions my "Eurocentric-outdated-inane existence." I think I'll put that in my blog description...that's just priceless. *evil laugh* Mwahahaha! And I haven't even revealed half of my horrible, heartless plans yet! By the time I'm done, all of Taiwan will be enslaved and held tightly in my iron fist!

*Ahem* Seriously though, their comments are very interesting. Most are not worth really bothering with, but I found this one to be worthy of saying something about:

"ung...it's unimaginably disheartening to see that you missionaries continue to infect cultures around the world. "

I find the word "infect" to be really interesting. Where did we get this idea that a culture cannot be wrong? A theory can be wrong. A math problem can be wrong (1+1=3). A witness can be wrong. A computer can be put together wrong.

But a culture cannot. Apparently if it has been made part of a culture, then it can't be wrong.

Not only that, but something that works to change a culture is "infecting" it.

Number one, a culture can be wrong. In Rome is was part of the culture to watch people kill people for entertainment. That was part of the culture. And it was wrong. In some South Amarican cultures it was ok to perform human sacrifice. And that was wrong. I could go on forever.

The culture here in Taiwan is one that encourages cutting yourself open with knives and parading around the streets with needles stuck in your face. That's wrong.

As for the idea that new things are "infecting" a culture. Give me a break. Cultures are forever changing. Have you ever thought about the fact that Buddhism came from India?

By the way, Doug, if you want to post comments feel free to do so. But please refrain from blasphamy.