Walking in Faith 依靠神

Christians always talk about "living by faith" which is easy when I can see ahead, but that’s not really faith 並不是信仰, is it? It’s not quite so easy when I have to rely on God when I don’t really see the answer.

Last week I had a request from a friend to translate 從中文翻成英文 for a Chinese Christian leader at a Korean crusade 韓國人的佈道會. Now let me say that I do speak Chinese and English pretty well (and am modest) but as I have said in past posts direct translation is an art that requires skill. I found out that he was a fairly famous leader, and a nice guy, so I put pressure on myself to do a good job. Then I found out that he had a fairly heavy regional accent in Chinese 東北的腔調, think of a non-native speaker of English trained in the U.S. listening to a thick cockney accent 倫敦老百姓的某种腔調. So, I prayed and worried, not necessarily in that order, throughout the night before. But I realized that as I felt that the Lord had given me this task to do, he would give me the strength to do it. I just had to trust.

The next morning I arrived at the hotel where the crusade was held and was told that, no we weren’t meeting here in a small room, we were meeting at the convention center 會議中心 across the street. So, I walked in to the meeting hall to the front of more than 1100 people who were waiting eagerly to hear the speaker. Our brave believer is shocked and prays intensely. There would be translation into Korean 韓國話 and into Japanese 日語 as well. ...more intense prayer. These translations would of course all depend on my translation into English first. ...even more intense prayer. I saw people I knew who said they really expected me to do a good job. ...tongue tied and more prayer.

I was thankful those 50 minutes flew by 五十分鐘很快就過去了and a meaningful translation was given. At least I could hear a lot of ‘amens’ and the audience said they were moved. The Lord was faithful.

We’re Back! 回來了

We’re back for another year of fun and Photoshop at Cross-Cultural Family blog! Just thought I’d start the year off the right way with a short recap of our Christmas / New Year and some brief thoughts. This first photo here is of our Christmas Eve. We spent it with our home group 小組 at church going out to sing Christmas carols 聖誕歌 and reading Bible passages at homes in the neighborhood. These are the females of our group showing off the cake we sampled beforehand.

The next day we spent at home with my parents. This is a photo my father took. Our younger son is the one who got the most fun presents. Clothes are nice but I always like toys 玩具 better when I was a little kid. He got all sorts of trains to play with, but no trash trucks. For some reason, he loves trash trucks and points them out on the road whenever we see them, “trash truck, trash truck” but for some reason they’re just not popular as toys. His nicest train, a Thomas train, runs really well on a wooden track with just one AA battery 電池.

New Years we spent at a prayer meeting at our church 跨年禱告會 that went from ’06 to ’07, sorry no photos of that. It’s nice way to ring in the New Year and orient our priorities with those of God. I got a first chance to carry the baby of a friend of ours. They are really light when they start out. The next day we took off for a distant hot springs where we stayed at a Korean hot springs resort 韓國人辦的溫泉. They had more than 15 pools 水池 of different types and temperatures. There are few things quite like swimming in a hot spring outside on a warm January evening with the palm trees waving and the moon and stars shining brightly down. This photo is of sunset in the area.