Taiwan Insider: Weekend Edition, Sunday

Sunday, June 14, 2009

This morning the delegation had the pleasure of attending the home church of my host family, Grace Church. Before arriving in Taiwan, Vicky shared the fact that she is a Christian and invited me to attend her church, so I’ve been looking forward to this opportunity to be part of their worship for weeks and to compare the differences in worship styles. The first surprise was that they had us take off our shoes before entering the small building. Thankfully, they graciously arranged for an English interpreter to allow us to understand the sermon. My favorite part of the service was the music because, although they were singing in Chinese, the translated lyrics were so meaningful and the music itself was very joyful and reverent. I wished I could have gotten a CD to share with my home church and friends! Other than the fact that the sermon was in a different language, nothing else seemed drastically different. The church was a modest size, but all the people there were so warm and welcoming; you could tell that God was working in them and through them. I can’t wait until October to invite the Taiwanese delegation to my church, Prestonwood Baptist Church. 

If you couldn’t tell from all the blog entries, a great deal of Asian culture revolves around food and today was no exception. The afternoon marked the commencement of trying new foods day. Today I had everything from sushi to chicken feet (yes, I said chicken feet for those who are squeamish), as well as countless other things that I still don’t know what they were and that’s saying a lot since I am Chinese and frequent Chinese restaurants. Nevertheless, they were all still delicious! Sometimes it’s better to just not know what you’re putting in your mouth (although it can be fun to if only for the sake of bragging rights). The chicken feet had surprisingly good flavor, but one of my favorite new foods was the fried octopus tentacles. It was kind of like a big version of calamari. Though it did seem like all we did was eat, we also managed to squeeze in a trip to the local zoo, flower market (which actually didn’t sell many flowers, and the night market in Junbei. At the zoo we saw lots of different birds just roaming around, a couple of tigers fighting it out, a little deer walking around outside of his cage, and some funny monkeys just hanging around.