From Ted:
Winter is coming! I opened email from Toronto today that commented on how quickly summer has come and gone. Of course reading this with the afternoon temperature at 32 (‘feels like 34’) didn’t quite match our reality. A long time without rain but still the flowers bloom. Fascinating.
We took our colleague ‘John’ to a nearby restaurant last Sunday. Although they have a variety of food I tell my Taiwanese friends that my favourite Taiwanese food is spaghetti. Body and brain seem to need a refill on a fairly frequent schedule.
One of my students took a picture of Betty and me. As usual Betty looks good while I look…. Perhaps this is why the graduate student who has asked me for a reference for a U.S. Graduate school called me Master Yoda Ted. Do you see a resemblance?
Every other Wednesday morning, ‘families’ of students gather together for discussion, prayer, or whatever. We host the international students with the aid and support of their adviser. Betty had the idea of re-arranging our living room which makes it much easier to host ten people; we provide tea, coffee, fruit and cookies. I suppose this is a kind of ministry to the students who come from eight different countries.
Thursday morning it was my turn to preach in the chapel which is something that I enjoy. In the afternoon Betty went to see the new office, new child, and new location of our former neighbour who taught in the Social Work Department but has now established a private practice.
I have been inundated with book reviews and student journals in English and in Chinese. It has made for a very busy weekend since I have concluded that these submissions do not mark themselves!
From Betty
On Saturday evening we were invited by Dr. John Chen to dinner at a restaurant that we had not been to previously. Dr. Chen’s two daughters, Grace and Julia also joined us.
The occasion was a visit from Dr. Paul McLean, who is not only a long time friend of Dr. Chen’s but also of ours.
We first met Paul, his wife Mary-Beth and their children in 1989 when we were all staying at the mission residence in Toronto. They were soon heading back to Taiwan and we had just returned from Lebanon. We have seen the McLeans from time to time at 50 Wynford Dr. where Mary Beth works, but only for quick ‘how are you doing?’ greetings between meetings. The Chens and McLeans have been friends for many years. They met when Dr. Chen was in his first pastorate near where the McLeans were working in Taiwan.
Dinner included a delicious selection of dishes including roast pork, various sea foods, bamboo shoots, two kinds of soup, roasted peanuts and of course rice. It was very hard not to eat too much!
Conversation during dinner was a little difficult because of the noise so on returning home Paul and John came to our house and we had an hour of catching up and drinking tea. It was very good to hear about Paul’s family and especially his current work with four aboriginal groups in Taiwan translating the Bible into their languages.
