A Recap
Busy. Busy. Busy. This is the best word to describe Bethesda right now.
This week was especially busy though, because we did many activities with the residents and had several guests arrive. Here is a recap of each day this week:
Saturday: We took 20 Bethesda residents to an opening ceremony for baseball directed at people with special needs. The residents, who had never played baseball before, had so much fun hitting a ball with the bat, running around the bases and cheering each other on! But the biggest excitement was the McDonald’s they got afterwards haha. Every Saturday for the next 2 weeks 2 residents from Bethesda will go and spend a few hours in the morning and learn how to play baseball.
Sunday: In the morning we went to church. Kajsa wasn’t feeling well so she rested at home while Mirjam and I took three girls (the only ones who could ride a bike) from the 3rd floor (the floor where we work in the afternoon). We got bubble tea and biked to a beautiful sport near the ocean. The view was incredible! Reminded me of something you would see in “Anne of Green Gables.” It was nice to be able to do something with these more independent girls who are mainly coped up in Bethesda. We also were able to stop at a small zoo and fed fish! Oh oh oh and I saw my first rat! It was dead though… haha. We were biking and there was something in the middle of the path and in my mind I was like “that’s a big mouse,” then one of the girls informed me it was not a mouse but a rat. Mirjam accidentally biked over it and it’s all on film so we can hear her screaming haha Later in the evening Mirjam took all of us short-termers to the Hualien night market! We had so much fun wandering around and having all sorts of yummy food options to try out. I tried stinky tofu fries (there Mr. Nessel I tried stinky tofu), it wasn’t super bad especially since it was drizzled with garlic sauce. The after taste was interesting though. My favourite was the banana crepe. It was banana pieces wrapped in a thin crape and drizzled with Hershey’s chocolate sauce. Kajsa’s favourite was a unique combination of thin wrap with vanilla ice cream, crushed peanuts and cilantro in it (yes you read correctly!).
Monday: Now this was quite a long day. Every 3 months the team (Mirjam and the short-termers) go to Hsin Chu and have sort of a conference with those who are a part of Liberty Corner and Marburger Missions (they do prison and Thai ministry). They read the bible, sing, pray, have fellowship, and share about what’s happening in each ministry. It was a 4 hour train ride from Hualien to get there. We had to leave by 5:45 am to get to the train station in time. Kajsa and I set our alarm to 4:50 am so we would have plenty of time to wake up, get dressed, do our make-up etc… For some reason or the other we slept through our alarm, something both of us have never done. Mirjam came into our room to see if we were up and by her calling to us woke me up so I checked my watch and it was already 5:25 am. We both scrambled out of bed and barely managed to get all of our things in order before we had to leave. We first took a train to Taipei and then from Taipei we took the speed train to Hsin Chu. We almost missed our stop, and in the hurry everyone had exited the train without me… it gave me a flashback to Kajsa and my first train ride together except I was the one panicking. Thankfully, like the last trip, everything was fine and I made it out just in time. We met at one of the missionaries houses. It was nice, and we got western food, pizza and salad. It went a bit longer than usual, since there were other guests, and Mirjam wasn’t paying attention to the time so we had to buy new train tickets back to Taipei. In addition to that, an ex short-termer named Leo, came back with us. He was a short-termer at Bethesda and did some prison ministry last year and was doing a missions trip with his church in Thailand. Wanting to come visit Bethesda again, he thought that a quick trip to Taiwan would be fun and coming back with us would be nice since we could help him with all his luggage. We got back home to Bethesda around 10 pm. Long day. Kajsa also really badly sprained her toe, so she’s been limping around a bit.
Tuesday: Being as nice as she is, Mirjam gave all of us the morning off. We got to sleep a whole hour later and didn’t get up until 8 am. At 10 am Kajsa and I helped get the beds ready for a YWAM team of 4 that were coming that day. They are missionaries in different parts of Taiwan and here for 4 days to help out because the government said they had to do some volunteer work so what better place than Bethesda. Of course we passed time by biking to our favourite bubble tea place: Presotea. It’s so hard not to resist especially when it’s only $3 CAD here!! At 7 pm I had my drama class. We’re doing a mime of The Life of Jesus that we’ll perform in front of people for Easter. It is probably one of my favourite things to do right now, and for someone who hates performing in front of people that’s saying something. The residents are so fun to act with and we have lots of laughs. Esther, one of the German short-termers, decided to lead an hour workout with those who wanted to participate. I decided to join because I know I need to workout but never have the desire to, especially when it’s just me. It was fun, hard work, made us sweat, and we had lots of laughs as we all suffered together.
Wednesday: Another typical working day. We helped in the bakery in the morning. I had a choir practice in the afternoon. We helped on the 3rd floor in the late afternoon. The residents were so excited because every Wednesday afternoon the milk truck comes and they can use their money to buy milk and juice. In the evening we had devotions with everyone. Mirjam suggested we go to the night market with our new guests who had arrived. It was okay, but many shops were closed since it was a weekday and it really started to rain and we all got pretty soaked. It was Leo’s birthday so we had cake to close our evening.
Thursday: I woke up to someone desperately crying my name. I went out and saw Kajsa standing on a chair and pointing at something on the ground. I saw a little gecko. I trapped the gecko underneath a see-through plastic container and slid a piece of paper under him, then disposed of him outside. Apparently Kajsa is afraid of any reptile, so it was my job to save her and being the good friend I am, I did :) After the fact we had a good laugh and Kajsa affectionately named the gecko Oscar. We got to help a lot in the bakery and they made several different things. There was: buns filled with a coconut filling (Kajsa and my favourite), buns filled with red beans, buns filled with pork floss, Korean mochi buns (also delicious), cake filled with something, buns filled with pudding, and a bread roll filled with cream cheese and raisins. Thankfully these were all the baking we could buy, so we bought 6 items! In the afternoon, on the 3rd floor, we did something out of the ordinary but special with the girls. We painted their nails, and got ours painted too by one of the girls. They were so so excited, and thanked us many times. It was so sweet. The 4th floor, also girls, heard about, and saw, our fun activity the next day and begged Tian Tian, the other short-termer here, to do theirs too. Later in the evening, we had a team meeting. It’s kind of a bible study but because we had guests we did it differently so we played some games, sang worship songs, had snacks and talked about, how warm climate different cultures are different than cold climate cultures and experiencing culture shock.
Friday: We welcomed 3 more guests, bringing our total up to 8 people. 2 of the guests were a couple and as I mentioned in a previous blog post, this couple Kajsa and I actually met when we gave our talk at the church associated with Liberty Corner. They have been on a cruise for the past 2 weeks and wanted to make a quick stop. We all went out for dinner with all the guests to a Thai restaurant. There were 12 dishes to choose from, plus one dessert! Surprisingly we managed to eat most of it, probably because it was an amazing meal.
Until next time,
Soli Deo Gloria!
Hosanna
