Happy Easter!

Easter is my favorite holiday of the year! I love spending time to focus on the mystery of Jesus' death and resurrection. Praise God! He is risen! Here are some photos of my students at Schoolhouse Language Center dyeing Easter eggs. I am not the world's most clever cook, so I accidentally soft-boiled the eggs. I didn't know that was possible until I did it. I told them not to eat the eggs and hoped they wouldn't notice--but when a few eggs accidentally hit the ground and some partially uncooked yolk was oozing out, there were many cries of "Aiyou!". Good times had by all! Josh also enjoyed his first egg hunt this year, compliments of my mom, the Easter bunny, who sent Spiderman eggs all the way to Taiwan. Way to make Easter a hit--good job, Mom! I love you.

Little Sprouts

"Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously." 2 Corinthians 9:6. I love this ministry! It is one of the reasons it will be hard to leave Taiwan. We just go to the park and ask the kids if they want to color (emphasizing that it's FREE to the parents), and kids come and learn about Jesus--most of them for the first time. As they're coloring and we have a captive audience, we tell them simple Bible stories, in English and Chinese. The parents are happy their kid is learning some English and the kids get the chance to hear the name of Jesus and find out that He loves them. What a deal! Praise God for the open door to do this ministry here in Taiwan. Our next big event will be Saturday, April 7th, a little pre-Easter party. I am excited to share the meaning of Easter with the children. If you're reading this before Saturday, please pray for the ministry.

Sweet Home...Chicago?

That's right, Josh and I are planning to leave sunny Taiwan, a place which I am proud to call home, and move to...windy Chicago? Go figure. We plan to leave this wonderful land toward the end of July, swing by California for a month, and then hit IL about September, when Josh plans to start his internship at my Uncle's supermarket. After staying there for a year we then plan to head back to California for about another year before returning to Formosa. My aunt and uncle are pictured here on the right of the second photo: It's my dad's sister and her Italian husband. Josh and my uncle, Ron, hit it off when they met a couple years ago, so Josh always wanted to return and spend more time with Ron and Terry. It will be great to be near my extended family as well, and to enjoy my first real fall in about 10 years! I love the fall! Don't know how I will feel about winter, but at least I have Josh to keep me warm.

MV DOULOS

Recently, I had the privilege of serving as "Translator 13" onboard the MV Doulos. Since my Mandarin is still limited, that mostly meant hanging around in the bookshop to answer people's questions and make announcements in Chinese. I had a wonderful time doing it, especially getting to know the crew members and interacting with the Taiwanese people who came onboard. One day I would love to be a translator for short-term missions groups coming to Taiwan (i.e. my brother's youth group, yes, that's you, Phil) So this was good practice for me. Unfortunately I know I will forget a lot of Chinese while Josh and I are visiting America over the next couple years...sounds like a topic for the next post.

Happy Year of the Pig!

The student's lanterns at Love River are always amazing, and Josh enjoyed them especially this year during the Lantern Festival. Most of them were piggies in honor of the year of the pig (we would say boar, but here everybody just says pig.) I saw at least three ballerina pigs! Too cute! Nice fireworks display, too.

My wonderful nieces

Don't I have the cutest nieces in the world? I'm sure many an aunt has said the same, but really: On the left is Avery and the newborn is Brylie, both coming from my second brother, Phil, and his wife, Alicia. On the pony is Kloe, just recently officially adopted (YAY!), by my oldest brother, Pete, and his wife Nichole. As for me, no kiddies yet, much to my Taiwanese friends and family's disappointment. (I mean after all, we've been married 10 months, clearly that's enough time to crank one out!) I'll keep you posted on that one, but Josh and I hope for a little one perhaps in late 2008 or 2009. We'll have to see what God's plans are in that department though.

I guess I'll hop on the bandwagon and get a blog

When blogs first came out, I thought they were only for people strange enough to want everyone in the world to have access to their personal journal entries. I guess the concept has grown on me though, as I now see it as an alternative to inundating friend's email boxes with long emails about your life. This way, anyone who's interested in my life can check it out, and the rest don't need to be bothered. Next, I had to concvince myself that my life was actually interesting enough to have a blog, but hey, I live in Taiwan--Formosa--how cool is that. And I'm married to the most interesting, handsome and fashionable guy on the island, so at the very least I should have some good pics to post now and again.

I'm coming up on a four day weekend, so I figured it was now or never to get this thing started. Looking forward to further updates and receiving your comments in the near future. Meanwhile, feast your eyes on this--one of my favorite wedding photos of me and my hubby.