Boxing Day

I trust everyone had a good Christmas or maybe it still is for you in Ontario. I think you are a day behind China. We spent the afternoon shopping trying to find Maelyn a present but there isn't anything for children here. Even when we are taking subways and trains we hardly ever see children. Everyone is in their late 20's and thirties. So hopefully when we go to Beijing we can find her something. I think I am getting a cold. The days are so hot but than it cools off in the evenings so much that you have to wear a coat. We had a nice xmas supper here at the base last night. Our team went back to our bedroom and opened up the presents we had bought each other here. Maelyn got a set of chopsticks. We are teasing her telling her she is turning into a Chinese girl because she eats with chopsticks all the time. She went for Dim Sum for breakfast the other day and loved it. It's been fun eating out. We are so thankful that Lisa on our team speaks mandarin and cantonese. Thank you for the comments everyone! David, I remember you had said that you and Diana had your honeymoon here. Hong Kong really is a nice city. Very clean. Really pretty with the mountains in the background and I love the palm trees. No foreigners when we are out and about but we don't get any second looks maybe that will come as we travel more into China. The chinese people keep to themselves. They seem busy. No smiles or conversations. Tomorrow is our day off. Thursday we leave for Guangdong. We are going out to a cultural thingy where we try different foods, etc. than from there we go to a hotel and teach in a local school for five days next week. After that we come back to Hong Kong and help out in orphanges. So we will be in Guangdong for New Years eve and New Years Day. We have to take a 20 hour train ride to get to central China. Hopefully this train ride we will see countryside. When we took the train ride to get Maelyn it was night time and we didn't see anything. Today we are going to watch the outreach team do their drama. It will be nice to stay in a hotel for a week. It's tough sharing the bathroom with so many people and the shower is right next to the toilet and the water goes on the floor and the toilet paper goes in a basket. We thought we would have a treat going out yesterday to the mall and restaurant as far as bathrooms go but they were all squattie potties. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a hole in the floor. It requires good leg muscles and balancing skill so you don't step into the hole like I almost did after trying to pull my pants up that were around my ankles trying not to get wet! I can hear Michael saying that is more information than he needed to know. Ha!Ha! It's been nice having internet access at the base here. Once we are in China everything will be screened more closely. One of the chinese staff here bought Maelyn two books that have the chinese characters so she's having fun learning that. She is doing really good on the trip being with adults all the time. It's fun to watch her with the Koreans on our team when we ride the subway they play rock paper sissors with her Korean style. It has more hand gestures and they laugh their heads off playing it. We noticed some of the Chinese were even smiling watching them have fun. Anyway, I should go. I have to figure out which boxes to click, everything is in chinese characters.

Christmas day in sunny Hong Kong

We just had the most awesome brunch. Last night we went out for supper and shopping after a day of preparing food for today. On Saturday night we went to the Hong Kong Stadium, which makes the Sky Dome look small, for a City wide Christmas Celebration. It was put on by the people who started the Global Day of Prayer in Hong Kong. I have never experienced anything like it. There was 10,000 people which is small when you think of all the people in Hong Kong. There was dancing, drama, worship and it ended with a message from a pastor in his forties and a pastor in his twenties. I have never heard preaching like it. Their message was on reconciliation between parents and children. They were encouraging the Chinese youth to go after God's dream and not the dream of their parents to make lots of money. This was the same message we heard back in Hawaii that Loren Cunningham had told the American Asians back on his tour of the West Coast of America and Canada. This must really be on God's heart for the Chinese. It was awesome to see so many Chinese youth worshipping God. At the end they gave an alter call and half the stadium literally ran to the front. I have never witnessed people run to accept Jesus! I have to go, we still have to get Maelyn a present. Oh yea, she lost a tooth yesterday. That's two since we started this trip! Have an awesome day. Remember it's all about love and not presents. Maelyn learned this today when she woke up to no presents but a team that loves her. They sacrificed going to church last night (a Korean tradition) to be together as a team having fun last night. Michael, we miss you! This is our first Christmas in 26 years not being with you. We are thinking alot about you today. You are in our prayers. Remember Jesus is Lord of your life! Be good!

More from Hong Kong

I hope you were able to see us here using the webcam. We are having fun watching ourselves on the laptops. Today we worked around the base helping out. In the morning we prepared lunch. In the afternoon we washed the base vehicles and pulled weeds, cleaned the food court and mopped floors. Now we are hanging out until supper. The outreach teams are having good results. Something like 80 people coming to Jesus. There are 13 temples surrounding the base. Lots of incense. Today is a big holiday in China. It's the first day of winter. Families spend the day together. It's hard to believe Christmas is this weekend. We still have to go shopping. We are exchanging gifts with each other on the team. There is a fancy breakfast buffet and supper on Christmas. Check us out on the web camera. I think the time difference is 12 hours in Canada. We found out we leave for Guangdong Province on the 28th. This is the province Maelyn was born in (although we will never know for sure where she was born but that is the province that her orphanage is in). We are going to stay in a hotel (yippee).
We will be teaching in a school there. Teaching a grade five class math and english. We will also be in the kindergarten class too. We are there for over a week and than back to here (Hong Kong) for another five days before heading out to central China. It was really hot here today. Hard to believe it's Christmas because it's so hot but I'm not complaining. Can't think of anything else to say. I have worship going on beside me so it's hard to concentrate. We have freedom in Hong Kong to talk about our faith on the computers but not the mainland China. The cars have steering wheels on the right side because of the British influence. That takes a while to get used to. Our living conditions here are really crammed because the base is at it's max because of the christmas outreach. It's a good thing our team gets along and we love each other!
The toilets are ancient here like 800 years old and we can't put the toilet paper in the toilet. It goes in a basket. The pipes can't handle the paper. Fun times! Anyway I should go.

We are here in Hong Kong

We took Japan Airlines all the way. from Kona to Honololou to Japan and than Hong Kong. Every seat had a tv screen and we could choose our own movies. We watched five to get here. There was a disney channel for Maelyn. Free food and drinks. Hong Kong is amazing. We are staying in a village that is 800 years old within the city. We took the subway train and double decker bus to tower around downtown. The xmas decorations here are stunning. Lots of designer stores and sony stores. We got to go grocery shopping yesterday for the base. The weather is hot during the day but chilly at night. Very tropical here with palm trees. It never snows here. So this is a nice way to break us in. Japan was fun to be in for a few hours. Maelyn is enjoying herself. It seems strange for Mike and I to be the minority and have everyone look like Maelyn. This base has a webcam set up in the food court right now because of the Christmas outreach going on. There is a team from Toronto here doing outreach. Go to http://www.ywamhongkong.org
On the lefthand side click on Christmas outreach than click on christmas outreach pictures click on the xmas wreath and than it should show the two webcams. You should be able to see us sometimes. We have jetlag like crazy. Maelyn got up at 2:00 am . The worship here is amazing. There is a team here from New Mexico, USA Very international here because it is the gateway to China. The base is smaller than Kona and very old being over 800 years old. Lots of temples surrounding us so we worship everyday. Gotta go for breakfast. Love you all from Hong Kong!!! Woot, woot!!

Mele Kalikimaka (hawaiin for Merry Christmas)

I won't be posting as much as Michael is taking his laptop back with him. boo-hoo! We will be leaving for China on the 19th. Staying in Hong Kong helping with a Christmas outreach while there. On the 28th we leave to go up into central China to help run a two week discipleship training school. The end of January we will go up to Beijing to see the great wall, etc and than onto Dalian in northern China. We will help out with another discipleship training school there. Everyday in China 35,000 people become believers so there is a great need for discipleship. In 2008 Ywam is sending 20,000 Christians to Beijing for the Olympics. They are gearing up for the World Expo in 2010 as well. They want to start up 40 bases through out China to meet the need. They are looking to start a school of biblical studies and a school of biblical counselling. People are hungry to learn about Jesus there. They want to be missionaries to the rest of the world. If a house church closes down from being found out, four more start up in different locations. Churches worship for three to five hours there. I won't be able to post or receive anything relating to Christianity while in China. All our emails will be read while in China and we don't want to put at risk our contacts there. If caught all that will happen to us is we will be asked to leave but the Christians there will go to prison. They are willing to risk it all just to learn more. There is a five month dts going on right now and we will meet these people. I'm starting to realize the greatest risk to our faith back in North America is to become comfortable in our prosperity.

Welcome to Hawaii

Here they are! It's 3:00 a.m. to their bodies but 10:10 p.m. Hawaii time. They were really tired. You can tell they just came from a cold climate compared to what Maelyn has on.