San Yi

Last weekend I joined a group of MTW missionaries on a trip to a town named San Yi to visit a fellow MTW missionary, Brenda. We traveled for two hours by train to the town. The train ride was fun. We went through towns and country sides. Then Brenda took us around San Yi. We had a great Hakka meal. The Hakka people are a regional people of China that live in San Yi. The food is different than the food in Taipei. I had thick rice noodles and they were great. Then we walked around the town and there were lots of interesting things to see like....

1) a little pig with toenails painted pink

2) lots of colorful pinwheels

3) An abandoned train station turned into a museum

4) A bridge broken up twice by two different major earthquakes in the span of 3 decades - it is thus called the Broken Broken Bridge

5) Tea fields on the mountains that look over the little town - we there as the sunset it was cool.

6) Lots and lots of wooden things - idols, carvings, just about anything you can think of I saw it carved out of wood trying to be sold.

7) I also had the priviledge of trying a molasses lolly pop with a dried, sour prune inside. It was really sour and mentioning sour you haven't experienced a truly sour taste until you try some of the sour dried fruit here - whew it makes your entire mouth twist and shout.

On Sunday we went to church at the church that Brenda helped plant and that she ministers in. She is an evangelist. The church service was great even though the entire service was in Chinese. Brenda helped translate the sermon enough that we could understand. The speaker talked about forgiveness and how it is not a feeling but a decision. I must say in my mind, "that person who hurt me does not owe me." This whole topic of forgiveness keeps coming up and I think God is trying to remind me of something incredibly important. If I don't forgive others then I am breaking the bridge that connects me to Him because He forgave me exponentially greater than the sins committed against me by other people.

All in all it was a great trip.

Here are some pictures - including the pig with the pink toe nails (I couldn't help myself - I don't see this kind of pig everyday!)

The family that makes and sells beautiful wood carvings. The woman's name is Lotus - she is a friend of Brenda's. We had tea with them and met all of their pets - their two dogs and their pet bird named dou dou who ate out of my fingers.