Christmas Fun

We had a great Christmas party at our house on Monday. We decided to make people feel like their was family for them and so we had 19 people over for lunch. It was great. Turkey with all the trimmings. Leanne and Melanie (a friend of ours from UK/Taichung) worked all morning to get ready. Shouts out to Sean, Albie, Lisa and Patty for all their help.
It was great and reminded me a lot of the old family gatherings with my Mom's family. 50+ people getting together and just talking the time away. Many of the people had to go teach this afternoon but we hope they felt a bit less away from home.
Merry Christmas.
Sherrie, Wally and Mom: for me it is only 3 more days. Can't wait to see you guys.

Merry Christmas

An eventful year. People came to visit us. People are coming again. My best friend got married by the providence of God. God providentially brought me home just in time. Dad went home. Leanne started becoming an internationally viewed artist. She busily worked in her workshop preparing gifts for good little children. I took on leadership roles before unthought of. I became more weary than ever before. I praised God through all of it. God carried me through all of it.
Merry Christmas to all of you and I hope that in this season where we remember the incarnation of God's son you will see Him and His love, mercy, righteousness and holiness more clearly.
Blessed be the Name the of the LORD.

Here They Come

I am so pumped. In a little over a week I will be welcoming three members of my family to Taiwan. My brother, Walter, has been here twice before as has my Mom, Mary. This will be the first trip out for Wally's wife, Sherrie. I feel so fortunate to have so many family members who want to come to visit me out here. I know people who have been here a long time and have never had any visitors come out. I am blessed.

We are doing well. We are gearing up for Christmas. The Christmas eve service will be coming up on ...... Christmas eve. I don't know what my involvement will be yet as my team is not in charge of the music this time. But I will be involved to some degree.

Leanne has gotten some cards ready for people this week. She finds it exciting when people order her cards but it also ends up being a very busy time for her. Pray she can get through it all.

We are alos planning a Christmas lunch for our cell group. Finding the turkey has been some work. But we found a good meal. We will have to fill it out a bit with veggies and such but it should be fun. I will teach in the morning as schools don't close for Christmas here but I took the rest of the day off. Pray we can have a good time and give people a home while they are away from home.

God Bless
Merry CHRISTmas to you all.

The Dinner

Here are some pics from the Thanksgiving dinner our church had last weekend. It was in a very nice place. The food was good but, in my opinion, not as good as last year (oh how I miss the Finnish restaurant). It was a very location though. It had a nice piano which Stephen and Chuck let loose on. It was interesting to here lounge versions of Jesus Loves Me and Amazing Grace. You also see Leanne and our friend Patty. Everyone was supposed to get dressed up which is why everyone looks so spiffy.
There were some non Christians at the thing. Pray the gospel light came through to them.
We are doing follow up by starting a church games night. Pray some of these people will come out for that. It is at the church on Friday night at 10. It is just board games and people hanging out and playing and chatting.
I had an unexpected morning off today. That is why I am blogging. Enjoy.

Sorry For Taking So Long

I have had a very eventful past two months. No excuse for not blogging but ...well I guess it is. The first big thing was a five day weekend we had at the beginning of October. As I was in the middle of my stats course we didn't go anywhere but it was a nice restful time. One of the pictures is of Stephen and Elizabeth (prominent leaders in our church) as we went for a seafood meal with them during that weekend. We were getting on the ferry.
I was also doing one of my courses for my master's course. It was a Stats course which meant some Math. As some of you know Math is one of my things and so that part was not hard but doing the interpretations of the stats was more challenging. I found though that I learned a lot in the course such as using data to come to conclusions and how to use Excel to do that. I will need that when I do my research I will need those tools and so this course took away some of my anxiety about that aspect of my course. I finished with a 99.8.

The last two weekends I went down to a retreat center near Kenting, a beach community in southern Taiwan. We had a time to go to the beach and do some hiking. The sunset picture is from the beach and the other two were from hiking. It was so nice to go down there because we can get out of the city and breath some fresh air (or fresher air at least). One was a church leadership retreat where we were making some important decisions about the future of the church. Pray as we decide on these things. The second weekend was for the OMF partners and so it was just relaxing. I also learned some interesting stuff about the structure of the Taiwanese folk religion's gods. It was fascinating to see first that they are structured a lot like an army or bureaucracy with levels of complaint. You don't go to a high level god with a small problem. It was quite interesting.
Anyways I had a good rest.
Leanne was up in Taipei last weekend where she worked very hard to help with a Christian weekend called Tres Dias (Three Days). She went to it last year as a participant so was invited this year to help run it. She was very tired but glad that she went.
We will have a Thanksgiving dinner this Sunday for church. It will be done in the same place as Leanne and I had our wedding. That is one of the few places that can do a good turkey dinner. By the way, for you Thanksgiving purists, we are doing it deliberately between Canadian and American Thanksgiving so that explains the weird day. It should be fun.
I hope I have caught you all up.
God Bless

More Pictures

Considering the most comments I have gotten on my blog has when posting Leanne's pictures, here are some more for you all to enjoy. A couple of these are also in Morden at the gallery.

We are doing well. The church has been going well without a pastor. We do need prayers so that we as the leaders don't burn out trying to run it.

Leanne is getting busy teaching crafts such as card making and paper painting. The girls at church are absoluting loving getting together and making the pictures. Pray this will lead to successful outreach to ladies in the English speaking community.

Here Is A Leanne Hildebrand!!!!

What you see is one of the pictures Leanne sent to Canada for the Gallery. It is at the Pembina Hills Art Centre in Morden. If you happen to go through Morden check it out.

What Was I Thinking

I am exhausted. I just finished my summer schedule which could be described most suitably as really really stupid. I ended up saying yes enough times to load myself down with 48.5 hours of teaching a week. That of course does not include the prep time needed for those hours. I am finished now and am very happy to be through. God was good to me. He kept me healthy and strong throughout as well as keeping me relatively happy. I am enjoying my mornings off this week before I hit the fall schedule head on next week. Shouldn't be nearly as many hours.

Leanne is really excited. She sent some of her pictures to Canada along with some hand made cards. A small gallery in Morden is showing them and selling them for her. Pray they sell quickly so as to encourage Leanne in this area. She will be starting some classes where she will be teaching some of these skills (hand made cards and the "paperpainting") as outreaches. One class will be for a pregnancy counselling center she volunteers at and the other will be a women's outreach for our church. She will also be doing an art class for a Chinese church as an outreach to Taiwanese kids. Pray for her as she does these things. Give her success and joy in them.

Another One Down

I have just finished another one of Master's courses. Thia one was on critical issues in education. I think the discussion boards were really interesting on this one. Glad to be finished again. I was carrying a 98 into the last week of classes so I am hopeful of maintaining my grade point average at 4.0. I am not bragging; just stating the facts.:)

As I work to complete my master's in the next couple of years I find myself questioning more and more why I am putting myself through all this stress. I feel I am more like Dad than I thought. He was always doing something. He always had a project to work on. He could hardly ever sit still for a day and relax. I smile when I think that I have something in common with him. It makes me realize that I am truly his son. unfortunately I am like him in the way that probably was his undoing. Too much stress could not have been good for him. Maybe I need to pull back somewhere.

Summer is a very busy time here. I will be teaching about 45 hours a week (that doesn't include prep time) for about 5 weeks. I am worried it may be too much. Pray for me as I try to deal with it. Pray for Leanne as she tries to deal with me.

I found out Wally, Sherrie and Mom will be coming out in January. We are really looking forward to them coming for a visit. We will try to take them to Taipei, Taroko Gorge and Kenting. I seem to be looking forward hoping to take my mind off the next five weeks. Here's to hoping and anticipation.

Here are a few more pictures from our last vacation to Canada.
Enjoy

Three Cheers for Henry

"I suppose your doing alright now
Making beautiful music on a white cloud
Father, Son and a holy host of angels
Surely sent up three cheers
Even as your mortal friends shed a few tears
We miss you down here

...We remember you yeah We laugh when we think of you

... We remember you, yeah, we cry when we think of you...

We love you....

Flap your wings"


The Choir song " Hey Gene" From the album "Flap Your Wings"

Six Short Years

"She makes alot of trouble Yeah When things don't go the way she plans

.... She makes noise, she breaks toys, she brings me tears of joy...

Cherry bomb with a face just like a cherub she's a bomb, she makes her presence known....
She's sweet as anything I know...

She never takes things lightly, no, her little heart explodes sometimes...

She kills me, she thrills me....."

The Choir song " Cherry Bomb" From the Album "Flap Your Wings"

Happy Anniversary Leanne

Six Years of Killing and Thrilling

Can't wait to be killed and thrilled for another sixty years.

Beauty Underneath

Dad saw something in it
He knew beauty could be brought out
So he placed his hand on the sickle and started to cut
He cut away the overgrown grass
He cut down the dead trees to allow new ones to grow
He tore down eye sores of buildings and replaced them with functioning ones
He lovingly tended the grass
He dutifully tilled the earth
He encouraged growth
He sowed and cultivated

God saw something in me
He knew beauty could be brought out
So He put His hand on the sickle and started to cut
He cut away the overgrown ideas
He cut down the dead habits to allow godly ones to grow
He tore down eye sores of sin and replaces them with His word
He lovingly tended my virtues
He dutifully tilled my heart
He encouraged growth
He sowed and cultivated

Wedding

We had the priviledge of joining Josh and Paula as they got married last weekend (May 20th). It was a beautiful wedding. Leanne did the music for the processional. She was nervous before the wedding and said she didn't want to go to the party after the wedding. Afterwards she was hyper excited and of course had to go to the party. It was a fun party. Some highlights included: Josh's Freestyle Ring Exchange, Flower Girl Dancing, Josh and Paula First Dance Montage.
The pictures included are of Josh and Paula Lighting the Unity Candle, Leanne playing for the processional, My friend Albie and his Fiance Lisa (Hear that----- Fiance, Cool!!!) in my token artistic dancing shot:)

Family

Leanne mentioned as Dad was sick and passed away that she was amazed at the way our family came together as one. It did not surprise me but it did her. As a result she knows that when she needs help she knows the family will help her. She really appreciates them. It is hard over the thousands of miles for the family to know her well. That is hard on her because she can see that difficulty in this. But she appreciates the efforts made by all.
Here are a few pictures of Leanne with the family.

Pictures: I MISS HIM

The Last Day

On our last day we went to a museum.
We went shopping.
He sat in the car and waited.
I sat with him.
He talked about buying a computer.
I told him about my apple.
He said, "your brother is trying to get me to buy one too"
"They scare me"
I said, "I know what you mean"

We came home and he sat by the TV eating a hot dog.
I sat with him.
He lamented his headache.
He lamented the growing distance between us.
I looked at him and resented it.
I thought, 'Why did you ruin a great day with that, Dad?'
He changed the topic.

I see it now.
The gap had grown over the continents.
But something I want Dad to know.

Even with no words to say between us
I know I love you
You know I love you
I know you love me
You know you love me
It's all we have now.
All I can cling to


In the last moments the bridge was built over the gap.
LOVE

We Know Where He Is

My dad knew a guy. He was slightly mentally handicapped. He loved my dad and they would talk on the phone often.
When he met my brother in the McDonald's parking lot my brother told him that my Dad had passed away. He was sad and then my brother said that now my dad could see out of both his eyes (my dad had one glass eye). At this the man started to laugh. He got on his bicycle laughing and saying, " We know where he is" over and over again.
We would often say, " Dad is in a better place now" with a small tear in the corner of our eyes. Why the tear? For us yes! but there should be smile and a laugh and joy as well.
WE KNOW WHERE HE IS!!!!!!!! Praise the LORD!!!!!! :)