www.drewfoisie.blogspot.com

Dear People of God,

It's been an exciting past 30 days or so. I launched an "English camp", visited a tea farm, introduced a new bible study approach, started Chinese lessons, flew to Hong Kong, drank tea with police officers, hiked the mountains at Oo-li, honed my lesson plans, scripted & directed a telling of Jesus' calling the first disciples and welcomed the new English Chaplin to Good Shepherd (though not exactly in that order).

Last week's English camp was not actually a camp in the traditional sense; there were no sleeping bags, no campfires and no cabins. We put together a series of fun English language lessons, songs, games and activities for youth and young adults in the Shilin neighborhood. For a couple hours a night over four days we had our "camp". This was/is a great evangelism tool because it brings together English language learning, youth group-like fun and the gospel message. I prepared a series of bible studies focused around our theme "Hello-Win" (a play on Halloween). The central question was "how can we be our best". The central answer was "by knowing who loves us (Jesus) we can be our best". Our bible studies centered on Jesus as the Good Shepherd. This dovetailed nicely with our church being The Church of the Good Shepherd!

The English camp was a success, but it wasn't well attended. I believe this had something to do with my unexpected trip to Hong Kong the week the camp was originally scheduled. Normally you can extend your visitor visa "in country" before you are required to leave Taiwan. This is what I planned to do until I learned that I had been stuck with a "P" on my visa. This means that the intention of your visit to Taiwan is to "visit family". This was never my intention, but this was the status I got stuck with. The long and the short of it is that I was denied an extention while in the country. So, we pushed back the English camp one week and I flew to Hong Kong. While in Hong Kong I attempted to change the "P" status of my visa but again was denied. Rather that apply for a resident visa we decided to stick with what I have. I returned to Taiwan in 2 days and entered the country with no problems.

Hong Kong is a beautiful city. I took the time to have a look around and even went on a tour. I am hoping in future visits to connect with the Episcopal Church of Hong Kong and possibly do some part time ministry there.

You may be wondering where and how it was that i was drinking tea with police officers. I assure you, I wasn't in any trouble! Last Saturday after the English camp wrapped up I went with a missionary friend to Oo-li. Oo-li is a local mountain town about an hour outside of Taipei. Its mostly know for its natural hot springs, but we were there to hike in the beautiful sub-tropical mountains. Many aboriginal Taiwanese live in this town and my friend, a long term Presbyterian missionary who for many years worked with the aboriginal Taiwanese, occasionally preaches at the Presbyterian church there. Over the years he's developed quite a relationship with the police, so, while we were in Oo-li it was quite natural to drop in on them. John speaks perfect Mandarin and I speak servival Mandarin. Needless to say, he did most of the talking, though I was able to eek out phases like "I speak a little Chinese" and "my name is Drew". We made small talk for about 20 minutes, or 3-4 cups of tea, and then headed for the trailhead of our hike. We got a police escort.

Every Thursday we have our youth group/youth outreach night. Last Thursday I created a little drama from Luke chapter 5:1-11. It was my first time "directing" anything. I enjoyed getting the youth involved and having them act out the story rather than just read it and talk about it. It also gave me ideas about what I can do differently to make it better.

For those of you who have visited my blog (www.drewfoisie.blogspot.com) you've seen the pictures from my visit to the tea farm with the Good Shepherd kindergarten. This is one of the many perks of my job... field trips. I was very happy to be invited on this trip. I got to pick tea leaves, make tea muffins, make sticky tea rice, learn how tea is processed and get to know my kindergarten students and their parents much, much better. It was a very good time. This experience also helped me to get to know the kindergarten teachers much better as well. It gave me a chance to talk about the lessons I was giving and how I can make them better for each class. This was good.

Speaking of field trips, yesterday (11/18) was the Taipei/Taiwan Ecumenical Sports Day. Every year about 7 different church denominations get together and have a day of sport and fellowship. There were competitions held for soccer-baseball, basketball, ping pong and relay racing. (people here take their ping pong very seriously!) I did ping pong and the 12 man 200 meter relay. The relay races are held last as a kind of highlight and everybody generally participates. Trophies are presented at the end to the winning church teams. Usually competitors are matched by age and ability, but this year our jr. high kids were stuck racing with the high school kids. They got creamed. We're not sure what happened, but whatever the reason the whole thing felt really unfair. My race, however, was fair and lots of fun. I haven't passed a baton in ten years, but I can still put the pedal down if I have to! Though our team didn't win we had a great time and felt a little closer because of it.

Well, that's about it. Thank you for your prayers and support. Your emails and your packages mean a lot too. But above all, please continue to pray. Pray for continued adustment to my new culture and that my English ministry will bring people closer to the gospel of Christ. Many blessings, many thanks.


In Christ,

Drew