Oh my, Shanghai!

(Yes, I realize I'll be winning awards for my creative blog titles!)

We've now been settled in Shanghai for a week.  The days have flown and we've hardly left our little neighborhood.  Our days consist of laundry and school and travel plans and homemade meals (yup, even that's a gift!) and grocery shopping and some general laziness*!  Here are some pictures of our first week, in no particular order (*yup, see above!):


On Saturday we took a day trip to two ancient towns a couple of hours away--Zhouzhang and Tongli.  The Innotec guys have been great about taking care of us and set this all up.  Jerry, one of the team members, spent the whole day with us.

I thought these were flower petals  They were all fish--jumping over each other to be first at the food.

The towns were built around these canals.  Very pretty!

And it wouldn't be a success without purchasing a tool.  Always room in the suitcase for something necessary like that.

More fun playground equipment for Innocademy!

Jerry introducing us to some new foods at lunch.

Once again, half of the fun here is just observing--the people, daily habits, scenery, etc.  One funny thing to us is that milk tea is sometimes served in baby bottles, for adults.  Jerry said it's kind of a comforting thing, a memory of your mother.


On Sunday we attended a home church.  I was surprised to see it was an actual church sanctuary and not a home.  But it was tucked away on the top floor of a factory.  There are legalized Christian churches in China which teach an approved curriculum and use a "politically correct" version of the Bible.  But then there are many of these home churches where the full Bible and gospel are taught.  The government has allowed these because they know they often attract people from around the world and because they see good results.  The church seemed very authentic and Biblical.  It lasted nearly two hours and was basically a few songs at the beginning, a song at the end, a solid message, prayer, and of course a welcome to visitors :).  (I don't think they even took an offering).  The message was about the purpose and work of the Holy Spirit--the scriptures and main points were translated for me.  SO much more I could write--the tiny apartments we walked by to get here, climbing over cardboard and up a dark staircase to reach the church (and we think we need to make our lobbies prettier?).  Very impactful.

The neighborhood surrounding the church.  The growth of this city is staggering (more below on that) and Allen (Innotec leader who attends this church) says he expects within months this area will be cleared for new buildings.  The poor continue to be pushed further out and the church has relocated numerous times.

Each Sunday the congregation has lunch together.  They made an extra special lunch for us and a team of YWAMers (Youth With a Mission) that were also visiting.  It was great for our girls to have time with these other young people.

After lunch, Allen and his family took us into Shanghai.

We first walked through a market area.  These guys were selling hairstyle doodads and immediately spotted easy prey with our long hair and white skin.  Trina was the first model.

Each of the other girls had a turn--and finally the most challenging of all!  They used a pick thing to twist the hair in and out and Ella's took numerous twists!  And of course with the twister now in their hair, we had to buy, right?

Pretty architecture if you could see past the crowds.  The place was filled with handicrafts and food stalls.

Shanghai's famous Pearl Tower surrounded by beautiful gardens.  This huge elevated walkway encircled this intersection and connected some of the major buildings.  Another example of money and progress and it makes sense--it eliminates pedestrians crossing the roads.

Allen, his wife Swee Lee, and their daughter, Kristi.  Allen has been with Innotec Shanghai since it began about 8 years ago.  I have met each of them very briefly but never spent time with them.  The girls and I had so much fun talking with them and Swee Lee has offered to take us shopping one of these days.  They're Malaysian but have lived in New Zealand and China so great insights, fluent, strong Christians...

We also used this week to get haircuts.  Found a salon in the shopping center where we get groceries.  Little English spoken, but we managed.

From this...

... to this!

Some random pictures and observations:

This is one Asian cultural thing I want to bring home with me.  People will freely nap wherever and whenever.  All those times I worked as a bank teller and we had no customers?  I could have just crawled under the counter for a quick nap!  My apologies to this sweet lady, but I couldn't resist.  

And I'm back to my favorite hobby!  Although here it's not so much about misspellings.  My guess is they write the English in the same order as their characters?

This reminds me of one of our funnier stories of the trip.  Our first morning, we got up late and were looking for breakfast.  We checked the restaurant at our apartment/hotel complex, but the buffet was cleared away.  I attempted to ask the hostess if the restaurant was still open.  With my lack of Mandarin and her lack of English we reached an impasse.  She used Google Translate to tell us:  "Sir, we are going to receive the beach."  In the famous words of Inigo Montoya (Princess Bride), "I do not think it means what you think it means."

Shanghai--such a blend of the new and the old.  Shiny new buildings and lots of electric vehicles.  But also old pagodas and pedal carts.

Allen says eight years ago, when they moved here, only 4 of these tall buildings were in existence.  Shanghai Center, on the right, is due to open any day and is the tallest building in China and the second tallest in the world.  The "bottle opener" building next to it is the second largest building in China.  The one next to that is the 7th largest in China, and the Pearl Tower on the left is the second largest structure in China.  Not only are there cranes everywhere, but all the buildings being built are huge.

In addition to new buildings, there are many new highways and along almost every median or road shoulder (we're talking miles and miles!) are layers of landscaping--flowers, shrubbery, trees.  Is it any wonder, with this speed and amount of progress, that China is becoming a dominant world power?

And finally, we celebrated another birthday on the road--mine!  Thanks for all the birthday greetings.  Many of you asked how the day was spent, so here's my chance to be perfectly honest.  Of course this blog tends to paint a pretty picture, but that's often not the case.  My birthday was celebrated in an extraordinary place in a very ordinary way:

• we spent the morning doing laundry and school
• we navigated the subway to a shopping mall in the city
• one child had a major grump on which made me grumpy
• one child felt sick so we aborted and came back home
• we headed back into the city for a dumpling dinner
• after eating our first round of dumplings, deciding we liked them, and attempting to reorder, we were told very sternly that it was "OVER!" (as in, the restaurant service is over for the evening)
• so we moved on and ended up eating at the Old Country Buffet of Shanghai, cafeteria style
• at home I opened some presents, but we were all so tired that it lasted for about 5 minutes
• grumpy girl decided to give her present at a later date

None of these things are meant to be complaints, simply to show that life is life no matter where you are!  In spite of all the bumps, it's pretty amazing to have these memories of my birthday:

The Huangpu River divides Shanghai into Pudong (river east) and Puxi (river west).  This is Pudong, the new side.

And this is The Bund on the old side.  Interesting history.  Shanghai developed because of the opium trade and each of these old buildings sort of represent different European countries present through that time (a horrible nutshell explanation--google for more :)!)

(Grumpy girl just gave me her gift, so I'm sitting here polishing off Snickers and eyeing my Ferrer Rocher chocolates.  Now that's a birthday!)

Seoul, South Korea

We've just finished a 5 day quick trip to Seoul, South Korea.  We intentionally planned this as a short stay, just to have a business meeting and to hopefully get a glimpse of the Korean Church.  We had no idea we would love Korea so much, and it has definitely made our bucket list for future travel.  This visit was only to Seoul and we would love to see more of the countryside someday.

Mike's business acquaintance, Yong Ho, and his wife, Jae Seon, were incredibly welcoming and planned out most of our visit for us (whew...).  Jae Seon owns a hotel right in the heart of Myeong-dong, a very hopping shopping/eating/tourism district, and set us up with a great stay there.

Admiring our cool toilet, just like the City Deli's, that does everything you could want "down under"

This is Yoido Full Gospel Church, the largest church congregation in the world.  It has somewhere in the range of 800,000 members.

Jae Seon and Yong Ho took us to a Korean barbecue restaurant our first evening there.  Hot coals are placed in the center of the table and thin strips of beef are cooked right at the table.  My favorite thing?  The servers had scissors and would trim off every little piece of fat as it cooked.

They also arranged a day tour of Seoul.  One of our stops was Gyeongbukgung Palace, the main palace of the Joseon dynasty.

We watched the changing of the guard here.

Insa-dong is a traditional shopping area where it's required that the signage be in Korean, even Starbucks.

 

This is the street right outside our hotel.  In the evenings it would be packed with pedestrians and vendors.  Any night we didn't have plans, we would grab street food for dinner.  The shops all stayed open until at least 10:00.

We sampled some amazing (unhealthy!) street food--hotdog on a stick breaded with either french fries or ramen noodles, eggs hard boiled and deep fried in a little cornbread loaf, gigantic ice cream cones, a crepe with nutella and banana and cornflakes, meat skewers, fresh juices.  Also lots of squid and octopus but I kept my distance from those guys.

Little rolls of sushi.  The girls impress me sometimes--they loved these.

Yong's daughter, Susan, suggested we visit the DDP (Dongdaemun Design Plaza), a huge, unusual building with all things design.  We loved walking through the Design Lab where they had all uniquely designed products for sale.

One of our other stops on the tour was Jogyesa Temple, a Buddhist temple.  The temple and most of the streets of Seoul were decorated with these paper lanterns to celebrate my birthday on May 25 (or maybe it's also Buddha's birthday on that day?)

Little monks in training

Hey, it's Ms. Kelli Korea!!  We saw tons of school field trips throughout our day.  This teacher was very passionately telling her kids about the display in the Korean Folk Museum.

Fashion is all over the board in Korea!  This Minnie Mouse lookalike was interesting.  Hard to see it but the hat even has the black ears!

In Korean, the word for "four" is similar to the word for death, so 4 is considered unlucky.  Buildings either skip the 4th floor or change it to F.

That's ginseng?  Oh OK, thought it was something else for a minute... (we toured a ginseng highpressuresaleslockyouinuntilyoubuy company)

During our tour we had lunch at a traditional Korean restaurant, serving bulgogi, bibimbap, a Korean soup, and of course kimchi.  And when did it get so hard for me to sit cross-legged on the floor?!

Sunset from the terrace of our hotel.

Mike and I realized that we hear a lot about Korea, but for some reason we don't know a lot about Korea.  This was such an educational few days and it was great to have "locals" who could inform us. Some things that will stick with me:

• Immediately it was obvious that this is a country that appreciates excellence, orderliness, professionalism, and cleanliness.  The airport was beautiful, roads and traffic were organized, our taxi driver always wore a suit and apologized profusely if he was at all late.  All the staff members at our hotel (many of whom were young adults) were dressed in crisp uniforms, greeted us immediately with big smiles, worked hard, and were never seen chit-chatting with each other.  And there is no tipping--this service is just expected.  It sounds like Former President Park Chung-hee was instrumental in moving the country forward.  I'm interested in learning more about how it happened.
• I had heard much about the pressures in the educational system (a really interesting book I read is called The Best Schools in the World).  Sounds like this is very real and many families will try to send their kids outside of the country for school to avoid some of this.
• We saw a handful of women openly walking around with big bandages on their faces, obviously from cosmetic surgery.  I googled and found out Korea has a huge cosmetic surgery industry.  The Gangnam ("Gangnam Style") neighborhood is like a Beverly Hills (even has a street called Rodeo Drive) and there are plastic surgery places all over.  I found this super interesting article about it:  http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/23/about-face. Because of the emphasis on outward beauty, this is also a place to buy inexpensive cosmetics.  In our area, there were at least a dozen different skincare stores and each of them would have shops in nearly every block.  As we flew into Shanghai, we saw Chinese women hefting bags of duty free skincare products.

We're now in Shanghai for the first of our three international long stays, while Mike works.  We're getting settled in an apartment and looking forward to catching our breath a little for the next month.

A Sabbath Post

Well, this is certainly way overdue.  I thought I would write one post dedicated to some of our church experiences.  We've now had 19 Sundays on the road--really can't believe that!  I think I've put this one off so long for a number of reasons.  First of all, these will be only my opinions (mine, not the girls or Mike), so most likely I will offend someone.  Secondly, we learn a little more as we go so I keep waiting for that perfect time when I've figured it all out :).  And also, this post requires a little more thought so it's hard to find sufficient time for it.  I'll do my best with the time I have, but know that it will be a "good enough" post like all my others.  Finally, I'm sure this will be filled with generalizations and comments that imply I have it all figured out--know that neither of these is intended.

There--I think those are all of my disclaimers.  Now you have the choice to read on or skip!

First some pictures of our various experiences and then some summary thoughts:

In Passekudah, Sri Lanka, we visited this small Methodist church.  Chairs for the old and visitors, but the rest sat on the floor.  This was typical of many Indian/Nepali/Sri Lankan churches.

Singing from her Tamil songbook

In Bangkok, we attended Calvary Baptist Church with an American pastor and services in English.

In Cromwell, New Zealand we celebrated Easter Sunday at this small Lakeside Church.

In Kalibo, Philippines we attended this one year old church.  It's called the Victory church throughout the Philippines and is part of Every Nation.

Here we are with pastor Fil and his wife, Derry.  Young, dynamic couple who were working hard to build up this church.

They use the third floor of this building

In Pagudpud, Philippines we visited Bethel Church.  Kind of surreal to be congregationally singing Jesus Take the Wheel in the Philippines.

In Pune, India we joined a small house church.

In Pondicherry, India we visited Hallelujah Assembly of God.  This is where we arrived 1/2 hour early, only because of miscommunication.  At most of the other churches, we've followed our pattern of being a few minutes late.

In Sydney, we attended one of Hillsong Church's congregations.  The girls and I really enjoyed their service so we went there both weeks.  We even went back in the evening to hear Christine Caine preach--one of my favorite speakers.

Inside Hillsong

While visiting Dignity in the Philippines, we attended this house church.

This was their very creative drum set--paint lids for drums and a gas container for the bass drum.  Unfortunately there was no drummer the week we visited.

This young girl, Camille, had a beautiful voice and led the singing along with a teenage boy on guitar--you can just see him behind her.  This "stage" area is normally the family's outdoor eating area.

After church fellowship time.  The women were busy preparing lunch in the kitchen just to the left of here.

Yesterday we attended So Mang Presbyterian Church, a large congregation in Seoul.  Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul is the world's largest congregation with over 800,000 members and has a more contemporary worship.  This was a much more traditional service with choir, robes, pipe organ.

The outside of the church.  Services are held every two hours from 7:30 am until 7:30 pm (the same pastor speaks at all of them with no break!).  The parking lots and streets around the church were just packed with people.  In addition to services on Sunday, they have prayer services every day of the week.

These are the ones I captured pictures of, but we've had lots of other experiences, including holding our own "church".  On the island of Koh Lanta in Thailand, we researched thoroughly and couldn't find one Christian church on the island (wouldn't be a bad spot to be a missionary...!).

Here are my random thoughts and observations, in no particular order or level of importance, other than the first one:

• Jesus is the hope and light for the world.  This has really been solidified for me.  We've observed lots of different religions--Hinduism and Buddhism mostly.  I so admire the devotion of the followers (and I can certainly learn something from that), but I saw this emptiness and hopelessness and sometimes even darkness.  People bowing down over and over and offering sacrifices to statues of either imaginary gods or people who are dead and can be of no help to them.  Jesus is wanting to bring light and hope into these people's lives.  It's been striking as we've been among Christian communities to see the difference in the joy that's among them.  We attended a church in Goa, India where the pastor talked about Jesus' glory and asked "Have you seen it?".  For me, just that one thought put it all together that that's what we all need to see and is the missing piece in all these other religions.
• Friendliness seems to be dependent on the individual congregation, not its size.  Of course, we've stood out most every place we've gone!  We've had a few churches where no one came up and spoke to us.  I got the sense sometimes that people were uncomfortable because we're from a different culture.  We really just wanted someone to smile and say hi.  So a good reminder to me to at least do that much.  We were invited to lunch by a couple at City Church in Christchurch (and she magically came up with enough food to feed all six of us!).  Many smaller churches asked us to introduce ourselves.  One church asked us to sit in the front (not our favorite gesture).  Two young women at very large Hillsong spotted the girls and walked up to invite them to the youth service.  I was very impressed by that one--because they were young and because it was a much harder place to spot visitors.  A few churches provided gift bags (the one with candy bars was our personal favorite).  
• We've seen some interesting twists on things.  We appreciated the worship team singers who had microphones, but stood on our level facing the stage so it became more about the music and less about watching them (there was still one worship leader on stage that we could follow).  
• We've come across a surprising number of women speakers and guest speakers--and some of them were from the U.S. which was a bummer in a way.
• We've had many discussions about excellence vs. authenticity.  In an ideal world, it would be both.  It's sometimes very distracting when the singer's out of key or the sound system is WAY too loud or the instrumentalists are struggling, but there's also a sweetness in "Giv[ing] of your best to the master" as the old hymn says.  And it's great to have high quality music, but then the distraction sometimes becomes whether this is about them or God.
• It's been interesting to have discussions with the girls and hear more about what speaks to them when they worship.  I'm most surprised (pleasantly) by how they're looking for teaching from the Bible and pick up on it very quickly when it's just about fun and nothing deeper.
• Speaking of the girls, Trina's been a trooper about going to kids' church when someone grabs her hand and leads her away.
• I cry almost every Sunday!  There's something really beautiful about the body of Christ all around the world, worshipping in different ways, at different times, with different gifts.  We're all broken (I especially think of the woman at one church who was more interested in knowing WHO was causing problems in another woman's life rather than praying for her--don't we all want to know that kind of dirt?!), but we're all offering up what we have.
• In general, we've had strong messages from the Bible.  Disappointing to speak with one pastor who was also operating an ashram so people could explore their spirituality however they wanted, rather than pointing them to Jesus.  
• Unlike West Michigan where many people have grown up in Christianity and it's an accepted thing, we've heard many stories of people sacrificing a lot to be a Christian (status, family, $$).  We've also heard stories of realizing Jesus' power through a miraculous healing.
• And of course, we have our funny moments.  Hearing the girls beg "Please, PLEASE don't make us walk into that tiny church!"  Or the man in one church who was enthusiastically clapping and dancing but way off beat.

So there you have it.  I'm sure I'll come up with many other thoughts the minute I hit send, but these are the ones that come to mind. We continue to pray that God will use all these interactions with His Church to draw us a little closer to Him.