Bi-monthly newsletter update for Matt & Holly Smucker — September 10, 2006

“Once they were told, ‘You are not my people.’ But . . . they will be

called children of the living God.” –Romans 9:26 (CEV) Matt and Holly Smucker matt_smucker@yahoo.com

holly_smucker@yahoo.com

Taiwan Address: Hsui Ping Rd.

Lane 84; No. 85; 11F

Dashe Hsiang 81541

Kaohsiung County

TAIWAN, R.O.C.

Phone: (07) 354-4991

From the U.S., dial 011-

886-7-354-4991

U.S. Address: 30010 Heather Oak Dr.

Junction City, OR 97448

Website: www.geocities.com/

smuckersintaiwan

Skype Name: mhsmucker

OMF U.S. Headquarters

10 W. Dry Creek Circle

Littleton, CO 80120

www.us.omf.org

In the musical Rent, there are lyrics that say “525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear. 525,600 minutes – How do you meas-ure, measure a year? In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee. In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife. In 525,600 min-utes - how do you measure a year in the life?” If we were to measure our time in Tai-wan so far, it would be in mosquitoes, new friends, new food, scooter kilometers, and life changes.

First, to relieve the worries of all the parents reading this, please know that we do have an apartment, transportation, clean water, nearby medical facilities, and con-

venient and safe grocery stores and markets. We live on the 11th floor of an apartment

building in Dashe (sometimes written as “Tashe”), which is northeast of Kaohsiung City. Our town has about 35,000 people and is part of Kaohsiung County. From our apartment, we can see the tall buildings in downtown Kaohsiung (about a 30-45 min-ute scooter ride away), and we’re about a 5 minute drive from hiking in the mountains. We’re also a 5-10 minute walk from a morn-ing farmer’s market, our Chinese church, and the most delicious juice shop in the world.

Our mode of transportation is a Suzuki 125cc scooter. It’s a per-fect size for our North American-sized bodies. And for only $3 USD/wk in gasoline, it’s definitely the most economical way to travel locally. Traffic is always busy, but we do our best to

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First month brings changes, new experiences

If you’d like to receive

brief biweekly prayer

requests and updates

via e-mail, please send

Matt a message at his e-

mail address on the

upper left of this page.

Thanks for partnering

with us in this way.

Also, if you have an

address correction,

please contact us.

Taking out the garbage is one of the most interesting experiences for us. At 6:30 p.m., six days a week, classical music blares throughout our apartment complex. People come out of their homes in droves to throw their garbage into the garbage truck. It’s a truly social experience. The truck also plays music—all day long, wherever it goes. It plays a ring tone version of Für Elise.

drive cautiously, and we al-ways wear our helmets.

We help in a local Chinese church of about 30-40 people. Since we don’t yet have the language to understand the service, our role in the church is assisting with Sunday school primarily for mission-ary kids, cooking a meal once a month for our after-church lunch, teaching English at a weekend children’s class at our church, and leading an English Bible class for people who want to improve their conversational English skills.

We’ve had one meeting so far with the Bible class. Four people came from our church. We were excited to see that number on our first meeting, and we hope that, as univer-sity students come back to school in the next month, they will also be interested in this class.

Our apartment complex is a major hub for university stu-dents who commute to one of several universities in our area. Please pray that this location will give us many opportuni-ties to build relationships with students and that we might be able to invite students to our Bible class.

In Kaohsiung, there is an English-speaking church that meets on Sunday evenings. It’s a blessing to have this oppor-tunity to interact with other English speakers in a church setting.

With regard to our jobs in Taiwan, things are still set-tling in a bit. The way schools operate and the way education is viewed in Taiwan is quite different from in the U.S., which has proved challenging in some respects.

Holly teaches during the week from 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. at I-Shou International School (ISIS). ISIS is modeled after the university attached to it. Students move from class to class and buy their books at the bookstore. The teachers move around quite a bit, too. For example, in one day, Holly could teach science to first graders, English to fifth grad-ers, and math to second and third graders.

Matt was also hired at ISIS this week as a half-time teacher in addition to working part-time at a bushiban (an English cram school). Origi-nally, the school was only hir-ing licensed teachers, but when there was a need to hire more teachers, it only took Holly’s recommendation to

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At top: The view of Kaohsiung City from the mountain. The tall downtown buildings and the harbor (on the

right) are visible from this view.

#1: Downtown Kaohsiung is full of shopping, in-cluding MegA, a 17 story depart-ment store with movie theaters

and a food court.

#2: We are next to the Taiwan

Straight. This cliff is on the same

mountain as the view above. You

could sail to China from here in about

8 hours.

#3: One of our favorite treats in warm weather is shaved milk. It’s very light and

comes with deli-cious fresh fruit

toppings.

#4: This is the view

from one of our two balconies.

Kaohsiung City is off in the distance.

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Have you checked out our website yet? Go to www.geocities.com/smuckersintaiwan for

updates, past newsletters, prayer points, maps, and more photos of our life in Taiwan.

Answers to the quiz are on page 4.

1. What is this colorful fruit called?

A. dragonfruit B. carambola

C. lychee D. maioli

2. Kaohsi-ung City has the sec-ond-tallest building in Taiwan. How many stories are there in this build-ing? A. 101 B. 92 C. 85 D. 73

3. Scooters are the way to travel locally for many people. Which of the following have we not seen car-ried on a scooter? A. A 50-pound dog B. A family of 4 C. A desktop computer D. A 10-foot ladder

4. We use this often. What is it? A. A scooter

gas sta-tion

B. A clean-water station

On Lotus Lake, where this photo was taken, there are many tem-ples (see the figure in the background). There are many temples and shrines through-out Taiwan. They are often extremely or-nate. Many peo-ple have shrines in their homes as well, which range in size from a small shelf to an entire room.

have Matt hired. Many things here are based on relation-ships, even hiring practices. This was certainly the case for Matt’s job. People tend to hire and do favors for people with whom they have (or wish to have) a relationship. Keeping up appearances and making good impressions are a big part of the culture of Taiwan.

Also, there is often very little planning until the last minute. Our school continu-ally changed the courses we would be teaching, even up until hours before class began. Teaching here is requiring us to be extra flexible!

The way people teach at our school is more of a direct instruc-tion approach. Read the book, do the workbook, take a test, repeat. We are having to adjust in many ways to this new-to-us idea of how education should be done.

We’re looking forward to many more new experiences, and we’d love to hear all about your

Smucker

30010 Heather Oak Dr.

Junction City, OR 97448

To:

Holly’s grandmother, Evelyn Hen-

derson, passed away in August,

about a week after we arrived.

She will be greatly missed.

Quiz Answers: 1)A 2)C 3)C 4)B

experiences as well. Please don’t hesitate to mail, e-mail, or call. You may also call us for free over the internet with a registration on Skype (www.skype.com).

What we can buy for 100NT (about $3 in the U.S.) • A tank of scooter fuel

• Two meals at a street vendor

• 2 liters of regular milk

Prayer & Praise Prayer & Praise Prayer & Praise • Pray for our English Bible class, that

we may reach out to more non-Christians and clearly communicate the Bible to non-native English speak-ers.

• Pray for patience and understanding

in our jobs. Some days are especially trying, and we need to adjust the best that we can.

• Pray for more hours of language study.

We are in need of Chinese to be able to be a better part of our community.

• Praise God for a nice apartment in

downtown Dashe with incredible Christian landlords who have blessed us by reducing our rent and installing two (much needed) air conditioners for us.

• 4 liters of soy milk

• 10 cups of iced wheat tea (Matt’s favorite)

• 200 liters of drinking water from the filling station