An Autumn Update

Back at the beginning of October, our community celebrated the Chinese Lantern Festival with a big party. Everyone was instructed to bring a lantern - but when Bob asked where we would find them we were assured that someone else would buy them for us. We have so far been the one Caucasian family to attend these neighborhood events and I think they are quite happy to have us, so they took care of the lanterns for us. Here you see Bob, with all of his innate craftiness, putting together our lanterns. He did quite a good job!!

And here are the finished products...

Ours were very simple and traditional, but some were quite elaborate. And some young children's lanterns came with annoying, tinny music...just like those annoying Christmas toys whose batteries can't die soon enough!

We're in the middle - we're pretty conspicuous in the crowd!

A few weeks later we blended in quite well into the crowd of Canadians who gathered for a Thanksgiving dinner. We all enjoyed delicious turkey, potatoes, stuffing and pumpkin pie as well as other great food. In comparison to much of the Asian food served here it was quite bland - but I loved it and so did everyone else. Before we ate we also all sang 'O Canada' together. It was fun to be with people who knew what you were talking about when you referred to Moose Jaw, or loonies, or the Flames!!

Josh and Rachel performed in their Fall Fine Arts Concert - Josh on the trumpet as part of the band and Rachel singing in the choir.

Another thing we've done this fall is host dinner and a game of Bunco for each of the three Dalat School dorms who attend our church. The smallest number was 14 and the largest 23. Those kids sure can eat a lot!! I know that they love being able to eat somewhere other than the cafeteria and also that it meant a lot to them to come into our home. We enjoyed getting to know them on a smaller scale than a Sunday morning, putting names and faces together and letting them know that they are an important part of our church family. We have the last dorm coming this Saturday night and already think that we'll repeat this in the next semester as well.

Some of the beautiful local sights. I love the look of the ocean - but unfortunately, it's not clean so I will 'look and not touch'.

We gathered by the beach a few weeks ago for another baptismal service. It was a great time watching four young people choosing to obey Jesus by being baptized.

We experienced a 'first' at this baptism. You can see the three men standing in the water out past where the baptism was taking place - well, right now there are a lot of jellyfish in the water so these men were our 'Jelly Patrol'!! Never seen that before!!

(FYI - generally jellyfish congregate in dirty water - ick...)

...and what's a Church Family gathering without a potluck???

One final photo for this time. A bowl of oranges??? Why does this matter?

Well - when I saw these at the store yesterday I realized that I hadn't seen them since we arrived here in January. Being in a place where very little about our surroundings changes through the year makes it more difficult to recognize the passage of time or the changing of seasons. So these sweet and tiny little mandarin oranges were a reminder to me that we are approaching one year of being in Penang. Wow!

So there is a bit of what we've been up to lately. Hope you've enjoyed it - what do you think? Love to get comments from you!!