Merry Christmas!!

Hey everyone! Again, I must apologize for the millennium that has passed since my last update, and there's really no excuse besides the fact that the last thing I wanted to do at the end of a 10 hour day on my computer was spend another hour on my-- you guessed it!-- computer. My lack of communication, however, didn't change the fact that I was thinking of and praying for my loved ones back home often during the last semester of school. I just wanted to write a quick update and let everyone know that I have just graduated from the School of Biblical Studies in Taipei, Taiwan. I wanted to take this opportunity to say a huge thanks for all of your prayers and support over the last 15 months through my Discipleship Training School, my time in Thailand, and finally, my School of Biblical Studies in Taiwan. I can quite honestly say that without so many people behind me, encouraging and praying for me, I never would have made it. God made incredibly huge provisions for me this year that got me from point A (hating reading the bible and totally missing the point of a relationship with God) to point B (loving the bible and coming away totally passionate about the Word and the God who wrote it). I made unforgettable friends and even found a new family in Taiwan, but I am very ready for the next amazing step God has for me.

My takeaways from the school are many- here are a few: I gained an incredible love and appreciation for God's word and the study of it, I got a better concept of who God is and that he never changes, and finally, I got a taste of what it is like to have an eternal perspective on life and, that in mind, am able to trust God with a freer, more open hand than ever before, and I only pray that he continues to grow that in me every day of my life to come.

I am now back safely in the states, had a wonderful pre-Christmas Christmas celebration with Mom, Dad, Katie, David and Ryan at Katie and Ryan's house on the Peninsula near Seattle, WA. It was so great to be back with my family once again, I missed them more than I could say while I was gone. I am now on the Eastside of Seattle getting settled into the place I will call home for a while (a long while, I hope). I welcome your continued prayers as I settle into this new time of life, as I move into my new place and as I search for a job. I have already had one job interview, at a Chinese Preschool in Redmond, but I'm not sure if that's the direction I want to go. As I am thinking and praying about what's next for me, I am trying to settle into something more permanent and challenging, hopefully with an emphasis in Chinese. (If you have any ideas, feel free to send them my way).

My music recommendation for Christmas this year is the Carpenter's Christmas album :) I hope that you all are having a blessed time with friends and family this Holiday season and I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Love,

Anne

HALFWAY!!

It's crazy to think as I write this that I will be officially finished with SBS in less than 4 months (3 months and 27 days. But I'm not counting. I'm not!) This morning we wrote our test for the Pentateuch (The first 5 books of the bible... the big ones that Moses wrote). When I started studying (last night at 8:30pm), it seemed like a daunting task: preparing for an exam on 211 pages of text, complete with maps and character studies, but as I began to look back at the material, I just became more and more excited. Granted, it took me a while to get to this point. Have you ever noticed that the only time things sound like a good idea is either at midnight or later or the night before the test? All through college, I would always get my greatestinspiration for a song or decide to clean my sock drawer or whatever random project I would never otherwise do the night before the test. I had the same thing happen last night. I organized all my computer cords, did some troubleshooting on my wii, hooked up all my music equipment, ran some electronics errands I hadn't gotten around to in the last four months, and organized all of about 500 receipts I've been collecting for thelottery here in Taiwan. Then at about midnight I actually sat down to study. Maybe it's a plague of my generation... or maybe I just STILL hate to study, but I was dying laughing thinking about how ridiculous I'd just been. Anyway, God had grace and gave me an amazing ability to recall, because I am pretty sure I just aced that test. Grades aside though, since those REALLY don't matter to me, it is SO cool to know the bible. Everything we study makes me more excited for the next thing and gives me an incredible sense of being grateful that there's still more to study. And the awesome part? There will ALWAYS be more to study!

These last few weeks have really been a blur, we've been crazy busy trying to fit almost as much work into 4 weeks as we'd done all last semester. Suffice to say, I spent a lot of time at the coffeeshop hanging out with little Pei Yu doing a lot of studying. It is SO cool how SBS has opened up the Old Testament. What I originally thought was dry, boring, and outdated has turned out to have even more practical application than the New Testament. Numbers, considered to be the armpit of the Old Testament has been one of my favorite books thus far. One of my favorite things we've done is during Deuteronomy, which traces a theme of remembering what God has done for you, we tied little boxes around our heads with our favorite verses from Deuteronomy on them to help us remember for a day. I used this verse:

But from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in tribulation, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the Lord your God and obey his voice. For the Lord your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them. (Deut 4:29-31)

I wore my box to the Rock that night, and these two girls who come to my guitar class every week asked me about it and I got to share with them the whole gospel... well... what I think was the gospel, it was all in Chinese and I was pretty flustered... Anyway, they're coming again tonight hoping to hear some more, so I'll let you all know how that goes.

I'll keep things pretty short this time because I'm just trying to meet a deadline with the book of Joshua and I'm meeting Paris (my friend I met at the Rock Coffeebar and went on vacation with to the South) for dinner before I teach guitar at the Rock tonight. I'll leave you with two really awesome things that happened to me the last two days that were really encouraging: Yesterday I was at my favorite Coffeeshop and PeiYu's dad and I were talking about his new menu and I said something about being a foreigner and he replied "Foreigner? You're not a foreigner! You have white skin, but you talk like us and you know our culture!" And then today, I was at the breakfast shop I go to every day and my Taiwanese roommate ran up and we started talking a million miles a minute in Chinese about the test, and as I'm paying for my breakfast, the boss says "Hey, your Chinese has really gotten way better." That had me on cloud nine because I've been feeling really discouraged about my Chinese lately, feeling as if it's gone by the wayside due to my SBS studies. So basically, with the test, the encouragement in Chinese, and an AWESOME lecture on Joshua by my good friend Charis, PLUS the brilliant blue sky outside, life is pretty nice here in Taiwan today.

Blessings to you all! Thank you for continuing to read!

Anne

Old Covenant, New Adventures

Hi All! As some of you might have guessed, we have started the Old Testament in SBS. Two weeks ago we did Genesis, which is one of my new favorites. I love how it is all about God pursuing his people, loving them, protecting them, providing for them, giving them a million chances, even though they're COMPLETE IDIOTS! Just like us. We have completed Genesis and Exodus and are ontoLeviticus, which I'm not too excited to chart... but I'm sure there's some great borderline-inappropriate jokes to be made, so I'm looking forward to that at least.

This will be a short update because, having come out of Revelation back to back with Genesis, back to back with Exodus... I probably don't need to tell you that I haven't done much besides work the last few weeks. Some highlights amidst the craziness of my studies would be hanging out at the coffeeshop with Pei Yu, my Taiwanese little sister, an all base pool-party, seeing

Eclipse in the Theater AND finding Burger King in the SAME DAY, meeting up with one of Lori (my roommate from Canada)'s friend from Czech Republic/Seattle downtown, and the various family nights we've had.

Pei Yu gets cuter every day. Lately she's taken to sitting on my lap while I'm talking on Skype and trying to talk over me in her precious broken 2-year-old-Chinese (sometimes we have the best talks since we're about the same level!!). She also loves to color on my charts. I've handed in a couple charts now that have her signature scribbles all over them because I wasn't

paying quite enough attention... but those are some of my favorite ones now. Today she had a pinwheel fan and was trying to blow on it, but her little lungs couldn't quite make it, so she eventually got bored and gave it to me. The cuteness continues. Actually in relation to the Pei Yu and the coffeeshop, I had a funny moment the other day when I was browsing the web and found the website for the coffeeshop, and it is covered with pictures of me! I was laughing so hard... mostly because

I didn't really remember ever getting my picture taken, but since I'm there every day for untold hours doing homework, I guess it makes sense.

The Taiwan YWAM base has a mandatory fun day every couple of months. (You may remember the GLOWING sunburn I got). This time, we had a pool party, complete with water olympics. For some reason (ask me privately (why) 4 of the 5 pools were out of commission, so about 100 people enjoyed hours of fun in 2 feet of water... Pictured above you can see my awesome Taiwanese-approved swim outfit and our team during the water Olympics.

Last week Lori and I went to downtown Taipei to study at Starbucks for the day with plans to later meet her friend Martin, who was from the Czech Republic but lived in Seattle for most of his adult life. He was quite the character, and we had a blast together. The evening ended on a bit of a ridiculous note, however, because he had left his backpacking gear in a locker (the reason he was in Taiwan was because he is traveling through Asia indefinitely, tired of corporate America) somewhere in the MRT station, but couldn't quite remember where. We walked through the entire Main Station, which is several miles of corridors, to finally realize that we'd made a wrong turn at the very beginning of our trek. But he found it and we ended up eating

Coldstone Ice Cream, so all ended well.

(Pictured to the Left: Mark and I at Burger King, a little too excited for our Whoppers)

Probably the most exciting thing that happened during the last few weeks (don't mock me... ok fine you can) is that I got to see the new Twilight movie, Eclipse, in the Theatre. Twice. That is the first time I've ever seen a movie in the theatre twice. It was a little excessive. But the first time I went it was with a big group of girls from SBS, and the second time it was with my Taiwanese friend Violet, my American friend Mark, and our Korean friend Andy, who, amusingly, is OBSESSED with Twilight. The capper for that being the best day in like, forever, was that on our way back to the MRT, we happened upon a Burger King, and I got a Whopper and fries, which was the most delicious thing I've had in... like, forever. Probably because Burger King is extremely nostalgic for me... but that's another story for another day. Violet had never had Burger King before, and did not quite understand my extreme excitement, but few people would, so it's ok. Needless to say, I got to treat her to a tiny taste of heaven, which she had the AUDACITY to compare to KFC. But, not being western, I suppose I will let her lack of taste distinguishing slide this time.

Lately family nights have been much smaller scale, likely because people are finally getting settled in, finding their way around, and developing friendships with Taiwanese. Two weeks ago we had a bonfire that never actually ended up burning on the beach, but turned into an awesome time for a chat. This beach in particular is always interesting to go to because it's a famous hangout for aging gay men, who often lounge around in the nude... so we're never quite sure what we're going to get, and often choose to come after dark just in case. Then last week, in honor of Exodus, we watched Prince of Egypt, but, of course, being huge Bible nerds now, we had to spend the whole time running a total of liberties Hollywood took. I fell asleep during the movie and never got a final tally, so I will have to pass on the challenge to YOU!

The number one mistake I found though was that Joseph did NOT knock the nose of the Sphinx off while playing in his chariot, Napoleon shot it off during target practice. So that's a freebee for you. Tomorrow we're having a Spaghetti feed at our house and playing Rock Band for the first time in ages, so I'll have to update more about that later.

(Pictured to the left: Violet and I at the Rock Cafe)

Before I sign off, I have one mildly entertaining story and I've read a couple really awesome books lately (aside from the Bible) that I would love to recommend: Captivating, the partner book of Wild at Heart by John and Stasi Eldredege, both of which I'd highly recommend despite excessive movie references, a few liberties taken in Bible interpretation, and cheesiness at time, it's been an awesome book in challenging me as a woman to view myself the way God created women to be viewed; and Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne, which challenges it's reader to be a Christian radical in ordinary life... and how to have a "life" and still follow God. It's great. This week for guitar class, I learned a Chinese song called "I like you, no, Love." It's one of my favorites and it was really great to teach it! Anyway, I had recommended a few songs to some of the girls, including one called "Hey Soul Sister" by Train, a few weeks ago, and last night, one of my friends, Violet (the same one from the Twilight excursion), asks me what a "Soul Sister" was, so I explained. A few minutes later, I heard her go up to my friend and say "hey Soul Sister, how's it going?" Just imagine those words coming from that face in your head and it gets a lot funnier.

Blessings to you all,

Anne Joy Briggs

Finishing the semester, break at the beach, giant spiders and John

好久不见(Long time no see)!! I am so sorry it's been SO long since I've written, time just seems to escape me here (have no idea how THAT is happening). But life is nice on my side of the world. SBS has been going great, and I've been seeing God do amazing things here in Taiwan. I finished the first trimester of SBS... which at first was a huge struggle, and something I DEFINITELY could not have done on my own, but God has seriously done something miraculous in changing me so much in the last year. Anyone who knows me knows the idea of me sitting in a chair for twenty minutes- much less ten hours a day was plain ridiculous. But after a major attitude readjustment and some help from our AWESOME SBS staff, I was able to pull through, with an incredible excitement for the semester to come.

After our test, we had a weeklong break, and I went to Kenting and Kaohsiung (Taiwan's got to figure out how to use Pinyin better!!!) with my friend Paris and her mom Christine, who I've been spending quite a bit of time with, leading them in bible study and praying with Paris about doing DTS in the fall. I wish I had some pictures of her to share with you all, but she refuses to let me take any of her... so I will keep trying to sneak a good shot. We spent the week cliffdiving, snorkeling, skidooing, extreme inner tubing (at about 60 mph with helmets and

bodysuits), surfing, and sleeping on the white sandy beaches... it was a tough life! It was so great to spend a little bit of time back in the "real world" for a while. I so often take it for granted that I live in an amazing Christian community full of people who support me, hold me accountable, and are just... generally awesome in every way. My trip, short as it was, was an amazing reminder just to love every moment that I get to be here, because I know my time in YWAM is probably coming to an end after SBS (and possibly Titus... please partner with me in prayer about whether or not/where to do it). Being in a totally Chinese-speaking environment for six days gave me a lot of practice in language as well as a LOT of time to learn to be quiet and just listen... and when I got sick of just listening I would pray. While I was there, I had a minor crisis of faith, being out of the "YWAM environment" really for the first time since before I did my DTS, which ended up just strengthening my faith and making me really excited for the next part of my life, growing in my faith without needing to be fed from the outside on a daily basis- just Jesus and I. I took the fast train back on Friday being ready to come home and get some rest and play soccer, but unfortunately I missed the soccer game by just a few minutes (in an effort to avoid the physical changes SBS is bound to bring, I've been playing Soccer up at the university above the base). However, I got in a few games of pool and had a relaxing evening reading "The Irresistible Revolution," a book I would HIGHLY recommend... a book about living as an ordinary radical, about reforming the church, and about pursuing a non-hypocritical faith in God.

Last week we finished John, by far my favorite book this far, but also one of the biggest challenges, as fitting about 100 observations onto 22 charts in four days is not an easy task... During our lectures, I just about got scared to death by a spider the size of my face with visible fur climbing out of the wall about a foot away from my head. Thankfully, my friend Mark caught a picture of it for your enjoyment. One reason, text aside, that I loved John so much is the amount of work led to many long hours at my favorite coffee shop (see last blog entry). My friendship with Pei Yu, the owner's daughter, has grown much stronger the last few weeks, and the other day, she just came up and climbed up on my lap, where she sat for about an hour and a half while I worked on my homework. She shares her Cheerios with me, tells me ridiculous stories, and throws me invisible gifts and plays peekaboo with me from across the room. While I'm here (I'm actually writing from that very coffeeshop), I feel like I'm part of a family, and the things that we are studying in SBS come alive outside the text.

We will be finishing up the New Testament and jumping into Genesis within the next two weeks, a showing of God's faithfulness and also his continued challenges. I look forward to sharing and hearing more in the coming days and weeks, thank you all so much for caring enough to keep reading!

PS Please keep our family friend Karen, my DTS classmate Lindsey, and my elementary school friend Starla in your prayers this week... as they are all on long roads to recovery. Big blessings to you all!

Love,

Anne

WORLD CUP! .... oh yeah and Hebrews and some other stuff :)

This has been by far one of the best weeks so far in SBS. God's really been speaking to me lately about my priorities and where I am spending my time, so I decided to do a fast... of sorts. I stopped watching TV, using the internet, and fasted for a week. Incidentally, all this went on while we were doing Hebrews, one of my favorites prior to SBS, and definitely now my favorite... except maybe for Ephesians and Collosians... well so hard to decide!! I was very reluctant to do this fast at first because I never really saw much value in not eating or denying myself of anything to get closer to God, but for me, all of these things were about time- I was spending more time doing those things than I was spending in worship... not the singing and raising my hands type worship, but worshipping God by doing the things that I was passionate about... I've been so incredibly busy since SBS started that I'd fooled myself into thinking that I didn't have time to do the things I loved before SBS started. This week, I did art, wrote some songs, and had plenty of time to finish Hebrews in style. I also got to spend time with some new friends and catch up with some old friends back home.

THEN, last night I went to Eddy's Cantina, a local mexican restaurant/pub to watch the World Cup kickoff (soccer pun, couldn't resist) game. It was so crowded I couldn't even get in the door until halftime... and even then I ended up sitting on the floor. I think you can see my hair in the very corner of the picture :) In so many ways it was sooooo fun to be back in that environment, it almost felt like I was back in the Tamarack again. I never thought I'd miss the smell of beer and cigarettes in a bar!!! The next game is at 2:30 Am and a group of us will be going back there. It was also just super fun to be in a room full of people from all over the world. There were many South African fans there... and by midnight it was preeeeeety roudy!

And the final good cap of the week so far is that Jeanine and I, my SBS classmate from the DR made mexican food for the Ellis kids and watched a great movie. The food was delightful, the kids are awesome, as always, and my belly is full and my heart is sooooooo happy!

Coffee Mecca

Oooooooooooooh my! I'm not quite sure how almost another month has gone by since I last wrote, but I guess it makes sense, since I just turned in my 14th book!! SBS is getting more and more awesome as it goes along. Every day it gets a little easier to sit down and study, the other day I was at Starbucks for 10 hours without a break! As I think I mentioned in my last update, when I was walking back to my apartment at 4:30am after pulling an all-nighter to finish Mark back in April, I walked past an old "amah" (grandmother in Taiwanese) rolling out wrappers by hand all by herself in this little breakfast shop and felt like I was supposed to take some time and get to know her. I decided then and there that I was going to make a major life change (especially for me, a total night owl) and start getting up at 5am to come and study in this "amah's" shop. It's been over a month since then, and I can't even tell you how much it has changed the way I'm managing my time and the amount and quality of work I've been able to turn in. I've now tried just about every kind of Taiwanese breakfast I think (above is pictured "Youtiao" which is fried dough which is dipped in a sweet soymilk soup; one of my favorites), all of it handmade by my new adopted "amah."

I also think I wrote about Paris, my new friend I met at the Rock. I have been spending quite a bit of time with her and her mom the last few weeks, and we even plan to take a little trip together during our SBS break in June. I have been leading her mom in a bible study and we have been meeting with DTS staff about the possibility of Paris doing a DTS (Discipleship Training School, the six month school I did earlier this year that focuses on one's relationship with God and learning how to do ministry) in the fall. If you think of it, pray for her, as she is heavily considering it, and her mom would love to see her do it, but her Dad seems like a pretty rough guy and is definitely not fond of the idea.

Last week we had some mandatory fun at the beach for the YWAM base fun day. It was a total blast, I hadn't gotten so much exercise (or sun, for that matter- see photo) in a loooooong time. We had a girls rugby tournament (see photo, I'm at the bottom of the scrum), I got to go surfing, and then spent about two hours swimming.

Despite several applications of sunscreen, and multiple warnings that my friends needed some too, the SBS received a LOT of sun. One of the girls in my class got burned so bad I turned around to ask her a question a few days later, caught a glimpse of her glowing legs as I was turning, and was so surprised and started laughing so hard I completely forgot what I was going to ask in the first place.

Aside from that, life has pretty much been SBS, SBS, and more SBS. I've gotten to splice a little fun in every once in a while... a few games of pool here and there at the billiards club across the street from my apartment, some games of arcade basketball, and LOTs of exploring. I have stumbled across a market that is VERY old China, it spans through several tight alleys and closes at noon every day, so I have to go early, but it is very worth it, especially when I'm feeling homesick for China. Then yesterday, Zack Mills (my DTS classmate who I met up with in Thailand if you remember) met up for breakfast at Amah's and then went for a walk around Danshui and up to the gorgeous Catholic University about a mile away from our school. On the way back Zack saw a stairway and was like, I wonder where this leads? We climbed and climbed and finally found ourselves in a part of the city I'd never been before, and as we walked around we found a coffeeshop that looked very intriguing. We decided to check it out, and found ourselves in coffee heaven. I ended up talking to the shop owner for about a half hour about all the different kinds of coffee and all the places he got coffee from, the different roasts... etc (an challenging but very rewarding challenge for my Chinese). Zack and I ended up spending five hours there tasting, talking, and working on 1st Corinthians. We left having had four shots of delicious espresso and a Latte for under $3 US. I guess my sister Katie was right about Taiwan being the new coffee mecca! (See article: http://eatingasia.typepad.com/eatingasia/2009/11/coffee-in-taiwan-who-knew.html). I plan to go back often, especially since I walk past my new favorite noodle shop on my way there!

My class, though very large at just over 50 students, has gotten really close really fast. I can already see how our class

would be at a major loss if anyone were to be missing, which unfortunately has happened~we've lost four students so far- two who decided to get married and two who felt God was calling them

back to Korea. We had a scare this week that one of our 17 year old students, Danny, a half Taiwanese, half Paraguayan kid who came from being a gang member on the streets of Taiwan to DTS and is now an SBS student was going to have to go back to Paraguay because of visa stuff, but the judge ruling over his probation personally went to the immigration office and explained the importance of his staying so he was granted a new visa. Also keep one of our other students, Zoie, in your prayers, as her step-mom has just undergone very serious surgery and her father just suffered a stroke and needs constant care. Since she is the only one who is available, she might have to leave the school to go take care of her father.

Teaching guitar class at the Rock has been great fun, it's always nice to have three hours on Friday nights when I'm required to have three hours without even thinking about homework. We have more students than guitars, which is always an awesome problem to have, but we are always trying to round up new guitars. I've also absolutely loved my work duty, as I've been babysitting for the Ellis family, recent transplants from YWAM Montana. Their kids are great and it's always so refreshing to go to their house every week, it's almost like being back in Montana for a little while!

Well, I should probably get back to color coding 2 Corinthians, but before I go, I have a HUGE thank you to everyone who has been supporting me during my time here in Taiwan, by a very generous gift, I am now able to pay for first semester's tuition!! Please keep in touch, I miss everyone very much, and while I've been very homesick during this time, God has been reveling to me how blessed I am and how thankful I should be that I have such an awesome home and such amazing people to miss back home. Thank you all for following my story! Blessings!

Parachutes and Turtle Races

The last few weeks have been so amazing... though it's great to done with seminar and all the craziness it brought (having class all day 5-6 days a week with homework on top of that), things haven't slowed down a bit. I can see that in a blink of an eye all this will be over. So far we've finished Titus, Philippians, Philemon, Mark, Luke, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, and Acts. Each one has become so much more than words on a page these last couple of months, looking at the history and going through God's word page by page is radically shaking my world view, the way I think about things, and the way I want to approach the rest of my life. Every day I wake up excited to see what God has for me, and I'm never disappointed.

Some cool blurbs about the last few weeks:

I took a trip to Hong Kong for my visa stuff (I will get my ARC resident card soon! I can't wait!!!!!!). It was so much fun. My roommate Lori put me in touch with her father's friend there, and he sent his domestic helper to pick me up at the airport, gave me a bed to sleep in at his house, and even had her bake me a cake! I had such a great time there, a far cry from what I expected it to be, as since I had gone alone, I had just planned to stay in the airport and catch a bus to the embassy. After I finished up my stuff at the embassy, his domestic helper gave me a tour around Hong Kong and then I was able to go with him to teach his kindergarten class! We all sang songs together, I got to take pictures with all the cute kids, and then I hopped on the bus back to the airport and arrived back in Taipei a few hours later.

We started our ministries; there were a bunch of choices but I chose to work at the Rock, the free coffeeshop on a busy shopping street near our classroom that YWAM runs. I really love that place (not just for the free coffee :)) ) because now every week I get three hours where I can just put all homework or any other stresses aside and just be there, talking to people, which is what I love. The first week I met a girl named Paris who is sixteen, she just dropped out of high school and came into the rock with purple hair, a lip ring, and tattoos... which to me doesn't seem too out of the ordinary, but I can't even imagine how her Taiwanese mother reacted. The two of us got to talking and I was able for the first time in my life (inspired by the book of Acts, which we were going through at the time) share the gospel and my testimony from a real and genuine place in my heart. From the moment I met this girl, God gave me such a huge heart for her, I felt like it was my responsibility to do everything I could to help protect and equip her for a world that would be really hard without God. I really encouraged her to do a Discipleship Training School (the six month school I completed with YWAM in January) and to get a solid foundation in her life, and the awesome part is she is now considering it. I was able to take her to church last Sunday and I also got to talk to her mom about YWAM and just my heart for Paris as well. It was such a cool experience, when we first met at the Rock three hours passed like a moment, and then after we'd been to church together last Sunday, she showed up to the guitar class I'm teaching at the Rock on Friday night. Oh. and did I mention that all this went down in CHINESE??? God has given me so many amazing opportunities to continue working with my language since I've been here, I really am seeing how creative He was in getting me here in the first place.

Last weekend I organized family night at the beach and we had a big bonfire, but instead of cooking, we were all able to just sit by the bonfire, talk and relax. This week, however, I'm taking on a big project: making marinara sauce from scratch. I'm not sure how it will go yet, but when God's hand is in things (though they may not work out as we'd hoped) they always work out as he plans.

Though I haven't had much time to play music, I snuck up to the roof a few days ago and took a long break from homework to write a song. Though the song isn't a million dollar maker, I am so thankful that I have music as an outlet, and I've decided that I'm going to start playing more often a priority because it was so refreshing to just be up there, singing at the top of my lungs.

The most exciting thing going on lately is that God's really been showing me how I can better manage my time so I can do my best in SBS while still having time for things like hanging out with Paris, playing music, and learning Chinese. One way he showed to me, though it seemed extreme at first, turned out to be one of the best things that's happened to me in a while. While I was walking home from McDonald's at 4:30 am after pulling an all-nighter trying to finish Mark, thinking that there was no way I'd make it through SBS like that, I walked past this little breakfast shop and saw the most precious grandma rolling out dough for the day's work. I felt God say that I should be there in the mornings keeping her company, so starting on Monday, I got up at 5am and took my homework to the breakfast shop and did homework for 3 hours before class started every day this week. I got to talk to the grandma a little bit more each day, the first day just being "good morning, how are you" the second, more of the same, the third "hey why are you here?" and I got to tell her about SBS and YWAM and on Friday, when I was telling her about the Rock, she said that she was going to send her son to take my guitar class. Also, halfway through the week her daughter would bring in her VERY fat and cute grandson who I've also been playing peekaboo with from across the room every morning since then. It's been so fun just building a relationship, being more disciplined, and having those extra few hours every day to finish my homework.

Yesterday, taking a much needed break from studying, I made a few funny videos with one of my classmates, one of us dropping an action figure with a plastic bag parachute off various rooftops, and one of my turtles racing in a corral we made for them out of our orientation packets! It was great to just forget about school for a while and have some fun. I'll be sure to post a link to the videos as soon as I'm finished editing them.

Anyway, I need to go to the market and buy thirty pounds of tomatoes for tonight! Thank you all for continuing to read and pray! Blessings!