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 What I originally thought was dry, boring, and outdated has turned out to have even more practical application than the New Testament.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