The Week to Come

So, it’s been a busy few weeks (that seems like it’s getting to be a repeating theme in my posts). This week, however, seems like it will beat them all. In fact, most of the busy-ness of the past few weeks has been in preparation for this week.

Friday was the Trailwalker. If you remember from a few posts ago, the Trailwalker is a 100 km (60-65 mile) hike through Hong Kong’s New Territories area. My team and I have been training for this for about 2 months. Our goal was to finish in under 24 hours. We started off well, but slowed down as the hike went along. At checkpoint 8 (about 18 km to go), we realized we needed to really pick up the pace in order to reach our goal. Luckily, all of the hard parts were done, and we were able to run much of section nine and get back on the 24 hour pace. Unfortunately, one of our team members got injured during section 9. He had to hobble (with help) to the checkpoint, where he ended up dropping out of the hike. Between waiting for him to get to the checkpoint and waiting at the checkpoint for him to actually decide to drop out (I offered to carry him on my back for the last 12 km, but he decided not to do that), we lost an hour and a half. When added to the loss of motivation from the realization that we would have to finish behind our goal, the fact that we were losing 25% of our team, and the fact that our bodies had used the break to get themselves out of hiking mode and into resting mode, section 10 went very slowly. Our finishing time was 25 hours and 55 minutes. The 3 of us who ended up finishing crossed the finish line together, and I almost cried when it was done—out of a combination of excitement that we had finished and pain in my legs from restarting after such a long rest.

Tomorrow (today if you're in Hong Kong), of course, is my birthday, which shouldn’t add to much busy-ness to my week, and certainly hasn’t taken any time from the past few weeks in preparation, but which does add another exciting element to my week.

Thursday is American Thanksgiving. With Hong Kong not being American, it is not really celebrated that much here. Fortunately, I am not the only American in Hong Kong, and another American family has invited me to their house for Thanksgiving dinner. Again, not something that has taken much preparation time over the past few weeks, but it adds to the excitement of the upcoming week.

Friday is the day of the week that I have most been dreading for a few months. Friday is the day that Nathan, Collette, Jaya, and Jonah Loudin move back from Hong Kong to the USA. It is hard to express in words how much this family has meant to me during my time here in Hong Kong. Nathan has been my boss, friend, mentor, and more. He is the one who picked me up from the airport when I got here, taught me how to do my job, was the one I went to when I had questions, and introduced me to many of the things I love most about Hong Kong (like Nomads—the Mongolian Barbecue buffet).The entire family is awesome. Their departure has consumed much of my time over the past few weeks, both in terms of spending as much time with them as I can before they leave and in terms of hours with Nathan doing Q & A time (me asking the questions) to prepare me for doing the job by myself once he’s gone. Needless to say, Friday is not a day I’m looking forward to.

I know this is just a brief survey of what’s happening here, but these things (especially Trailwalker and the Loudin’s departure) have been largely responsible for my lack of posts over the past few weeks. I’m sure after this week I will find a new excuse to be busy rather than to write on my blog, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it…

A Typical Day

So it just hit me that most of you don't know what a typical day looks like for me while I'm here in Hong Kong. Here's my best attempt to describe it:

A typical day for me ideally involves me waking up at 6:30 so I can pray and read my Bible. Of course, as the week goes on, I get more and more exhausted, and this time generally moves back a few minutes each day until the start of the next week, when it goes back to 6:30. Around 7:30, I start to get ready for work, and I leave for work around 8. On my way to the tram stop, I stop at the bakery for breakfast. I then take the tram (basically a double-decker cable car) to the bus stop and take a bus from there to work. I arrive at the office at about 8:30. Work starts at 9, so the half hour is usually very quiet in the office. (I don't leave early to be an overachiever. After my roommate had been here a few weeks, I realized I hardly saw him, largely because he was leaving for work at 8 and I was waking up after he left for work. To try to have more time to hang out with him, I decided to leave for work earlier so we can ride together until I get off the tram.) If it looks like a busy day, I will sometimes use the time I'm in the office before work starts to get a head start on my work. Otherwise, this is time for checking email, sports scores, facebook, news updates, or catching up on Bible reading I should have done earlier in the morning but slept through.

Once work starts, I have a number of things I'm responsible for each week. I generally have to prepare a lesson for either the youth group (Shillage) or for Sunday School (Soul Cafe). Nathan prepares the lesson for whichever one I'm not teaching, which means starting November 26, I will have to prepare an extra lesson each week (because Nathan's leaving). I also have to prepare for discipleship group meetings (I have 3 a week). Some weeks, I go do stuff at a Christian School in the area so I can get more interaction with the kids outside of a church environment. I am also responsible for planning events and taking care of whatever else arises throughout the week. Often, I will meet with people for lunch, whether that is students who are free, Nathan to discuss work and life, other youth workers from around Hong Kong, or friends. Work ends at 6 each day.

Each day has its own individual nuances that set it apart from every other day of the week. For example, Monday is my day off. On Mondays, I make an intentional effort to do nothing at all related to work or school. It is a day of rest which involves sleeping in, spending some good time with God, no schedule, and often hanging out with friends. Tuesday nights I have a discipleship group I run that meets at 7, and the games for my Ultimate Frisbee league are at 9. Wednesday mornings I have a discipleship group I run that meets at 8, and Wednesday evenings, the youth band practices for Friday night at 6. I'm supposed to be supervising this, but lately I've actually been leading music for them because the student who typically leads has had to work on Friday nights. Thursday nights, I do English tutoring every other week. And of course, Friday night is youth group.

Every day is busy and exciting, each bringing its own challenges and joys.

Trailwalker Update 2

When I woke up this morning, my entire body hurt. I rolled over and looked at my alarm, and it really was time to get up, just 6 hours after going to bed. I begrudgingly rolled over, swung my feet over the side of the bed and got up.

I know what you’re thinking. Why were you so sore? Isn’t 6 hours more than enough sleep for someone your age? What’s so special about this? The answer: yesterday was my longest day of training yet for the Trailwalker (which is a fundraiser for Oxfam). Starting around 11 AM, I hiked about 45 km (slightly longer than a marathon) over the next 13 hours. We did almost the entire second half of the trail which we will be hiking for the Trailwalker. Because the rest of my Trailwalker group is out of Hong Kong for the weekend, I went with a couple other guys from my church. We went slightly slower than my normal training pace, but it was a good day for building endurance and learning certain preparation tips which I would never have realized I needed to know on the shorter training hikes we’ve done so far. After the hike, it took a couple hours to get home (a long bus ride, a short walk, and a stop at McDonalds), and after a long shower, I went to bed around 2:30. While 6 hours of sleep is normally enough for me, it falls desperately short of being adequate when my body is trying to recover from a 45 km hike. Tomorrow (my day off) will be a beautiful day.

In the rest of my life, things are going well. Last week, I read the book Radical by David Platt. It is a book I highly recommend about taking Jesus words as Jesus’ words and obeying them because He said them rather than trying to analyze the reasons why they shouldn’t apply to us. It hurt at points (notice the “s” on the end of the word “point”) because of how close to home a lot of what he was saying hit, but it was an incredible read and a great challenge to take my faith seriously.

Trailwalker/Update

I am sorry it has taken so long for me to update my blog since my last post. I have had a crazy busy couple of weeks, consisting of 3 consecutive days of camp with a local Christian school (where I spoke twice to the eleventh grade boys and hung out with the kids for the whole time I was there), work, teaching at our youth group for the past few weeks, leading two discipleship groups per week, hanging out with the kids, and "networking" with other Hong Kong youth pastors (this largely consisted of us staying up until 4:30 AM at camp playing cards and talking about life, in addition to some basketball in the park and another night discussion at camp which ended at the nice early hour of 1 AM). My ultimate frisbee league has also started, and my team, the Leadbeaters (an Australian possum which was thought to be extinct for many years until one was discovered in the 1960s or so) is 0-1-1. We have become a comeback team, letting our opponents go ahead early and making it exciting late, but so far we haven't had big enough comebacks to turn them into wins.

Another big development in my life the past couple of weeks is that I have been recruited to do something called the "Trailwalker" with some men from my church. The Trailwalker is a charity fundraising hike along a Hong Kong trail called the MacLahose Trail. The MacLehose is 100 km long. All 4 members of the team must do all 100 km (62 or so miles) together. Each team has 48 hours to complete the hike, but my team has set a goal of completing it in 24 hours. We went out last Saturday, which was my first day training with the team, for a hike of about 20 km (12.5 ish miles). This past Thursday night we went on a night hike, where it rained a lot (the rain wasn't part of the plan, but we walked through it anyway), to get used to hiking in the dark, since completing the MacLehose in 24 hours will require us to walk through the night. Yesterday (Saturday), we went on another hike, this one being 27 km (about 16 miles). We did yesterday's hike (on 2 days' rest) in 6.7 hours, which would put us on a 100 km pace of just under 25 hours. We still have a month and a half until the Trailwalker, but we have a lot of training to do in that time.

Psalm 63:1

The past couple of days, I have been spending a lot of time reading and thinking about Psalm 63. It is a great chapter. Tonight, I decided to post some of my thoughts on Psalm 63:1 for your reading pleasure/consideration. Depending on my schedule, I may post my comments on the rest of the chapter later in the week. Whether I finish the project or not, here is the start:

David wrote this Psalm when he was in the wilderness--in a dry and weary land where there is no water. It is a Psalm of desire for communion with God. David starts by expressing his "thirst" for God, then says, "my flesh faints for you." The ESV translates the next part, "as in a dry and weary land where there is no water." This draws up strong pictures of David's desire for God, similar to Psalm 42 (As the deer pants for the water...). The only problem with this is the ESV is the only translation I've seen so far that translates it this way. I don't know which translation is correct, but the NASB, NIV, KJV, and Geneva Bible all translate it as, "in" a dry and weary land (rather than "as in"). I think this gives an even stronger portrayal of David's desire for God in this passage. Instead of saying metaphorically, "I desire you like I would want water if I were stuck in the desert," he is saying concretely, "I am in the desert. My throat is dry, my lips are cracked, and I am probably dehydrated. Most men at this point could focus on nothing but their desire for water. Not me. My desire in this time is for You. I don't thirst for water, I thirst for You, God. I do not faint because of my lack of water, I faint because I desire a closer walk with You. All my human instincts tell me to forget about You for a little while so I can find water, but I cannot forget You." This is not a figurative message of one man's romanticized dreams of a closer walk with God. It is a desperate plea for communion with God, his creator and sustainer. It is the cry of a desperate man for the only thing that will truly satisfy him.

I hope these thoughts encourage you and challenge you to seek God with a greater voracity as they have encouraged and challenged me.

Times of Change

Sorry it’s been a couple weeks since my last post. They have been a crazy 2 weeks. Last Tuesday, August 31, my church’s new pastor, Dr. Dan Williams, and his family arrived from Oklahoma (who could blame them for wanting to get away from there…). This is a very exciting event for the church, as it (hopefully) marks the end of a long period of the church being without a long-term leader. Tomorrow, he preaches in IBC for the first time, and I’m excited to hear him speak. Along with Dr. Dan (our new pastor) came his wife Anita and his son Nathan. They are a very friendly family and it has been exciting getting to know them the past couple of weeks.

Two days after the Williams family arrived, Josh Chee arrived in Hong Kong. Josh is a 20 year old university student from Toronto. He is also now my roommate for the semester. It is very different actually having someone to talk to in my apartment, and it took a couple days to get used to having another person living here. He is doing great adjusting to Hong Kong, and I am excited to get to live with him for the next semester.


Other than the transitions from the past couple weeks, work itself has been keeping me busy. This week, I ended up working close to 50 hours, including speaking at a local Christian school, starting the 2 discipleship groups I’m leading for the semester, teaching at Shillage (our youth group), and planning and running a youth event today.

Another thing I did in the past 2 weeks is sign up for a competitive ultimate Frisbee league. Luckily, I got drafted to the league although none of the people drafting the teams have ever seen me play before. Apparently someone at the draft who knew me mentioned to the captain of the team that drafted me that I’m really tall, and that was enough for them to take a chance on me. The youth pastor from ECC, another church in Hong Kong, is also on my team, and he said he hopes I turn out to be a late round steal. I’ll keep you updated on how that goes.

That should catch you up to most of what’s happened in my life the past 2 weeks. I’ll try to send updates more consistently in the future.

Culture Shock

I knew when I moved to Hong Kong there would be a lot of adjustment in my life that would need to come with my geographic relocation. I knew that aspects of my new culture would be strange to me. They would not make sense. They would leave me confused.

I thought that I would find these areas in places such as the language. I anticipated needing a translator with me everywhere I went. I thought there would be a lot of people here who could not communicate with me. I was wrong. Most people here speak great English, and when I encounter someone whose English is not clear enough to converse, there is generally someone around who can act as a translator for the two of us.

I thought that learning a new place, adjusting to new foods, and learning a new currency would be tough. It is not.

But I have found it. In the last place I ever would have thought to look, I found a part of Chinese culture that is not only different than mine, but it is so different that I am having trouble wrapping my mind around it. And I found it in the last place I ever would have thought to look—a bus in Manila.

No, I was not on this bus. In fact, I probably never would have heard anything about this bus if things had gone as planned. A group of people from Hong Kong were in it for vacation. They were driving down the street when they were pulled over by a man in a police uniform carrying an M-16. The only problem was, this man was no longer a police officer. He lost his job as a police officer last year due to accusations that he was acting corruptly on the job. And he wanted his job back. He proceeded to take the bus hostage, letting a few people go free, and killing eight. The whole situation did not end until police shot the hostage taker, leaving nine dead in the incident. This happened Monday.

While events like this do not happen every day in the USA, hostage takings and murders are not uncommon to us. We hear about them, see them in the news, talk about them for a couple days, feel bad for the families involved in the incident, and move on with our lives.

This is where the trouble comes for me adjusting to Hong Kong’s culture. Instead of moving on, Hong Kong has made more and more of this story since it came out. This man was acting alone. He is dead now. And yet Hong Kong has warned its citizens to avoid travel to the Philippines because of this incident. The city of Hong Kong is having a severe backlash against the nation of the Philippines because of this one man’s actions. Many Hong Kong residents hire Philippino workers as “helpers” in their houses. They basically function as maids. I have heard stories of families firing their Philippino helpers in light of this incident and going out to hire a helper of a different nationality.

Yes, this event was and is a tragedy. Yes, what this man did was wrong. But the way the city of Hong Kong is reacting, it seems as if they blame the whole nation for this one man’s actions. Like I said, I cannot wrap my mind around this reaction. Maybe being raised in the States made me immune to this type of violence. Maybe Hong Kong is over-reacting. Maybe a middle ground is the right approach, where we see it as a tragedy, and yet manage to forgive those who had nothing to do with the attack and move on with our lives.

Whatever the case may be, one thing is sure: I am not yet as “Hong Kongese” as I thought I was.