Asian Mission Report

Volpone by Ben Jonson

I was reading through this one for a class I’d been helping my friend prepare for her masters students in Shanghai. I was there for her final session with the students, and it was fun to see how the course had gone so nicely for her. Volpone is a fun play to read, with lots of clever twists and turns in it, and tons of verbal humour to keep the play moving along nicely.

The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne

I was recently telling a friend about my favourite poets, and Donne sits right on the top of that list. After talking about him with my friend, I just couldn’t help it. I had to go back and read his work again. This particular collection is in ebook form, which I downloaded after this discussion. I’m enjoying revisiting Donne’s work, and the ebook format seems to work very nicely for poetry. I have been surprised, though, in reading it that I don’t mind reading the prose on my PDA screen as much as I feared I would. The ebook format seems to have developed during all this time I was busy scorning it, and it actually caters well to the avid reader. I love being able to carry Donne’s poetry, a monster-sized dictionary, and many other books all in my PDA. It makes me wonder why I’ve avoided it for so long.

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

This was the first play I covered in my Shakespeare course for this semester. (Just started this past week.) I suppose there will be several of Shakespeare’s plays making an appearance on my reading lists throughout the year. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of my favourites, probably my favourite of all the comedies. We had a lot of fun discussing it in class this week, and it helped to get the semester off to a good start.

Poetry Magazine

I managed to get caught up on a couple of issues of Poetry while I was in Shanghai and leave them with my friend there for her to read. There weren’t many poems that jumped out at me from either the November or December issues. Only “Natural Selection” by Clive James has really stuck in my memory. It’s not mostly memorable to me because it is excellent poetry (though it is very good), but because it led to a good discussion with my friend about what is “didactic” in poetry. We enjoyed puzzling through the whole issue, especially as regards this poem.

The Three Penny Review

I have had a couple of issues sitting around waiting to be read for some time now. I finally got around to reading one while I was traveling, and I found it a really fun read. There were lots of stories and essays, and some good poetry. I like the breadth of the review. It covers not only literature, but also theatre, places, movies, music… everything fun! I think I will enjoy finishing up the other issue that I have here, still waiting to be read. If I ever find the time!

GUD Magazine

I’d come across the website for this new magazine some time back and was very interested in submitting some of my own poetry for it. I like the way they’ve arranged their payment structure for writers. It’s lined up so that each order of the magazine will earn a small bit for each contributor. But, readers can also order individual pieces, and the revenues from those orders will be split between the individual writer and the magazine. And that holds for as long as the work is sold from the site.

It’s a good concept, and one that I think is very smart for any new literary magazine that gets started today. It is a way of generating a paying market without having to be out one’s own money before the orders start to come in.

I’ve submitted a few pieces at GUD, and all were rejected. Having finally gotten and read the first issue, I can easily see why the work I had sent in doesn’t fit.

The Travels of Marco Polo

I’ve been promising myself for years that I would read this book, and I am glad I finally got to do so. I really enjoyed the read, and would recommend it to anyone. It was fun trying to figure out how the unfamiliar names of familiar places fit into what I know of it all. Some of it was more easily put together than others, and it is fun to try to piece it all together.

Juvenal’s Sixteen Satires

I’ve started this one, but not gotten very far into it yet. It’s competing, at the moment, with The Mists of Avalon for my time. I’ll probably end up setting aside the Satires to read the other book, which we’re going to be covering in a book discussion at another blog site next month.

The Book of God by Walter Wangerin

I’m listening to this audio book while I commute, and I am really enjoying it. It is a lot of fun listening to the story and how it is told, but also to the narrator. He’s pretty good.

I’ve not read a lot of Wangerin, though I have several of his books on my shelf, including The Book of the Dun Cow, and his fictionalized version of the story of the apostle Paul. I have, however, heard a dramatic rendition of his story “The Ragman.” I’ve seen my brother-in-law stage a telling of Wangerin’s story. It is very powerful, and he does it very well. I have to credit my brother-in-law with pointing me towards Wangerin’s work. I am enjoying the novel I am working on while commuting, and am looking forward to the others sitting on my shelf.

It’s a busy time here, with Chinese New Year coming up next week. It’s the year’s biggest holiday for most of the members of the congregation and their families.

The girls I’ve been studying with every Saturday morning came together last night to help make gift hampers to give to our elderly members and visitors. The girls did a great job making them, and we now have 5 gifts to deliver before the weekend.

During the New Year holiday, we will have lots of good time to fellowship together. One of our members has invited several of us over to his place, and some old friends of ours who have fallen away now, hoping to help them reestablish connections with the body here. The holiday season is always a good time to reconnect, and I am pleased that the members are trying to make the best of the opportunity the season provides.

One of our old friends who is now living in the US is back for a visit with her family members now. Some of us were able to get together with her, her 2 boys, and her mother last week, and it was a very warm reunion. It is such a pleasant thing to be part of a body that can share such bonds together. (It was the first time I had seen her boys, and I was very impressed by how well-behaved they were!)

On a personal note, I was very pleased recently to recieve news that a poem I had written was accepted for e-publication at Utmost Christian Writers’ website. They are collecting poems for The Genesis Project, with each poem being focused on a specific passage from the Book of Genesis. If you’d like to see my poem, entitled Cursed, you can click here. (And if you write poetry and have something that might be suitable for the collection, the writers’ guidelines are here.)

Thanks, and Happy New Year to everyone!

新年快乐　•　万事如意

It has been good being settled in back at home, getting back into the swing of things. I’ve really enjoyed getting back to teaching the children’s class on Sundays. The kids here are really an uplift to me, and I think they are a vibrant part of the life of the body in Woodlands. This past Sunday, we had a small class, with several of our regulars being absent for one reason or another. The students who were there had some really good questions for me, and we spent time exploring how they might find answers to those questions. The best question was, “How do we decide whether a thing is right to do if God didn’t mention it anywhere in the Bible?” We spent a good deal of time talking about 1 Cor. 6:12 and the principles expressed there. I was amazed at the depth of the questioning these kids were doing — they range in age from 7 to 10. I think it really reflects well on their parents, that the kids were thinking beyond just rule-keeping, and how they might have to discern sometimes between things that don’t seem so clear cut. It was just another of those times when the kids proved themselves to be the ones who really seem to know what it is all about.

Our regular small groups are also continuing to go well. I’ve enjoyed the time spent with each of the groups, and am pleased by the study each is doing. I’ve also started meeting once every two weeks with some of the people who are involved in leading the various groups and the Bible classes on Sunday. It gives us all a chance to discuss the various issues that come up, and to pick up ideas and insights from each other. The leaders of the groups were the ones who initiated the regular meetings, and I think that is a good sign of the commitment they have to their task of leading well.

One of our men was recently able to participate in a mission effort to Sarawak and Sabah, the two states that make up East Malaysia. The work was very encouraging, and there are signs of some real growth there. Those involved in the effort have put together some reports in PDF format. If you are interested in knowing more about that work, do feel free to contact me and I will forward the reports along to you. The brother from our congregation who has been involved in the work over the past year will make 3-4 trips there this year, and we are excited about that.

The work in China is moving along nicely since I’ve been back too. The weekend after I left, during the study, they had a question from the passage they were reading. They did as they always do, wrote it down to ask me when we next spoke on the phone, and then continued their discussion. As they continued reading, they found the answer to their question, and worked it out for themselves. They were very pleased to find that they are able to explore and find answers on their own. This is something they (and I) have been hoping to see happen in their studies, and I think they felt they’d really achieved something. It was nice to hear the sense of accomplishment and a higher level of confidence as they told me about it.

The youth ministers from some of the churches that help in my support have started a new website, and I think it is a fantastic tool. I’ve already sent it out to the youth here, hoping they will want to get involved in the interaction on that site, which would hopefully help them feel more connected with a larger group of Christian teens than they really get to mix with here. I’ve linked the site in my blogroll (on the right of my main blog page) so that it will always be right there when people visit my site. Alternatively, you can click this link:
Striving to Be Real