By the Skin of my Teeth

On Tuesday afternoon, I made my way back to my parents' home in VA in order to leave from Dulles Airport the next day. While on I-78 in PA, I lost control of my car, spun and flipped into the median strip before coming to a stop. I didn't really realize what had happened except that I was tumbling everywhere and the glass was shattering all over. When the car stopped, I saw several people running towards me, cell phones to their ears. I managed to pull myself out. One of the people asked me if I was okay. They all just looked at me in astonishment. The guy told me that my car had rolled over and that he couldn't believe I was alive and walking.

The paramedics made a big to-do and checked me over very carefully but aside from a few cuts and plenty of broken glass all over me, I was fine.

After they emergency folks processed everything, the cops dropped me off at a truck stop. I made some phone calls to family and to LK, a good friend of mine who lives in PA. What would you know, but the accident happened just 10 minutes from where she and her family are staying. It was such a huge comfort to see her walk through the doors, and so quickly too! She and her family looked after me, helped me take care of details, and that very night LK and her mom drove me all the way home to VA. I'm so incredibly grateful for them!

In the end, I was able to leave for Taiwan as scheduled. Although I'm still a little sore from the accident, I'm simply grateful for all the ways that God provided for me and kept me safe. Thanks again to everyone who's been praying for me. God was certainly answering your prayers for my safety and protection.

I've been trying to take it slow and easy since arriving. I'm staying with M, a Swiss missionary who's been living in Taiwan for 27 years. She's quite a tough lady, with an impish sense of humor, a voice like a Muppet, and a wonderful gift for connecting with the rogueish boys in Taipei's reformatory for delinquents. She also has two "naughty" (her wry description), "sons" that she's informally adopted. I was surprised to then hear that they're 27 and 32 years old. She met them when they were young teens in a reformatory and has been invested in their lives ever since. Pretty cool.

Why Taiwan and Cambodia?

Cambodia has been on my radar for the past four years because some good friends who are missionaries there got me thinking and reading about the place. I loved the people there and it’s a place where the socio-economic needs are so plentiful and glaring that it would be natural to dive into the stream in my life that constantly pushes me towards spending more of myself serving the marginalized. There’s also a huge need for anti-trafficking work there, which is something I’m growing to care about more and more. I know these are things that are close to God’s passions and He’s definitely been at work there. Plus, Cambodia’s a strategic place to be right now – church growth is through the roof, an international superhighway is getting built in the north, the times they are a-changin’…fast. On a personal level, the sheer foreignness (relative to my current world), ruggedness and relative simplicity of life there appeals to me. I could totally see myself living there, maybe grass hut and all.

As for Taiwan, I honestly was pretty put off at the thought of being a missionary there and never really gave it any thought until my last visit in January. In the week I was there, I met and prayed with some folks who are part of a worship ministry in Taipei. As we prayed, I felt that God said, “You may have forgotten about your people, but I never did.” Then came this flood of memories of how I used to pray for Taiwan to come to Jesus on my way to school when I was a young Christian.

I also remembered a vivid dream I had in the spring of 2004. In the first part of the dream, my father bought a huge mansion for his parents in Taipei. The strange thing about this house was that it was on a huge tract of spacious, open land, which is pretty much nonexistent in Taipei. The reason why the land didn’t get developed and overcrowded was because there was a church on the property that protected the land. Though the church owned the land, we got to enjoy the grounds as if we owned it. Then the dream changed and I found myself with my family in my maternal grandparents’ backyard garden in Shalu. Though it was still too early for harvest, we found a few fruit, and those we found were giant-sized. After I woke up, my dad called and I was shocked to hear him say that my grandfather (his dad) had died that night.

All this isn't particularly well-informed or profound, I suppose, but it does make me pray and wonder...