Staffing SBS begins

SBS 2011 in Taiwan began a week and a half ago.

I'm feeling so blessed to be here. It has been an incredibly busy season, for sure. The students began arriving so there have been new faces to see and people to get to know. I've been thanking God I'm a bit of an extorvert so I've been getting energy from hanging out with new people and learning their stories. It's a bit overshelming because there are 57 students in the class, plus the above pictured 25 staff members (one is missing in the photo), so there are lots of relationships to invest in.

I have a lovely group of three women who are in the small group I'm leading.
And then every three weeks I have three students whose work I'll be checking and this also gives me the opportunity to get to know them a bit as well.

I have to admit, it's been a bit strange to transition back to being a staff member. I was rather enjoying my season of being a student and just being a sponge. At the same time, I feel parts of me lay dormant last year and I'm excited to be utilizing my gifts.

One area of that is teaching!! I will be teaching the book of Psalms this quarter at the end of April--it's only one day of teaching for three hours, but the preparation has been so rewarding. Ashamedly, I really slacked in my study of the Psalms during my school. So, this has more than made up for it. I think one of the biggest highlights has been seeing who God is in the Psalms...time and time again his character and nature is praised, affirmed, repeated. If you close the book of Psalms without knowing God more, you've missed the message.

I also taught Figures of Speech this morning (See...you can use an English Literature degree in missions!!) and I'll be sharing some Bible teaching with the DTS as well in May. So, I've got some great teaching opportunities. I'm really hoping that I can make some trips outside of Taiwan and teach in some other schools as well this year.

The visa drama continues as our visas nearly were ready to go through but they got submitted wrongly (not our fault) so we are waiting on the correction to be made to see the final push through. This is especially important because a number of our students are having to leave the country repeatedly until this goes through and they can switch their visas over to their resident visas. Lots of info...for me it just means some long hours and helping students think ahead for their visas until this thing gets sorted out. I'm going to have a major party when everyone's visas come through and are in their passports, finally!

Taiwan springtime has been lovely. I spent my Sabbath this week laying on the beach soaking up the sun. I heard snow was falling in MN this week so I was very, very thankful. I'm also back out running again....cuz I want to try to run the FULL MARATHON in December this year. So, I'm getting back into the swing of running and realizing what three months of slacking can do to help you fall out of shape again!