Random House Dinner

Jen here. Roy and I love entertaining/hosting. In our first year of marriage we had a weekly meal at our place with three of my good friends and anyone else who came. It was random, and it was dinner. Thus began the random house dinner.

In our fourth year of marriage we have picked it up again. Praise God for His awesome provision of a house to rent with ample room for dinner and hanging out with friends. Hallelujah!

We invite anyone and everyone, the same day every week.  We have had from just the 4 of us (Roy, me and two housemates) to about 8 people. The most common guests are friends from work, so I am surrounded by chess coaches! Games of chess are common as well as Backgammon, Euchre(my favorite!) and Apples to Apples.

Tonight the guys decided to film a kung-fu chess game, which is what the photos are of. :)

Enjoy!

The Troll

Jen here. So I've been posting more often than usual, but my posts are shorter. Why? Roy put a blogging app on my phone so now I can take a photo and immediately write a quick blog about it and post it. Hooray!

Yesterday Roy, Dale and I went to sushi with some friends in Fremont, which is in Seattle. Our friends are moving to Chicago in one month so it was a sort of farewell dinner although we will see them a bit before they leave. It was a good time with good food at a restaurant called Chiso.

Each time we go into Seattle we talk of going more often. A tourist has probably been to Seattle and knows more about its different areas than we do. Maybe we will plan some outings... René and Patrick mentioned something about a giant cement troll under a bridge nearby. Cool, we thought, maybe we will come back to Fremont to see it. And off we went. It just so happened that we drove right by the troll!

Check out the picture! He is huge...and is holding a VW Beetle. Pretty cool :)

Thanksgiving!

Jen here. Thanksgiving 2010 was not what we planned, but it was grand. :) We had been planning for months to visit Roy's sister and family in the southeastern US for Thanksgiving because it had been about 1.5 years since we saw them last (before HK). But as time got closer, our funds and the plane prices weren't lining up. Plus, Thanksgiving isn't exactly a long holiday off work. So we ended up staying in Seattle and our good friends Scott and Jill invited us to join them for a large feast!

All in all they had about 16 people in their welcoming home for a delicious meal. Friends, family of friends, friends of friends. It was a great time. Scott and Jill are like family to us...we feel so comfortable around them and in their home. They invited us to stay the night before and after thanksgiving, which made us feel even MORE like family! :) And God added blessing upon blessing by giving us snow over the holiday...so it really felt like a holiday! Yay!

The day before and day of we helped them set everything up, including two themed tables to go along with their dishes. One table was "the blue table" and had blue and white plates, a cheese pumpkin for decoration and blue/green/tan place mats. But my favorite table was "the cow table" and well, you can check out the picture to see why it was so named. Look at the white cow creamer with flowers in it! Cute!

The next day we planned to have a post-Thanksgiving dinner with a few new friends from church at our home. We made a splendid meal of ham, potatoes, etc...and enjoyed another day of feasting, games and talking. Ahh...it was grand. :)

That weekend my brother Dan and his friend Daniel ran in a 5K in Seattle, so we had them (even Christie and Baby E) over for lunch, games and even a bit of time in the sauna. Daniel has ways of tricking the thermostat in the sauna so that it heats to his desired (really hot) temperature. Later on there was a brief shopping run, during which Baby E napped and woke up...and this is how we entertained her.

Uh, yes that would be a metal mixing bowl with a glass jar in it. Baby E LOVED it. She was ecstatic--smiling, giggling, grabbing the bowl and looking into it nonstop for at least 20 minutes. So adorable. We think she loved seeing all the reflections of the ceiling lights in the bowl...plus when you tipped the bowl, the glass jar made a cool sound. After a while, we turned the bowl over and it became a drum! Good times.

MHC | Shoreline Women's Retreat!

Jen here. At the end of October MHC's Shoreline campus put on a women's retreat at Suncadia Spa and Resort, about an hour east of Seattle. Even though Roy and I decided to attend the campus of Mars Hill Church closest to where we live now, I attended our old campus' women's retreat. And boy, I am so glad. :)

First off, look at the scenery!! Who could NOT have an amazing time here?? :) Here in God's beautiful creation...and at a spoiled fancy resort. Ahhh...it was wonderful. Praise to God for providing it; perfect timing.

The retreat wasn't just about relaxing and getting away. Nope. It was about Jesus. AMEN! We had several women who shared where God has them in His story and spoke to us about Identity in Christ. The women were open and real, sharing their struggles and their sins, and then how Jesus saved them and is saving them and calling them to Him even now. Jesus-saturated...one word to describe the weekend. The titles of each session (possible identities we can put on) were real and provoking. Don't think blue-hair convention. Think single women, newly-wed women, young moms, old moms, grandmas, working women, women of God seeking to know their powerful Savior more!

All of the sessions were beneficial. I could identify with each identity. But my true identity is Clothed in Christ as a Child of God.

Jill and I chose to room together, and we were with two other women. I enjoyed getting to know them a little and was able to gain a little perspective when one said, "Oh it will be so nice to take a shower, and not have any kids to worry about or rush through the shower for." Wow. I don't think about that much...not having a moment alone. Perspective.

Here are a few quotes from the weekend:

"But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope, The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end, they are new every morning, great is your faithfulness. (Lam 3:21-23)"

"I don't have the option to look at others apart from the cross, because God looks at me through the veil of the cross."

"God has written you into His story to say something about Him."

"The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD is safe (Pro 29:25)."

Through the weekend God continued to show me that I need to be proactive about reaching out and being in community in our church. I need to be the one inviting women to come over for tea or go for a walk...and not sit back and complain because no one is inviting me to do anything!

Thank You, Jesus, for continually chasing after me. You are the Giver of life and breath and all things. Amen!

Hospitality of Friends :)

Jen here. God is so gracious and generous. I am continually blown away by His provision, protection and blessing. We arrived in Seattle in the end of July and began searching for housing. Two friends from Mars Hill Church graciously offered their guest bedroom and opened their home to us. It was a huge blessing to be in a home with familiar faces and loving hearts. We treasured time getting to know Mike and Courtney more and LOVED seeing their 11-month old Judson crawl, cruise and learn to walk. Here's Courtney, but this darling baby isn't hers(you'll see a photo of Judson later). This is Eowyn, my niece!! Courtney and Mike are date night babysitters for Dan and Christie, so we got to see our little niece more than planned. She is adorable...and I love spending time with her.Roy and I looked for housing, met up with old friends and continued going to our old church Mars Hill Church | Shoreline. It was a blast to be back and to see our church family again. Oh how we missed them! When we walked into Schirmer Auditorium for the first time, we felt so loved, so cherished. Hugs and tears abounded. :) After leaving the service, Roy and I looked at each other and said, "Can't we just live up here, go to church here and commute to work?Do we really want to do church in the same city where we work?" :)
MHC | Shoreline had their annual BBQ Beach Baptism in the beginning of August and we attended. Pastor Steve preached a great message and several people decided to be baptized. It was a great time of rejoicing! I LOVE Washington's beaches, water and mountains all in one. It is good to be back in Seattle. For a while we double-dipped in regard to church. We attended our old Community Group from Shoreline during the week and on Sundays attended the MH campus near our work (and house to-be) in the morning and our old MHC | Shoreline campus in the evenings. We began searching for a community group at our new church in Bellevue.

Our housing search was long. Long before we left Hong Kong, we were told of a house for rent owned by a former Chess4Life employee who just recently found a job in Washington DC. He and his family were preparing to move there and wanted to rent their house to fellow Christians...they wanted their house to be used for God. We were in contact with them and planned to check out the house. We did and it was awesome. It is a rambler (whatever that means...) 3 bedroom 2 bathroom. The living room, dining room and kitchen are open and spacious. Beautiful. Clean. Spacious. Perfect for entertaining.

To be wise, we continued looking at other places, but none of them compared. Our hearts were set on this house. We prayed for God to provide housemates to share the cost and live in community. Roy began working in the beginning of August and we decided to rent the house.
Courtney did an amazing job taking care of Judson; I was blessed to talk with her and see her interact with Judson. He is so adorable. Roy and I laughed with him, crawled with him, played peek-a-boo with him. He was a true joy to see every morning, so smiley. :) BTW, he was born about a week before we moved to Hong Kong...and he celebrated his first birthday while we were staying with Mike and Courtney. :)

What a blessing our friends and church family are to us. Mike and Courtney's gift of hospitality was vital in a peaceful transition to life in Seattle once again. Thank you!! And praise Jesus for His people!

Driving to Seattle: Leg 3 | More Yellowstone and Idaho!

Jen here. Our 3rd leg consisted of packing up, sight seeing in Yellowstone and driving to my birthplace. Yay! After freezing during the night, we packed up our things and prepared to leave the campground. I was hoping we would see some wildlife--especially for Roy's sake. It was his first time to Yellowstone! A buffalo wandered into our campground grazing the grass. The other campers watched at a distance but weren't surprised. They said he came there every morning. Hm. I got out my camera and shot some photos at a distance (with Dad's voice in my head warning me about all the people who have been gored by buffalo) and Roy headed to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Several minutes later I wondered why Roy was taking so long. I wandered toward the bathroom and BUFFALO and Roy! Apparently he was thirsty so he decided to drink the puddle of water outside the men's bathroom door. Roy noticed and was very careful not to make any sudden movements. The buffalo slurped the water up like a dog and looked at Roy a few times, then went back to drinking. I went back and grabbed my camera and shot some pics of Roy's encounter with a buffalo. Yay! :) Disclaimer: Buffalo (or, okay this may be a Bison...really, does it matter?) are very dangerous and I praised God that Roy and everyone else were safe. The buffalo eventually walked away and Roy snuck out the door and we were off.
We drove around most of the main road loop in Yellowstone looking at the GORGEOUS scenery and some wildlife along the way. We saw a few bears (in the distance), many buffalo and a fox. We stopped and hiked near the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone--AMAZING! I could have stared at the scenery all day and still wanted more. At lunchtime we stopped at Tower Fall and planned to go for a short hike, but I was hungry and Roy was hot. He headed into the gift shop while I grabbed some food from the cooler. I shuffled back and forth between the front door and back door and one time the door shut before I caught it and I pulled on the handle and...NOOOO! It was locked! Oh no!! The keys were on the seat by the cooler...and next to my sandwich I just made. NO!! I prayed and tried to open every door. No luck. :( Shaking I went in to find Roy to tell him what I did. He was very calm and told one of the rangers he locked the keys in the car(What a husband! He claimed my mess up!). The ranger gave him a phone and number for a mechanic. Roy called and then told me to pick out a prize from the gift shop. Needless to say, I had TONS of time to browse. I know every piece of merchandise that shop carried. Most of the shirts, mugs, cups, glasses and bowls had buffalo, but some had deer, elk or moose. If you gave me a piece of paper and had me draw up the floor plan for the shop, I could do it. The mechanic had to drive from Cody, WY through Yellowstone up in the mountains on the 35mph road to us. Yikes. About two hours later he came and it was no big deal to get in our car, though it was a big cost. :( I picked out a mug, though reluctantly because I thought it would remind me of my awful mess up and our miserable time waiting two hours to get into our car. Now I smile looking back at it. It was no fun. I was hungry, Roy was feeling sick, it was hot outside and we just used up the last bit of our time in Yellowstone browsing in a gift shop! Anyone who has seen my drawings of mountains may recognize these. The mountains of my birthplace!! This was my second time returning since my family moved to Ohio in 1998. We stayed with my God-parents and got to catch up with them and two of their sons whom I haven't seen for years! It was a GREAT time...I love going there. We need to spend a little more time there sometimes. Both visits were less than 24 hours... :)My God-parent's oldest son was looking for a ride to Missoula, MT to pick up a truck so we condensed our things to create a spot in the back seat for him and off we went. Over the three-hour drive we got to know Crispin a lot. He's at least 10 years older than me, so when I was a kid I never knew him; I only heard stories about him. He was a kind of mysterious older brother of my friends. I enjoyed catching up with him and hearing his take on life, which seems to be very common to the west coast. I took it as a cultural learning experience and time getting to know him. We were able to share some about our life as well and had a great time. We dropped him off in Missoula, stopped at a McDonald's for the free WiFi and a bite to eat and continued on. (Hong Kong totally took away my bias against McD's.)

Seattle is about 9 hours from Missoula; we arrived just after dinner. Aww...it's nice to be back to Seattle. I wonder what it will be like to live here again. :)

Hang Time

Jen here. I got to hang out with a few of my small group girls and one of my co-leaders one day in Sai Kung. It was a good time. :)

The outing was a culmination of many conversations, facebook messages and desires for a long time. We wanted to get all our small group girls together and hang out in HK. In March I sent out a facebook message asking when the girls wanted to hang out. One girl said she couldn't hang out until after May 27th because of exams. That's two months away...HUH? Generally, students are very serious about their studies in HK. Yes, there's a spectrum of zeal, but it seems to be higher than in Southern Ohio. :)

We made a plan, and as the day approached the girls dropped off like flies. Oh no! Not to worry because it was great to spend time with just the 4 of us.

Kaishi and I traveled together to Sai Kung (We had to take the MTR and a bus...about a 60-90 minute commute) and met up with our girls. We scouted the area for a good place to eat and settled on Steamer's (or something like that). Good food. Then on we went to walk along the water. I brought my camera, so I let the girls run around with it and take photos of whatever. Some of the photos I posted were taken by them. :)

One interesting thing I had never seen before was along the sides of the pier, there were several boats selling fresh seafood. A customer would look down into the boats where the seafood was alive and sorted into baskets. One who tell the person in the boat what she wanted, and the worker would kill it, gut it, etc and pass it up to the customer in a net. The customer would then put the money in the net and end of transaction. We watched this for at least 30 minutes.

We concluded our hang out time with real Italian gelato and a quick photography lesson. Great time!

Youth at Church

Jen here. In the middle of December I decided to volunteer in youth ministry at our church. The youth program had recently (I believe) switched to a small-group model, but had many students and few leaders. They cried out to God and asked the church for volunteers and many people stepped up! Praise God! We started newly-made groups in January and have been meeting weekly ever since.

The first student pictured is the photographer. I took my camera to youth one night and she excitedly asked if she could run around and take photos, and I agreed. She loves taking photos...and enjoyed the added element of the on-camera flash and surprising people. She's a bit eccentric and goofy, as you can tell from the photo. She is wonderful and I'm so glad to know her! Enjoy. :)


I'm in a group with high school girls and it's been great. I love getting to know them and seeing their hearts for God. I was there...at all stages of the stages they are at. From not-sure-about-this-Jesus-thing all the way to totally-sure, the girls are a wide range, and I love it. I love them.

Our church is english-speaking, so all our youth are fluent in english, whether their backgrounds are 100% Chinese, 50%Chinese or 0% Chinese. Two of my girls are from the states, with both parents from the USA as well. One girl is all Chinese, but is from New Zealand. Another girl's parents are Chinese, but from Canada (I have met WAY more Canadians here than I ever met while living in the states). One girl's dad is Chinese and mom is American and I believe one of my girls is from Central America (or one of her parents). And my last girl's parents are from Wales, so she speaks with a distinct British accent. :)

Every time we get together, we hang out and eat pizza for the first 30-45 minutes. Then our youth and sometimes youth staff lead us in praising Jesus in song. Loud music, guitars, keyboard, drum set, and great songs. At first I didn't know many of the songs, but now I know them well and they are near and dear to me. I haven't been keeping up with contemporary Christian music recently, but am realizing the songs we sing are new David Crowder Band songs, Chris Tomlin, etc...Sweet! In the photo at right is one of our middle school students chowing down on a piece of pizza and a shy volunteer. :)






We have students age 11 (I believe) to age 18 there for youth on the same evening. After praise, we split up into small groups and head to different areas to study God's word. Each small group is age and gender specific and has about two leaders (my group has three, others may have one, depending on volunteer commitments). In the photo at left are two youth volunteers and one youth staff.

It's a great time and we see God at work in the hearts of these students. Yay!

Sewing Madness

This is Jen, once again. On Thursday Donna invited me to quilt with her and her friend Madeline. I enjoy sewing and would love to make a quilt, so I attended.

During lunch I got to meet Madeline. She is in her late 20s or early 30s (according to my observations, which are usually off), very friendly and very joyful. She smiled for most the afternoon. She was sewing together the pieces of her quilt that she cut last week.

I ended up making a purse, because I need a new one. I only brought a few small bags to HK, one that is too small to hold very much and another that is worn and tearing! Donna knew I wanted to make a purse, so she suggested it.

She already had some fabric that coordinated well: three kinds that all had black backgrounds, white flowers and red berries. Two of the fabrics were sewn together back-to-back with batting in the middle and had diagonal stitching to hold the batting in place. I drew up a few designs, bounced ideas off Donna and Madeline, then began cutting the fabric. I knew if I was indecisive and unsure I would never make a purse, but if I just went for it, I just might begin and finish a purse. :)

We began sewing at 12 or 12:30pm and I finished at 7:30pm or so...with a purse! It took so much thinking...Donna helped me think it through and work out the complications. It is reversible and has pockets on both sides. The horizontal strip across the front of the bag is three pockets of different sizes. One pocket I designed to hold my octopus card (for buying things and for public transportation), another for my wallet and another for extra cash or something small. There is another horizontal strip (of pockets) on the inside as well. One of the pockets works well for pens...

I enjoyed sewing. It was fun, inspiring, and satisfying. It is fun to design and create something. I think God gives us this blessing...but I'm glad my purse can't rebel against me and hate me like humans did to God! Made in the image of the Creator, I like to create...with fabric, with food, with words. Think of all the things humans create: movies, books, art, clothing, buildings, music, food, etc. Everyone is reflecting God...every time they create something. Imago Dei. Amen.