Happy Chinese New Year! 2025

Wednesday, January 29, 2025 Happy Chinese New Year!

I finally fall asleep at 2 AM and wake at 6. Not a long night. I start packing for Friday's flight to Canada, where I'll spend a week with my mom.

Happy New Year for the incoming Year of the Snake, which our friends consider a year for big changes. We have a wonderful lunch with Josie and her family. Her mother, who writes and edits the Mandarin newspaper, loves to cook traditional food. It's delicious!

We feel honored to be included in their New Year feast.

On the way home, we spot a motorcycle rider carrying a flower board - we can't see him behind his huge foam-core slab.

It's back to packing and editing for a few hours. W has written a few more chapters and sent them my way. It's more work for him to write than for me to edit, but with thick theology on the page, it is still work on my end.

Thursday

One more hike before I'm in the flat country of my hometown. And what a hike it is! It's been raining on and off for the past weeks so the clay soil, compacted and wet, is a slick as ice. 

We stab our walking poles into the ground and get a good arm workout. We're walking off-clay whenever we can, putting our shoes on the grass- and weed-covered rims. Sometimes it's not possible: there are drop-offs on each side.

Every one of us wipes out. I slide onto a knee on the last incline. Bummer. I thought I'd make it without getting a dirt patch on my trousers. Nope. And our shoes and socks are covered in mud.

"It's an easy walk," we're told. It's in the mountains so we're traversing up and down the slippery slopes, though we skirt the tall hills.

Our goal is the star at the top of the next mountain.

The wildflowers are abundant.

We climb over fallen trees and skitter along the track.

We stop for lunch at Opera, where the pasta is lukewarm but otherwise tasty.

I finish packing in the evening. I dream that I miss the flight, and then it's morning.

Friday

My body wakes me before the alarm at 5 AM. I'm in the shuttle to Jakarta Airport by 7. Our Jackel driver is excellent, not a risk-taker or constant lane-switcher (-swerver, as is usual). The constant lane-changing creates traffic jams - and high-risk slow vehicles suddenly "appear" in front of the car as a driver swerves over to get around a slower car.

At one of the toll booths into Jakarta, our driver takes an exit. Suddenly, we're on the other side of the highway with our lane is separated from oncoming traffic by cones. (Later in the day, they'll switch those orange cones to the other side of the freeway  to provide one more lane for home-going traffic.) We zip along since there's no way for drivers in our one lane to weave in and out. Meanwhile, regular traffic is stop and go. Mostly stop. He probably saves an hour or more and we're at the airport in under 3 hours.

There's construction in a wing of the airport, with workers high above the pedestrian walkways.

You can't have a fear of heights for that job.

Otherwise, the flights are uneventful - the best kind. The food is good in the Taiwan lounge.

The second-last (late!) passenger comes to my row and takes the window seat. Sigh. I almost had a row to myself for the 10.5 hour flight from Taiwan. He doesn't speak English and falls asleep quickly. He climbs over me once, eats all the meals and snacks, and is otherwise quiet.

I pull a fleecy jacket on backwards, suspend my sign "PLEASE LET ME SLEEP" in the tray latch, and pull the hood over my face. I sit. And sit. In the dark under the hood. My watch tracks 1:50 of sleep. Better than nothing. Our flight swings up the West coast rather than coming across the top of Alaska.

I emerge from my hoodie for breakfast. We've cross the international dateline, so we land in Vancouver after 6PM (Saturday 9AM in Indonesia). My brother picks me up and takes me to Mom's. She's had no idea I'm coming so he wakes her and shoots a video to send to her caregivers ... she's surprised!

She chats for over almost 2 hours before I head upstairs at 10PM for a shower. I read a bit ... and am fast asleep within a half-hour.

And get a phone call at 11:45PM. It's Mom, downstairs. "Didn't you hear the bell? [Nope, fast asleep after being up most of 32 hours ...] My care person isn't here." She usually has a night person who makes sure she has meds.

We message the caregivers and my brother but they're sleeping as well. I search for Mom's night meds, then sit with her until she's finished the pills and food, gets up briefly, and is ready to sleep. I fall into bed again but it takes an hour before I'm back to sleep. zzzz

Read more:

*The Lord will again take delight in prospering you, just as he delighted in prospering your ancestors. Deuteronomy 30:9

*Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his child David. Luke 1:68-69

*Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that 

we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. 1 John 4:7-12

Moravian Prayer: Mighty God, you have provided for us throughout the years, knowing that goodness and mercy shall come. Help us to see your providing ways. We are never forgotten and never alone. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.