money for.
The lunch
is not bad as I meet a young
Brit
whose wife
is off in Cambodia doing
charity work with young kids, teaching them computers
and photography,
and not only that
the enterprising philanthropist raised all the funding by herself
before she
left the USA.
Will I ever
get to this stage, instead
of
taking the
HK Metro for three hours
to teach
one hour,
since it is stabler working
teaching kids private lessons than doing training centres?
At the minute
I doubt it.
***********************
Well, the
best part of the day came later,
when I met
Laura, my beauty salon owner friend.
we atended
the evening service, and both the songs
and the sermon seem to be quite lengthy.
The songs
are usually recently written ones,
and I like
the old Bible-thumping
guts-and-glory
hymns.
I studied
the December schedule with more approval,
as onyone raised as a Christian child, knows
that December
is the apex of the year.
There is a
full round of activities
with Christmas
Candle Carols on December 11,
two services,
one at 5 and one at 7,
and free mince
tarts and coffee as well.
There will
be gift box creations, for both the
old
and the homeless,
of many small practical items,
socks, gloves, shampoo, soap, etc.
There is also
Christmas Choir, which repeatedly
requests More Male Voices.
I see too
that the men of the church have rural
retreats, which do not exist at all for the women.
Since many
of the activities otherwise involve
Uphill Climbing, a favourite of the Ex-Pat Crowd in Asia,
and I despise
Uphill Climbing, with my asthma,
I will take
December as a rare month to be active.
Laura and
I talked to the other Christian sheep
out in the
terraced area, and I spotted two
best-seller
style covers on the Theology
Books table.
The youthful
volunteers explained to me that the
books had caused a hullaballoo in the church world
with tales
of life in a small town torn apart
by Angels
and Devils.
Laura and
I then walked up Nathan Road to the
Oliver's Sandwich Shop on a side street.
She began
talking quite emotionally about
a cancer victim
that her group had invoked global
prayers for, by use of the Internet.
She told me
how much she cared for this man,
though he
was in his fifties, married,
and had a
boring job.
We
were going to give up on him,
she said, and Then I kept seeing an image of Abraham.
Abraham
of the Bible?
Yes,
Abraham and I wondered if I should
tell the group what I saw, but I kep
seeing Abraham and Isaac, and hearing the words his only son, and
remembering that we
should never give up, she continued, I didn't know if I was remembering the story correctly.
I forget
the story too.
i
urged them to keep prayer going for him,
with the same attitude that they had
begun with. And then, only a few days ago, I saw him with his wife,
and he had
a miracle of a turnaround.
I told Laura
I liked her because she was deep.
I told her
about the Hong Kong Fashion Maven,
who actually
criticized Mainland China
for not having
a sense of fashion and style
after the
Shanghai of the Forties.
They weren't
aplying their lipstick properly when
Japan was invading them.
They weren't
following Paris during The Cultural
revolution.
They weren't
having their hemlines lowered fashionably
during The Civil War.
So this is
why I have a Hong Kong friend who sees
visions of Abraham and Isaac, because at least
she is thinking
about something of this life
and this world
at a deeper level.
****************
Then we went
on Chinese and Western men, and had
our fill of this topic too, ending up
screaming
cheerfully
we never wanted
to touch on it again.
It's
always the same problems,
I said, arguing that there are Cultural Differences.
Laura
says no, It is mostly money.
You
never have any wanring of the problem, and
suddenly it hits you, and there is
whole group around the Chinese person - a huge amount of relatives.
We talked
about some we had loved, and
would possibly
never see again.
I mentioned
the
beautiful and brilliant and mysterious
James Qiang
of Shenzhen, who seemed to know
what was happening
in my life before even I did.
Why don't
you read your letters from your
father?
he would ask.
Phone
him, said Laura, Maybe
he would like
to hear
from you.
No,
I said sadly. After Joseph,
I am just sick.
Why is Joseph calling you so much,
she asked, When he ran off so suddenly?
Two or three long-distance calls a day,
I said,
I just don't know.
A lot more was said: I can't write it.
Artists fear this sort of narrowness,
as the author Peretti was smart business-wise,
and following only a classical tradition
of Good versus Evil.
He deserved his success, and the thought of a
religious book with exciting Forward Momentum stands out.
