Yesterday and today we caught up with a few friends who used to be in our Church and are now back in Taiwan.

Isn’t this a great photo???!!!! This is Zoe’s family! Zoe has been part of our Church for the past 11 years, and she and her boyfriend Bret are in Taiwan visiting her family. Her mum; Ginger, was in our Church for a couple of years and her Dad works here as an engineer in a power company. They are very involved in their Church, a Presbyterian Church here in Taipei. Zoe’s brother; James is just completing his PhD in Computer science. His lovely wife studied counselling at the Methodist Seminary here, and they, and their very cute son Lala, (with #2 on the way.. congratulations!!!) are very active in their Church. We had a lovely evening with them, catching up on old times.

Here is a close up of Zoe’s handsome kiwi boyfriend; Bret. This is so that when Bret comes to our Church with Zoe you will all know who he is, and you can say; “Hi Bret, we saw you on Pastor Jack’s Blog….welcome”

Tonight we spent the evening with another group of friends from CCC;

These guys have been friends for 30 years, since their Uni days. Teddy and Eileen Miao were in our Church for 3-4 years with their daughter Esther, and son Samuel. Teddy is Brother David and Minky Miao’s eldest son. He and Eileen are dentists, and have a large dental Clinic in Taipei. They showed us around the clinic, it has 8-9 dental chairs very modern, very impressive! Eileen has been studying Theology and Counselling and is soon to give her defence for her PhD. Daughter Esther is doing Medicine in Tainan, and son Samuel (in the pic below) is doing Zoology in preparation for studying dentistry next year. It was really lovely to catch up with Samuel as he was baptised in our Church as a young boy of 6 years old, and he left Chch soon after that to return to Taiwan with his family. He has become a very fine young Christian man!

Teddy and Eileen showed us a place they have decorated out which they are using as a safe place for those who need a listening ear, love, wise counsel and prayer. It is a very modern, warm, comfortable place with several rooms, where Eileen and a few other Christian friends with the same vision are helping those in need. The direct translation from Mandarin into English is; “Spiritual, heart, home, garden.” So it is a spiritual place like a garden, like a home, where hearts can be opened up, healed, and filled up with the Love of God. You can see a little bit of this place here in this photo;

Joseph (better known as ‘Lau-da’) and Beverly Huang and their family were also in our Church for several years. Beverly was baptised in our Church as were her son Jeffery, and daughter Judy. Jeffery is studying medicine, and Judy is still in our church…. many of you will know Judy as she is part of our Worship team and homestay’s with David and Vivienne Zoan. Here is Lau-da, Beverly and youngest son Jeremy. (Jeremy was just 4 when they left Chch…. look at him now! He is a very nice young man!!)

Lau-da (who looks so much younger, being now clean-shaven!!) is also a Dentist and has his own clinic here. Beverly is a Govt. officer and is quite high up in the Environmental Protection Dept. They are active in their Church, and it was great to catch up with them.

And finally in the Picture below is brother Johnny Lee, who is also a dentist… they all studied dentistry together. (I introduced Brother Johnny in a previous Blog entry.) We all had a wonderful evening, talked and laughed, and talked and laughed and talked and laughed!!! (if you know Brother Johnny you know why we laughed so much, he is really a lot of fun!!)