From the Secular to the Religious!

Yesterday (our Saturday), Ted and I decided to try to see Slumdog Millionaire at a Taiwanese Cinemart, as their movie complexes are called, or at least the one in the Dream Mall is so named. Having won so many Oscars, including for Best Picture, we wanted to see it and at the same time, discover what a Taiwanese movieplex was like. We had a good time! We paid senior prices of $3.50 a piece. The seats are so comfortable, reclining part way and with padded cushions,
that even before the film began, one can look at Ted acting appropriately like a senior!

Then today, we actually did some work, creating a chart, based on our research, of the similarities and differences, as we know them currently, between the American and Taiwanese educational systems in the way each attempts to meet the needs of special ed students. One of Ted's doctoral students, who also happens to be Prof I-Heng's assistant and whom we have mentioned before as a super friendly and bright friend (Cynthia, wife to Moowah and mom to WanWan!), has set up at least two interviews for the three of us to speak with educators at two nearby schools. They both happen to be Junior High Schools (what I call Middle School), and at one, we understand that learning disabled youngsters are incorporated in the mainstream classroom (more on America's current model), and at the other, such students are in a separate resource room. It will interesting to talk with them all. Our ultimate goal is a paper, co-authored jointly by Ted, Cynthia and me, for publication in a Taiwanese educational journal.

This afternoon, we had the honor of having been invited by Janet to attend with her one of her church services, which they call meetings. Each Sunday afternoon at 3 pm, a meeting is conducted in English. She is a Christian. We met her at the appropriate subway stop and walked with her to the church, which as you can see looks like a movie theater from the outside. The room where the service was held was, as you can see from the photo I took before everyone arrived, a very simple room, looking like a Sunday School classroom of ours. The early arrivals helped set up chairs in a square, with each side about three rows deep. Ultimately, about 30 came, mostly young persons of graduate level age.

The "brother" in charge, a Taiwanese, sat with his assistants, a fellow from New Zealand, and a fellow from Nigeria. Another young man occasionally sat with them but mostly was the piano player accompanying us on hymns. (By the way, he was fantastic! When one of the songs chosen by the brother was unknown to him, he listened to the first verse and suddenly was able to hear the key we were in and played it for the ensuing verses!!) The spirit of the two hour service was pentecostal in its spontaneity and everyone often punctuating anyone's comments with joyful shouts of "Amen," or "Praise the Lord!"

The meeting began with praising the Lord with chants from the congregation. A brief conversation with the brother before the service revealed to us that this was a fundamentalist church (my word, not theirs) who wholeheartedly and passionately believe in the Bible and in the Trinity, with special emphasis on the importance of not only believing in Christ but truly becoming a slave (their word, not mine) to Christ's ways. The spirit of the entire meeting was joyful, praising, testifying. After the praises and prayers, during which everyone is talking praising the Lord, we sang three hymns , but each hymn was followed by different members of the group, I think mainly unplanned, selecting any two lines from any one of the hymn's verses and chanting them like poetry, with the congregation loudly exclaiming "Amen," or "Praise the Lord" after each two lines. This process went on for about half an hour, and its purpose, we assume, is to get people to truly pay attention to the words.

Then communion was served. The "wine" (grape juice) is served in little glasses, like ours, and the bread is broken wafers. This process seemed a bit hurried, and there were no words spoken for each of the two items. Rather, the wafers were to be dipped by you into your wine and consumed, but the meeting went on even before people had completed this act. We did sing a communion hymn too, again with the follow-up of members selecting stanza they liked and others supporting the choices with "Amen!"

Then people took turns standing up and testifying about what the words "assigned" from the week before meant to them personally. Most were Taiwanese who came partly to practice their English public speaking, as most had attended the morning services as well. It was moving to hear their stories. They then asked Ted and me to speak; we did so briefly, Ted commenting on the how different our background was from theirs in terms of the public speaking, testifying, and Amen-ing, and I shared how we do communion in our church, but that the values of community are the same.

After that, the New Zealand man, Ben, gave what we might call a sermon, although it was very casually delivered, about the Scripture lessons for today, on how the Book of Acts has as its main purpose the description of Christ as the kingdom of God, and all churches propagated by Paul and others are the kingdom of God.

Then, at about 4:45, the meeting officially ended. Janet asked everyone to pose for a picture; we did. And a special Taiwanese cookie was offered; it was good. Then they all asked if we would please come again. Maybe we will....

We had dinner on our way home at a Family Steak House. They, like most restaurants here, solve the problem of non-Taiwanese speaking patrons by having a photo of every item on the menu with English subtitles. Everything seems to come with an egg on the side. Tasty and I didn't have to cook and Ted didn't have to do the dishes!

A good plan at the end of a tiring day!