What rhymes with “rye dot a bob”?

Me, me, me. God, God, God.
On Monday, I had the privilege of sharing the gospel during contact evangelism alongside Matt Hauck. In the past, I have often brought up the man-centeredness of the opposing worldview as seen in their self-determination of right and wrong, their self-requirements for salvation, and their self-comforting altruistic ideals. But this time, I was the one that learned how man-centered my thinking was. As Matt shared about sin, he emphasized that our accountability is solely toward God. It is amazing how many times I’ve heard or said that exact phrase and yet still share about sin by appealing primarily to its earthly injustice. Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that there is no inherent earthly injustice without God; therefore, when I harm others, it is not to them that I am ultimately sorry but God. I am very grateful to the Lord for this experience, because it helped me realize that there is still a bunch of man-centeredness in me that I am not aware of. The more I learn of specific ways that God is ultimate and supreme and sovereign, the larger view I have of God. And the larger the view I have of God, the more God-centered I inevitably become and the more joy I have in Him through all things. I mention this because, as many of you may know, it has been a long-term prayer request of mine that God would show Himself to be glorious and that He would grow in me a larger view of Him. Praise Him for graciously granting my request! Please pray that God would continue to grant me this request of mine for His glory.

“I got a job”
A week or two ago, I braced myself with the thought of having to go to Hong Kong to extend my visa. Calls and interviews, though becoming more frequent, were giving me the impression proving to me the fact that my Asian appearance alone made me unqualified at many places to be an English teacher. If not the appearance, my ethnicity implied that I was going to be a passive, shy, and ineffective instructor. All this in addition to some prayers requesting for sanctification made me nearly certain that I was going to be unemployed for awhile or at least until I couldn’t stand not having a job anymore.

But, the Lord has shown me His great kindness in another way – providing me that job. Wednesday morning at 9:40am I stepped into a new looking building (of 3 or 4 years) with the words “Happy Marian” on the outside for a 10 o’clock interview. I sat down for over 2 hours and answered a buuunch of questions pertaining to specific student-teacher scenarios semi-successfully and with total honesty declaring my lack of knowledge in some areas. Never before having been a real teacher and being the personal owner of an Asian face, I was met with hesitation. After a demo full of songs and stories and laughter, however, the Lord gave me a job!

The rest of the week was spent signing contracts, doing paperwork, and bringing papers to the council of labor affairs where they are being processed to obtain for me a work permit. If all goes well, I should have my work permit approximately two days before my visa expires!

An extra prayer request I have is for me to be uncompromising in my devotion to God while teaching. I have already been told to say to the students “I don’t know any Chinese.” However, since I do know Chinese, I will not lie. Please pray that I would strive to be excellent for God in the workplace and that God would use my efforts to work in the lives of my boss and co-workers.


Photo Journey.
I’ve decided to make things a bit more interesting here. Instead of just posting pictures, every now and then I will be rewarding those who read by revealing some of my low/no-cost photo-enhancing secrets. I won’t go into too much detail so you can ask me for them and attach a personal update along with your questions. =) This week’s ghetto way of enhancing your photos is with your plain old polarized set of sunglasses. The results are labeled in the following set of pictures, which is also a snippet of what my daily commute to work will look like, Lord willing.


The underground walkway near NTU.


The Gongguan MRT station.


Gongguan on the left, my workplace in Mingde on the right.


The MRT map at Mingde station. Gongguan is on the green line.

That's about all I have for you this week! Thanks for reading and praying! Update me, please! Grace and peace,