Dengue Fever Outbreak in Kaohsiung, Taiwan

This past week has been pretty exciting. We've been studying so much for our midterms, and in the middle of life we had to take a break for Dengue Fever.

All Saturday morning we studied. In the afternoon, we decided to take a break for an hour a two to get some fresh air. When we got home, we found a pink paper with an official notice on our door, which was written entirely in Chinese. The only recognizable thing on it (besides the few characters we've learned) was a picture of a mosquito in a circle with a line through it.

We've seen many posters around talking about mosquito prevention because of the problem that Taiwan has been having with Dengue fever this year. It's a disease spread by mosquitos biting infected people and then in turn biting others. Over 25,000 people in Taiwan have become infected since May! We thought maybe this notice was just some good information about prevention. After checking with a Taiwanese friend the following morning, we found out that someone either in our apartment building or in our neighborhood has been diagnosed with Dengue fever. The government had issued a warning to us and our neighbors that they would be sending people to inspect and to spray everyone's homes the following day. If the inspectors found any larvae in anyone's home, they would be subject to fines. If anyone was not at home when they arrived the next morning, they would call the police to break in.

Sunday night we had the privilege to be Skyped into a church's mission conference. We were planning to prepare for that and to study most of the afternoon. However, it turned into us buying plastic tarps and tape. We spent the rest of the day cleaning our house and covering furniture and all our belongings with plastic to protect them from insecticide fumes. We were worried that the toxins from the spray would make us sick. Monday morning we also had to miss the first hour of classes to let the inspector and bug killers in.

Other than how time consuming this endeavor was, it is a somewhat scary thing for us. We are in a foreign country, we don't know their regulations on bug chemicals, and also Anne Marie has the gift of attracting mosquitos to bite her legs. There is also a frustrating side to this; our home is clearly not the problem as it has always been mosquito larvae free from how clean it is, however they sprayed everything in our home anyway. Also, in our courtyard there is standing water in the floor drains constantly which is the most likely place mosquitoes would breed, but they didn't even bring up that issue as far as we could tell and left the standing water there to continue as a breading ground.

After school we opened all our windows in an attempt to air out our apartment. We then spent all of Monday afternoon cleaning the walls, floor, and other various places. So far neither of us have shown any symptoms from this disease and we pray that we never do!

Taiwan Focus - Dengue Fever Article

Explore Kaohsiung: Formosa Boulevard

Formosa Boulevard

Formosa Boulevard (美麗島站) is Kaohsiung's main MRT station. It is named after the Formosa Boulevard Project, which aimed at remodeling Jhongshan Road (中山路) to prepare for the 2009 World Games (which was for sports not contested in the Olympics).



There are two MRT lines that meet here. The Orange line which runs West-East and the Red line which runs North-South. You can transfer to the next line in a matter of a couple of minutes. At this station you can exit on any street corner on the intersection of Jhongshan (中山路) and Jhongjheng (中正路).

Dome of Light

Within the Formosa Boulevard Station is a massive beautiful art piece called the Dome of Light. The Dome of Light was created by Narcissus Quigliata. It is the largest public art display made out of individual pieces of colored glass (Source).



The pieces were shipped from Germany and took about 4 years to complete. It has a 30 meter diameter and covers a area of 660 square meters (2165ft). The art is symbolic of the 4 stages of life. Water representing The Womb of Life; Earth representing prosperity and growth; Light for the creative spirit; and Fire to illustrate destruction and rebirth.

Moving to Taiwan

We have official moved to Taiwan! We flew out on August 2nd and arrived August 4th, celebrating our two year anniversary in the San Francisco Airport (8/3). The flight from San Francisco to Taipei took around 14 hours. It was a very tiring few days of travel.



After we arrived in Taiwan we met our Taiwanese friend, Nikki, who is studying at Moody. She allowed us to stay in here home and to show us around her neighborhood and reminisce about the places and food we missed that we haven't had since the last time we were in Taiwan.

We then decided to take the High Speed Rail (HSR) to Kaohsiung. Its about $25 more a person then a bus or a train. However it only took us one hour and a half verses a six hour trip! The train is a straight shot with quick stops along the way that travels over one hundred miles an hour.

We met up with Kim in Kaohsiung, who is another Taiwanese girl studying at Moody. Her family brought us to our new apartment which she rented for us. She also took the time to get our phones, internet and transportation needs all squared away. Having her here has helped the process a ton compared to if we had to figure out how to do all these things ourselves. A lot of these things would be impossible to do without a Taiwanese signature also.

Its so crazy being back in Taiwan. We feel very excited, nervous, scared, and relaxed. It's hard to explain the feeling. We really feel at home in Taiwan but are also so far away from everything that is normal to us.

Taiwan Bound: Moving Out

We just moved completely out of our home. It was a very sad and exciting moment. Seeing our house completely empty and lifeless was hard but knowing that we are on our way to Taiwan makes it all worth it.

Anne Marie played Sunday morning for the last time. She enjoyed this last memory with the band and close friends from our church.

We will be in Michigan for three weeks and then Ohio for two weeks before we are sent off to Taiwan!

Last Day at First Glance Skatepark

Last Tuesday we celebrated my last day with First Glance Skatepark Ministry. It was a fun relaxing time just to be with everyone one more time before I leave Akron, OH. It was definitely a bittersweet time, skating hard with everyone but knowing it was the last time I would see a lot of these faces or at least for a long time.

We had a little farewell time and all the guys prayed for me. They gave me a departing gift that had all the signatures of that skaters that were there on the bottom of the deck with my favorite brand of trucks and wheels. I'll be using the trucks and wheels but I'll hang onto that board with their signatures!

Jeremy DePace made a Farwell video for me. I didn't realize he did this but am so glad he did. It really means a lot to me seeing all these faces in this video that I have spent time with almost every week and almost every day for some of them. Thanks for the video!

FYI: There was kind of a joke that got started tonight, the kids in this video refer to me in a way that isn't very nice but its all a joke, they don't really think of me that way....I hope. :)

Normally when the park closes at 10pm I'm eager to shut the doors and leave. However this last session I didn't want to end. I stayed at the park till 11:30pm skating with one of my favorite dudes Isaiah Jones and Joe Simpson. There was one trick I really wanted to do before the night was over and they stayed there and pushed me to get it!

June 2015 Newsletter

Garage Sale

Anne Marie and I are doing a lot to prepare for moving to Taiwan. It has been an emotional process going through all our belongings and having to determine if we bring it with us, store it, or sell it. All of those questions are answered through determining if the item is sentimental, how big it is, how much money is it worth, how easily we can replace it, etc. This process would be complete different as a single guy but being married adds whole new layer to the process.

We tried to pack up everything we wanted to get rid of and even a lot of stuff that we will be taking with us. We are now living off of plastic plates and forks. Our house has a strange feel to it with its emptiness in most rooms now.

There was a flea market at our friends house. So we packed our car three times to drive stuff over. We started at 5am and went till 3pm. We didn't make a huge profit but it was still something. Everything we couldn't sell, we are donating or giving to Anne Marie's parents for their garage sale.

Long Hair, No More

Before


After

The beard has to go too...

Jake and Emily's Wedding

This last week my wife and I took a week to spend down in Florida to stand up in Jake and Emily's wedding. They are a wonderful couple that we have served in Taiwan with in the past and will again in the future. They both first met in Taiwan with a similar story to ours with some differences.

We left Wednesday driving all the way down in one day. My wife makes fun of me for this but I have a rule that we can only stop once about every 5 hours. So basically we only stop when we need gas and food at the same time, any bathroom needs must wait until those stops come up.

When we finally got down to Florida, just past Jacksonville, I heard a loud noise. Now my car makes all sorts of weird noises so I normally ignore them. However moments after I made a comment about it to my wife our tire blew. We originally were going to arrive at our stop at 11:30 but got delay until about 1am.

The next week Kyle Paradis, another groomsmen and I charged lots of tires including the Bride and Grooms honeymoon car the day of their wedding. Luckily the bride never found out...

Kyle Changing Tires

The actually wedding was at a resort at St. Pete Beach. It was a beautiful location and aloud us to have a decent amount of time at the beach.  There was lots of old friends from WOLBI (Bible College) that I got to see again and made lots of new friends.

Picture: I snapped a few pics of Jake getting a haircut for his wedding.

Both Anne Marie and I had the privilege of being in the wedding. About 30min before the wedding it was down pouring. When the wedding finally started there was still a very very light rain but it made for a beautiful ceremony with people holding umbrellas in the audience.

They wrote their own vows. Jake has an amazing way with words. Most of the time its for making jokes, but he can be really powerful and make people feel and understand his emotions. Many people were crying after he finished his vows to Emily.

The next few days we were able to meet up with friends and spend a few days with Anne Marie's relatives. We even stopped by were we got married almost 2 years ago. While we were there we took some photos of ourselves trying to re-enact the photos from our wedding day. (but I don't have those to upload at the moment)

Support Raising Bootcamp

We are in the back row second from the left

Anne Marie and I were invited to go up to Word of Life (WOL) in Schroon Lake, NY this 2 weeks ago, to partake in a support raising bootcamp. It was extremely last minute, we literally found out about it a week before going. There was a lot of homework, including a Bible study, a book to read and more. We really enjoyed the prep-work, that we were able to get done. The bootcamp gave us fresh eyes on how to support raise and Biblically what it should look like. I'm really glad we took the time to sit down and read through God's Word and his plan for us through support raising.

This is helping us better view ourselves as missionaries and the donor. Lots of times we almost view missionaries as having to be poor and begging for money from potential donors. Instead I need to be viewing myself as an investment for others to partake in what God is doing in Taiwan while I need to view the donor as someone I can minister too and pray for. As missionaries we often just see donors as dollar signs. I'm really glad Anne Marie and I took the time to go through this training, we look forward to support raising the way God intended it!

While we were at WOL we were able to connect with a best friend couple of ours who will also be returning to Taiwan to do ministry. We look forward to serving God as a team with them and being able to encourage each other as we go through struggles and with joy from ministering to others. We also met a lot of other missionaries and we able to be encouraged through them. We look forward to following their ministries and receiving prayers from them.

Through the bootcamp and meeting with WOL Directors we have decided to join the WOL team! We will have more details to come after the partnership becomes official!