2003 June » TheBellSite

We have had a busy couple of weeks, but over all, it’s been successful as far as accomplishing our goals. We are currently in Ching Mai – sunny Thailand wrapping up the 2004 budget proposal. We had over twice as many folks on our team to do data entry/printing, than what we have had the past couple of years. Having a larger team proved to be less stressful, and less time consuming. Of course, Jackie’s responsibility didn’t lessen any, but he seemed to tackle the task with more confidence. I’m quite impressed with the organization ability of our supervisor to pull off such a large task, to distribute the work and to complete the process in about half the time. THe rest of the team have been released, except te 3 of us. I’ve just helped out tie up some loose ends all morning, but now I’m sitting idle, until Jackie can release some ending tasks for me to print. I’ve caught up on reading Taiwan news to find that the SARS travel alert was lifted yesterday. YEA! Does anyone want to come see us during our last month??? Oh, that would be fun, I bet fairs are cheaper – Taiwan is leading a campaign to revive the flor of tourist. I also read a funny article that Taiwan will fine you if your a/c drips water on the street. Those who report offenders get 20% of the fine money. We return to Taipei tomorrow (after 10 very busy days – 2 different cities/hotels)and it will be nice to attempt to return to a little normalcy. although normal is disappearing swiftly for us. With BSF over, our main commitments with the mission over the hump, all that is left is to pack out our current apartment for returning to Texas July 18. We still haven’t decided if we will stop off for a mini vacation or not on our way home, if so we will be home July 22 (my birthday) or July 23. We still need to walk through the apartment that we will move into Jan 2004 to make notes of clean up/repairs needed. We hope to get an idea of what all will need to be purchased in Taipei upon our return, and also list what will be packed out in Texas to be shipped. All these details make my head swim.
I’m looking forward to coming home for 6 months and spending quality time with our loved ones. Well, I think they are about read for me to finish up the printing. later. Fran

The May conference thing was all so weird. We planned to pause for 4 days in Dallas on the way to see family & get over jet lag; Candidate conference was to be 4 days more, and then we would return to Taiwan. All that was a total 10 day trip. However, the day before departure – we receive word that VA physicians requested those of us from SARS infected countries needed to be symptom free for at least 10 days in the US before they would give us the required physicals. So, the 4 of us were held back from going through conference with the other 40. They went ahead and sent us to US and scheduled a mini-conference, making our trip a total of 23 days.

Is this under the micro-scope thing – for the good? or for the bad? You can imagine how we felt …. although spending an extra 2 1/2 weeks with family in Dallas was a gift. However, we both left so many projects undone in Taiwan and we were grieving. (I missed giving last lecture and leading share day with my BSF class. Jackie missed out on giving 4 BSF seminars and lost time doing budget prep work for Hal.) We had already received the notice that went out to everyone about cut backs and so we were a little anxious about where we would fall in the wave of the cut. Then about 4-5 days before going to conference, we get a personalized email stating specifically that those scheduled for appointed in Sept or Nov could expect delay in the process. Now, I see stress in Jackie’s face for the first time. We don’t know where we stand and we admit that the stamina for the whole ordeal has been kicked out of us by now. Heading for VA, we are like – lets just get this over with.

We arrive at mlc and the 4 of us are put in a quad away from those attending orientation and from a de-briefing group. So, we nicknamed our quad, the “SARS QUAD”. WE drive into RVA all 3 days for a specialized conference, and We each experienced a high level of stress (much worse then culture shock/stresses) during those 3 days and we all ended up with different results. One young man from Tib. area, “J”… is delayed to attend Jan. MLC. “RS”got expedited to Sept appointment and Sept MLC (instead of Nov as originally planned). He was super happy and the Lord knew he needed that gift of a super quick turn-around. Jackie and I get to remain on Sept appointment/Nov mlc/and then Jan return. That is the time schedule we had to have, in order to meet Hal’s needs for us. However, there is a twist in all this….. we will only go through the EA part of MLC (it’s like 3 days at MLC in Dec) so our Assoc pay will not begin until Jan 04 when we return to the field. That was the only way they could include us in the delay time line and still get us to the field on time. Rarely is anyone from EA exempt from mlc, but it was the only way to keep us on the turn-around pay status for nearly six months and also satisfy the prohibition from going on salary before next year.

You can imagine, we are a little concerned about being able to live on the masters salary for 6 months stateside now. Whereas, under the original plan, the Assoc pay would have kicked in about mid way in our stay, besides going to mlc where food and meals were provided for 6 weeks. That’s where we are reminded to trust God in his provision and a reminder to be good stewards.

The good part of all this is, we get extra family time and it will be our first Christmas home after missing 3. We now also get Thanksgiving time w/family also. Otherwise we would have spent thanksgiving at mlc.

This week -we are both super jet-laggy and trying to get caught up on responsibilities. We leave on Mon for Thailand for AGM planning. Then we go to Ching Mai on Fri to do budget. Many of our team could not get into Taiwan to help us do the budget because of coming from other SARS infected areas, so the venue was moved.