Born in Taiwan but left when I was 8y.o., lived in 5 different countries by 18y.o., Christian, full-time General Practitioner in Eastwood! Loves travelling&adventures. Master of Divinity graduate.
台灣出生，八歲出國，十八歲時已經長期居住過五個國家，基督徒，道學碩士，在澳洲依士活作全職家醫科醫生，喜歡旅遊探險。
A series of freaky event occurred in April 2025, right after I’ve
participated in a month of Revival Prayer movement in Taiwan, so I believe
these are attacks from the enemy. Firstly, a relative implied that someone in
the family had active TB and kept it a secret from the relatives. On the
following day I decided to do the IGRA blood test as precaution, since Charlie
happened to have gotten sick with fever. On that same day Chester had an
accident where his finger was in the door hinge while the educator was closing
the door and his thumb nearly fell off, so we went to the ED and waited whole
day, only to be told he needs to be seen by the plastics team the following day
in another hospital which was very far away. This week coincided with the week
of a big doctors’ strike! We were lucky that Chester was able to get the finger
surgery done in the late afternoon. However, when I got home after Chester’s
surgery, Charlie became even sicker. Chester and I tested -ve for TB, but
Charlie's results were still pending! Then at midnight Charlie was breathing
very fast and had very high fever and I saw the TB result was indeterminate, so
I took him to RNSH ED in the middle of the night! We pretty much got locked
into the hospital because as soon as they heard possible TB contact they got
very cautious. CXR showed early pneumonia. IV antibiotics were given and
Charlie improved very quickly. However, they wanted to take a nasogastric tube
to confirm that it really wasn't TB, which was highly traumatic for Charlie, as
he needed 5 people to hold him down. I got an update from the relative that it
there wasn’t TB in the family after all. I tried telling this to the medical
team but it took quite a while before the consultant doctor got the message. Luckily
we got released from the hospital as a result. The children were very
emotionally upset throughout this week, because they were both very upset by
the whole hospital experience, and I didn’t sleep for 4 days. And I had to
cancel three days’ worth of patients, approximately 100 patients! So the
financial impact was pretty devastating for the family. Meanwhile, my husband’s
studies abroad were going pretty rocky and he was at danger of having to repeat
a year of medicine. This also coincided with the time where I was planning to
get pregnant with the third baby: I have to get pregnant on this particular
month so that the baby will be born when my husband is back in Sydney for the Christmas/New
Year holidays. These series of event actually made me even more convicted that
getting pregnant this month was the way to go!
Fast forward to July: I was about to enter into the second trimester
and the baby and I have been well in all the antenatal checks. I thought that I
should make a visit to Taiwan, because once we have the third baby, our family
might not be able to travel again for quite a while. This was my first overseas
travel since our wedding reception in Taiwan in 2019! And the children's first
international travel! It was a lot more difficult than what I imagined (but my
hubby already predicted all of those difficulties). Just to list some examples:
Children overwhelmed by an environment different from what they are used to and
crying that they want to go back to Australia and unable to fall asleep. 18kg
preschooler suddenly refusing to walk: before getting on the plane, in the
middle of switching from one public transport to another, etc.Overtired children suddenly falling asleep
during meal and throwing crazy tantrums in the restaurant after waking up and
we had to takeaway the food.The
technical difficulty of catching public transport, which makes going from one
place to another impossible: you can’t get a pram onto the buses in Linkou
because there are so many steps, public transport is so crowded and you need to
take the lift if you’re bringing the pram, and the wait for the lifts take
forever, and the routes to the lifts makes the walks in the station much
longer, just to name a few.
I did my cpds on the first weekend back, and my hubby did his medical
electives on the weekdays for the rest of the two week stay in a more remote
region in Taiwan, so I was alone with two kids during the weekdays, which made
travel on public transport even more impossible. I stayed in Linkou during the
weekdays during our first week back, and in the Taichung hotel during the
weekdays of our second week back. The second week was much better than the
first, because the environment was clean, and the hotel’s got brunch buffet and
great play facilities for the children.It was still exhausting being the sole carer for the children. It was
great catching up with some relatives and family friends during the weekends
though.
Fast forward to late August: It is confirmed that my husband has passed
this year’s studies safely. Hopefully, he will graduate on time in June 2026!
Fast forward to 7 September: It was quite memorable in that it coincided
with my wedding anniversary, the Australian Father’s Day, and the 23rd
anniversary celebration of the church I used to go to – the 1503 Mission
Network! Yet, this was a pretty “fatherless” day for our family. My husband is
still far away abroad undergoing a career change. My dad passed away suddenly
and unexpectedly 12 years ago. Although not a man of many words, there’s still
regret that I never tried “listening” to him and never truly got to know him
well. Occasionally I still get dreams where my dad was actually alive and there
was somehow a mistake that occurred which made us thought he had died. The
first time I stepped into 1503 happened to be the church’s 5th anniversary, so
I dropped in for a visit. The blood moon phenomenon occurred in various places
around the world 7-8 September: based on past observations of blood moon occurrences,
I think something big is coming up.
There is a prayer movement happening in Taiwan. The organisation that’s
helping with this is the College of Prayer International, and the pastor
helping Taiwan is Rev Donald Young:
During the Christmas trip to Taiwan, Chris and I visited the Sun Moon
Lake. My last trip to the lake was four years ago, while Chris was 29 years
ago.
28Dec 2019
Went to the Sun Moon Lake today. Encountered quite a few incidents, eg.
missing our high speed train, a long wait for the bus. So it was very late by
the time we got there. When we took the last bus to Ita Thao, there was
suddenly a loud metallic noise, and Chris thought a metal had broke in the
wheels and was prepared to knock open the bus window in case the bus plunges
into the lake! Turns out it wasn’t the wheel, but the door that broke. We all
had to exit through the emergency exit when we got to the destination. Despite
these incidents, we give thanks to God, as we got to hear a beautiful string
concert at the Sun Moon Lake Church of Christ, and a friendly fried tempura
stall owner called a taxi for us so we could get back to our accommodation at
Shuishe Pier. The driver is a Thao, and he told us the tribal name “Ita Thao” means
“we are human.” The Thaos used to live on the Lalu Island, which was originally
not an island, but a piece of land. The Sun Moon Lake used to be a river, but
became a lake when the Japanese modified it into a dam. (I looked up more
information afterwards and found that the Sun Moon Lake was originally a lake,
and the surface area of the lake increased from 4.5 km2 to 7.7 km2 after the
Japanese modified it. Water flooded the land where the Thaos used to live. In other
words, their land was taken away from them.)
We stayed at the Sun Moon Lake Teachers' Hostel, which is actually
great value for money. However, Chris googled this place up and saw there are
many ghost stories about this place in relation to the ship accident 29 years
ago in Sun Moon Lake. Many people reported hearing heavy pounding on the glass
in the middle of the night, like people stuck in a boat pounding the glass for
help. That made him very scared. Fortunately, we slept peacefully that night,
and there were no weird noises.
29Dec 2019
It’s an amazing grace to visit the Sun Moon Lake Church of Christ.
Chris had become very obsessed about violins lately so I bought one for him as
a Christmas gift for him to learn himself. He enjoyed the string orchestra
concert at the church very much. On Sunday, we received great hospitality from
Sherry, the preacher and other co-workers in the church as well as intercessory
prayer. Sherry even gave us “almond coconut pineapple cake” (in Mandarin, these
words sound the same as “serving Jesus”) and milk nougat candies. Chris loves
pineapple cakes! What an amazing place to visit!
Today, Australia’s Prime Minister has changed again. Five changes
in the last ten years! Although Malcolm declared he remains optimistic about Australia’s
future, I think something is very wrong here… I think the government system is becoming
more and more dysfunctional and is falling apart!
Anyway, now we got Scott Morrison as PM. Interestingly, he is the first
Pentecostal PM in Australia
Now, I don’t know whether that’s good or bad. I’ve had both good and
bad experiences with the Pentecostals: each church has their strengths and
weaknesses. Anyway, can’t do anything now but to keep praying for this nation.
The Taiwanese government isn’t doing well either. The US gave us some serious
warnings. Something is happening in the South China Sea: China has been
building military installations on reclaimed shoals and sandbars to reinforce
its territorial claims in the sea. This is a region that some say could be the
next flashpoint for global conflict! And we see Taiwan losing its diplomatic
ties one by one. Good thing my mom retired before things look this shameful.
But when she left Ireland, she couldn’t get the bank in Ireland to send her
bank statements over to her home address in Taiwan because there is no “Taiwan”
on the selection list for the country! And many airlines have already removed
any references to “Taiwan.” Taiwan’s experienced lots of natural disasters too:
we’ve had earthquakes and floods this year. And the society is also a mess,
with many gruesome murders flooding the news headlines.
(Just as an aside: Paradoxically, the recent drought in Australia is devastating the farmers because the animals and crops are dying from the lack of water, while the recent flood in Taiwan is devastating the farmers because animals have drowned (thousands of pigs and 400,000 chicken drowned in the Chiayi area)!)
Anyway, some world powers are rising like horrific beasts, and some governments are just collapsing.
I don’t know if there are many people placing trust in the government and political leaders these
days, but I definitely don’t. The problems associated with human nature do not go away no matter which leader we change to.
Recently I read Ch.5 of Andrew Sloane’s book “At Home in a Strange Land,”
where he talks about the idolatry mentioned in Isaiah 46. It helped me see more
clearly the idolatries of contemporary times.
In this chapter, he was initially talking about technology and cloning.
Then, he suddenly asked us to imagine a festival of Babylon worshipping the
Babylonian idol Marduk. Initially I thought he was going off on a tangent, but
later I realised it is part of the contextualisation process to help us
understand the passage better. Here are some of the things he said in this chapter which stood out for me:
Ancient world ideology sees a connection between the strength of a
nation, its fate, and its gods… “The gods of defeated nations were seen as
vassals, submitting to their overlord, Marduk… The glories of these gods and their
festivals represent the wealth, comfort, and security of this great world power…
What did Yahweh have to offer?... Israel in exile is faced with the temptation
to trust in this visible, seemingly successful system of power and control in
the face of the call to trust in the promises of Yahweh.”
However, “idols are "manmade" deities… The objects that we
choose-the particular kinds of human persons, or the type and form of
animal-are chosen because they signify something we value. They depict particular
aspects of human nature, or ways of living and acting in society or the world,
or powers in the world or our projects, or characteristics of society that we
value and want to claim for ourselves or others… These idols are, however,
lifeless and powerless: for all their beauty; for all the power of the symbols
and the social realities that they represent, the idols are in fact nothing,
they do nothing. This is the force of the sarcastic portrait of idols in Isa 46…
The gods that they represent cannot save even their own images, let alone the
worshippers who created and depended upon them.”
And the part that stands out the most to me: “Idol and worshipper are equally helpless when their system falls.
So it is when the gods fail.”
“All of this is in stark contrast to the reality of Yahweh, the one, true
and living God, as the rest of the passage makes plain… The fall of Jerusalem
is not the fall of Yahweh… God is not the projection of Israelite hopes,
values, and aspirations. Yahweh is the creator, not the creation, of Israel… the
demonstration that Yahweh is unlike any human god-has a clear and practical
purpose: to call the people to trust Yahweh in the present and the future. The
call to trust is real. It involves trusting God alone, embracing God's system of
values, living as those created by God, in line with God's purposes.”
And then, on to the contemporary examples:
“We too face the temptation of idolatry, and this text speaks
powerfully to us in that temptation… It calls us to examine the power of the
cultural forces arrayed against us and to consider the temptations that we face…
Some are obvious, such as social power, wealth, and the desire for control;
others are less obvious, such as the idea that technology has a solution to every
problem, from communication to conception, or the view that fame is what counts…
Idolatrous cultural values are idols… They embody what we value: wealth,
success, popularity, and control… So too is technology, which is increasingly
becoming a means of controlling not just our environment but also our societies
and our selves... Diet and exercise programs and cosmetics (and cosmetic
surgery) augment (or reduce) what is counted as physical imperfection, all in
search of beauty and control over the self, its appearance, its destiny.” And
the creation of “designer babies,” where technology
is used to impose parental reflection of these idolatrous cultural values on
the very bodies and intellects of their chosen children. And using prenatal
screening to select the gender and other traits which the parents desire.
However, “Even the fittest, best product of psychotherapy, plastic surgery,
and "body sculpting" will end up a corpse, no more than a sculptured
body. Our technologies, our myths of
control, cannot stand in the face of death and economic collapse...”
So today, we still live in the midst of the "success of the
gods."
“We have wealth, we have control. We have technologies that can control
our world, information, even ourselves. This is our festival of technology. There may be no parades as such (like that of Marduk in the ancient near east),
but there is real allure.”
Just finished my trip to Israel on Saturday (but my mobile phone
touchscreen malfunctioned severely and had to use my mom’s phone to take
photos, so I will sort out those photos later), stopped over in Taiwan, and
joined the Taiwan Association of Family Medicine annual conference on Sunday to
earn some CPD points. On arrival, there were mountains of people, and the food
in the hall got wiped out immediately. Most of the doctors that actually
listened in to the lecturers were more elderly. The younger doctors just walked
around the exhibition area. Although the conference is supposed to last a whole
day, some doctors simply signed in, filled out the questionnaire and left.
Because the attendance check wasn’t very strict, so I went out between 11am-1pm
to a nearby congregation for Sunday service and even bumped into a family
physician I previously met from Mackay Family Medicine serving in worship! There are many health care professionals in this church and they thought I was very young and seemed very surprised that it is already my 8th year practicing as a fellowed GP (I was entered into the register of fellows on 8July, 2011).
Some thoughts from the sermon:
The suffering of the flesh: you do not have to testify Christ using
“success” stories.
The world is full of suffering and persecution.
Suffering with Christ and sharing in Christ’s glory.
Focusing on Christ to overcome difficulties and pressing on towards the
goal.
Our time on earth is short. Sometimes we have to remember our eternal
home is not on earth.
A psychiatrist gave an interesting talk:
About obsessive compulsive people: Someone obsessed about cleanliness
aren’t necessarily clean themselves. His/her idea of “uncleanliness” may be
very different from you. A obsessive compulsive Hobo can believe that the
smelly clothes he’s wearing is “clean”, while clothes that’s been through a
washing machine is “contaminated”!
Romantic delusional disorders: He noticed that when a handsome guy was
mayor of Taipei, he had to treat many “mayor’s mistresses.” The current mayor
isn’t all that attractive and so far he hasn’t encountered any client who
thinks she’s his mistress. So there is still a sense of reality here.
Some psychology counselling available in the community are actually
quite cheap: equivalent of approximately $10 Australian dollars per session.
He finds that some of the high risk suicide patients forcibly admitted
into the hospital were initially verbally aggressive to the psychiatrists, but
their anger dissipated after a few days and the golden time for discharge is
after one week.
Health literacy and the “Choosing wisely” campaign:
The doctor is not the god of Adam.
When we grow old and sick, we need a good helper: the doctor.
Females are generally more interested in discussing about health and
better at taking care of themselves, so females are generally more health
literate than males.
The elderly: best to see the doctors in the presence of other family
members.
Health literacy education should begin from an early age.
And in the final talk, I learned there is a new specialty in Taiwan
called the “hospitalist”! However, I find this specialty redundant, because the
family physician can do all of the things they do (just employ some GPs in the
hospital)!
After the conference finished I met up with two Christians who
interceded for my sick aunt and kindly gave
me a gift. There was a strong presence of God during the prayer. They too agreed that they sense the presence of a very strong spiritual warfare over the last weeks.
Had a very enjoyable catch up with my paternal relatives for dinner: My
grandpa suffers from dementia but is still very humorous. He has a deranged
sense of time but still very clear logic. I learned from him that my grandma
used to sing on radio because her voice was great, and he used to call my dad
"bull" because of his bad temper. Received some yummy fruits from a cousin
who’s married to a farmer. The break will finish Monday when I leave for
Sydney. 43oC in Israel vs 0oC in Sydney: hope I will survive this weather
change when I land on Tuesday morning and start work in the clinic on Tuesday
afternoon!
On Monday evening, when I was about to leave Taiwan, I visited my aunt and saw that her situation became better. Felt a bit surprised when I saw her room number was 1119 since our room number in Israel was 119! Her consultant said, “she was kicked off from the River Styx” (another words meant she had a near death experience and is lucky to be alive). The flight to Australia was delayed and I landed at 11:11am. Although I declared having “animal products” on my customs form, the officers simply asked me to put my luggage through the scanning machine and didn’t even look at my luggage, so I got out at 12 noon and had enough time to take the train home, put my stuff down, and wash myself before going to work at 2pm. I was initially fearful of becoming very sick from the extreme temperature changes going from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern Hemisphere, and it was a blessing that Sydney weather suddenly warmed up to 18oC when I arrived.
Feel like the rebuilding of the walls of
Jerusalem in the book of Nehemiah! Building the walls at the same time as
carrying weapons in preparation to ward off enemies! Had to take a week off
work to fly back to Taiwan during the busiest part of my semester at Morling
College (happened to sit at the place where the recent tragedy of the women
sucked out of the plane was sitting)... Coincidentally, reading Romans 8 for
the assignment, on the pains of #childbirth!
Need to stay focused on the kingdom that
cannot be shaken!
22April Sunday
Around 5am, the plane landed safely in
Taoyuan Taiwan Airport. A passenger in the same cabin had been snoring
throughout the trip, shaking violently as he snored. He was so noisy that
everyone stared at him because no one could fall asleep due to this noise. Even
the air host tried waking him but he only briefly opened his eyes and then
snored again. I don’t know if this person has a physical problem (ie. Very
obstructed airways) or psychiatric problem.
As soon as the plane landed, I went off to
a CPD activity in Taiwan (Don’t want to lose my Taiwanese Family Medicine
licence). Although the teaching lasted for a whole day which was exhausting, it is very helpful clinically.
The reason why I've made the trip is to visit my
aunt, who has terminal cancer. She was already diagnosed with end stage terminal
cancer in July 2016. Although no one “formally” spread the gospel to her, she
called upon God’s name during the treatment in 2016, and after three months the tumours
became undetectable by MRI. I took her through the prayer to accept Jesus as
her savior, but she didn’t feel like going to church afterwards. In actual
fact, her treating doctor was already very amazed that she could reach “remission”.
However, cancer that is undetectable by MRI doesn’t mean “cured cancer”. It’s
just that the cancer cells are too small to be detected. So the treating doctor
still didn’t think she’d live beyond a year after treatment. However, this was
not revealed to my aunt, as people who knew her well feared that if she lose
hope, she’d go into depression and commit suicide. On 8April, my aunt was
admitted into the hospital with a major bleed. Two days later, it was
discovered that the cancer had spread all over her liver and lungs. From these
information, I speculate that she will not last more than a few weeks if there
is no supernatural intervention, because there are so many acutely fatal conditions: nonstop haemorrhage, fatal loss of liver function or being unable to breathe are all things that can happen to her anytime. To get out of the hospital alive will be a
miracle! In this horrendous situation, I wondered what will happen to her
faith. Then I heard the news that she still replied “Christian” when the nurse
asked her what her religion is.
At night, I visited my aunt and saw that
she was extremely frail. She had just begun bleeding nonstop again and needed
another blood transfusion.
23April Monday
My aunt requires a carer 24/7, but a professional carer hasn’t been hired yet, because
we do not know which direction she is heading towards. My mom and my uncle in law both snore, and my aunt
don’t have children, so she wants someone who doesn’t snore to stay with her at
night. My 3rd aunt and I are the only suitable candidates! So this
week I had to take turns with my 3rd aunt to sleep in the hospital.
A cystoscopy was done today, and the urologist sealed the vessel that had been
bleeding profusely. However, my aunt became so weak from the bleeding that she
required help to go to the toilet, and she had to wake up every hour to go to
the toilet! So I didn’t get to sleep! Caring for a sick person in the hospital
is very exhausting.
24April Tuesday
The essay on “the relationship between
Israel and the nations in the Pentateuch” had been marked.
I’ve never thought of the Jews as any
better than the people of any other nations. I had a few Jewish classmates in
medical school, and I didn’t think they are any special. Felt like this before,
and still feel the same right now. Strangely enough, God has placed a kind of
burden in my heart for Israel, because whenever I started interceding for this
nation, I shed tears easily and have a strong desire to see the revival of that
land.
The relatives only started coming to the
hospital around noon, so I couldn’t get home until the afternoon. I simply
collapsed on the bed and slept all afternoon. Then I continued to write up my
essay assignments for Morling College. Although I’ve applied for 1 week
extension for both essays, I still hope to finish the essays on time, because
the later I finish, the more it will eat into the time I’ve got to prepare for the
final exams.
25April Wednesday
Today, I started writing up the paragraph
on “cruciform power” for my essay assignment. In the afternoon, I went to Dr
Eileen Lin for a retainer follow up. I usually don’t wear the retainers during
the day time because it impacts on my speech when I talk to patients. However,
there is a tiny gap between two teeth. Dr Lin said she can see the retainer
still has power to move the teeth, but I may need to wear the retainer both day
and night for approximately three weeks before the gap can close. This reminds
me that the Pentecost is coming up in approximately three weeks, might as well
wear it continuously until then! Then I went to the Elim book shop and joined a
revivalist prayer meeting/conference in the prayer centre next to the bookshop.
Honestly speaking, I found the people in
the prayer centre to be pretty crazy. However, sometimes things don’t have to
make sense when we are being led by the Spirit. If everything had to make
sense, then Abraham wouldn’t have been able to sacrifice Isaac: God had
promised that a great nation will come from the line of Isaac, so if Isaac is
gone, how can the great nation come about?
The topic of the prayer meeting is on “the
anointing of Elijah: the power to call down fire”. The speaker from New York, Donald Lee, kept yelling
“fire fire fire” and told us God does not like “lukewarm”. He said people may think he's nuts, but he didn't came to Taiwan to make friends. He came to do what God wanted him to do. He then talked about
two revivals recorded in the bible. Acts 2: At the Pentecost, flames of fire
came upon the disciples. Fear was burned up. 3000 souls saved! For revival, God
wants people of fire! Elijah, 1Kings 18: Elijah was praying furious focused
prayer for 3.5 years. God gave him the power to call down fire! The God who
answers by fire is the true God! Are you asking for the fire?
He also talked about: 2King 1:10 the fire burnt the enemies of Elijah up! The fire of God can overcome your enemies! Jesus in Revelation was a man of fire! He also tells us how important it is for us to have “fire in our bones”! 2King 13:21 Elisha died a year already and they threw a dead man info Elisha’s tomb and the dead man came alive by the power of the “fire in the bones”!
We prayed continuously for about two hours,
which was very exhausting for me. During the meeting there was a song called
“the sun above the cloud”, which I felt very touched by.
At night, I went to sleep in the hospital.
My aunt became stronger and I didn’t have to help her as much during the night.
26April Thursday
I continued to do my assignment, and started
writing up the paragraph on “cruciform hope”. This reminded me that the prayer
evening for this evening will be on “the valley of dry bones”. However, I was
too exhausted and didn’t go. Furthermore, I had already felt compelled to pray in Hebrew on 15April using Ezekiel 37 and done it that day.
My aunt’s treating doctor carried the
medicine ipilimumab with him during his ward round. This medicine is supposed
to be given into the vein, but the doctor (who’s an authority in gynaecological
cancers) bluntly told us that all his patients who were given this medicine
died a day after treatment. "Either the cancer dies, or you die." Then he said he had a relative who had it intramuscularly and
lived for approximately six months. He asked my aunt whether she wants IV or
IM, and my aunt replied “IM of course”! He jabbed her with that medicine
straight after her reply!
Asked some people from church to intercede
for my aunt, and she went through the day uneventfully. Out of curiosity I
start looked at the Hebrew calendar (I didn't take much notice of the Hebrew calendar before but lately there happened to be several coincidences which caught my eyes). If you look at the Jewish historical
events, the month of Iyar's got the longest list out of all the Hebrew calendar
months. The Proclamation of the State of Israel, conquering of Jerusalem during
the Six Day War both happened on the month of Iyar.
I saw that it was 7 Iyar during sundown of
21April, the evening I went on the plane and kept thinking about the walls of
Jerusalem and Nehemiah. Coincidentally, 7 Iyar (498 BCE) was when Jerusalem's
rebuilt walls are dedicated, nearly 88 years after their destruction by
Nebuchadnezzar. I also saw that it was 11 Iyar on the fiery and powerful sundown
of 25April. Coincidentally, on 11 Iyar (1948) - Battle at Degania - It was the
first Israeli victory of War of Independence! After observing the Hebrew
calendar carefully this year, I found that there had been many timings on the
land of Taiwan which aligned with the timings of Israel’s history. In the
evening, an intercessor told me that one needs to pray more than one hour
before strong powers can arise out of the prayer.
27April Friday
Went a long way today, to visit my dad and
my paternal grandma’s graves. Then went for a haircut and spa in Beitou.
Strangely enough, the pipes in our spa exploded, and we had to get the
apartment manager to fix it quickly or else it will flood. Also received the good news that my aunt has been
discharged from the hospital!! However, caution is needed. The hospital
discharges people who don’t need drips or transfusions, and have stable vital
signs. This doesn’t mean that everything is fine after leaving the hospital.
Praying that she can have gratitude towards God and not take everything for granted.
28April Saturday
Finally, I can breathe and have rest today.
Prayed for more than one hour in the morning. Usually when I am in Australia, I
knew in my head and heart that I need to pray fierce focused prayers, but my
body could not do it. It is not unlike Jesus’ disciples in Gethsemane. However, this time the situation changed as soon as I stepped into my home land, which is in a
fierce spiritual warfare. I had to move my flesh, because there is no other
choice but to fight this spiritual warfare.
I was listening to some worship songs from
Israel as I was praying. I felt the spiritual warfare on the land of Taiwan is
as fierce and critical as the Six Day War. When the national anthem “Hatikva”
(hope) started playing, tears started falling down my cheeks again. When the
playlist started playing the advertisement clip on the “Pentecost conference in
Jerusalem”, I felt this fierce warfare will continue until the Pentecost. This
is not to say that we don’t need to pray fiercely usually of course, but there
is just something quite unusual about this month especially. And I will need to
keep praying that my aunt’s heart will be softened enough that she may visit
the church or accept church visitors, and maybe even get baptized. Hope to see
her again in July.
Tonight coincides with the “second
Passover” on the 14Iyar. This is a fast-moving week where I felt like I was
blown into Taiwan by a fierce tornado and blown out of Taiwan again. Didn’t
spend enough quality time with God during the “first Passover”. Hope the fire
will not be vanquished as soon as I get back to Australia.
Revisiting
an alien dimension: There is an increasing sense of alienation as I begin to
realise how Australia and Taiwan seem to be two completely different worlds.
This was a very condensed trip, with only four days in Taipei. After all, I
only had a week of break, heading for the airport on 23Dec right after
finishing work, landing back in Sydney on 1Jan evening and working again at 8am
2Jan! But then again, my holidays had always been very short ever since I
started working in 2007, and I have always worked as a full-time doctor. The longest period I took off work was 5 weeks for the
Mackay Memorial Hospital Family Medicine exchange program, and that was not
really a holiday. Otherwise, I never took a break that lasted longer than 3.5
weeks at a time (not even for my father’s funeral or my grandmother’s funeral).
So, it was those five weeks in Mackay Memorial Hospital that made me realise
what life in Taiwan is like.
A good
beginning, with a free upgrade to premium economy China Airlines!
24Dec, 2017
4:30am touchdown in Taiwan! Then I went to a dermatology CPD activity at the
familiar NTU medical school lecture hall! My first time doing a medical CPD
activity in Taiwan and it was pretty interesting! They served boxes of free
nice coffee, which usually cost NT200 per box!
25Dec Ruifang District and Keelung:
Did a day trip on Christmas Day to the Gold
Museum, Yingyang Sea, Jiufen and Keelong. It was extremely crowded in Jiufen!
27-29Dec Yilan with maternal relatives:
The worship song “Jehovah’s Blessings
Abound” had been on my mind constantly for the last month. It was the first
Taiwanese song I learned in church and the opening song for my dad’s funeral
video. A month ago, an intercessor friend of mine dreamed of my grandma and my
mom with this song as the background music. The song opens with the sentence
“the egrets in the farm do not lack anything”. My friend gave me this verse:
“The LORD, the God of your fathers, make you a thousand times so many more as
ye are, and bless you, as he hath promised you! Deuteronomy 1:11” Two days
later a couple living in Brisbane posted the egrets in a lake near their home
on social media.
When I got back to Taiwan, I rode in a car
where the owner was playing this song. During our maternal family trip to
Jiaoxi, there were egrets in the tourist attraction we visited called Longtan
Lake, the accommodation we stayed in had a large picture of egrets in the
toilet, and there were many egrets in the farms surrounding the accommodation. We celebrated my grandma’s birthday
in Jiaoxi.
We then went to the Wuling Farm where we
saw beautiful flowers, and went on a trail to the waterfall where we saw a beautiful
rainbow at the bottom of the waterfall!
Taipei:
During this trip, I received a lot of help
from Dr Eileen Lin, the principal of the Methodist Graduate School of Theology in
Taiwan: learned more about her ministry, “Soul Home”, got my retainer adjusted,
visited her church and listened to a very good Sunday sermon and coincidentally
bumped into a friend whom I knew in Australia, had lunch with Dr Lin’s family,
etc.
During New Year’s Eve, Sunny invited the
2015 Israel Marching Prayer Group G to her home for the New Year fireworks! We
experienced great fellowship and worship! The group leader Andy shared with us
how he felt a deep burden to “be aligned with God” and to “link”. Last year,
when he went to serve in Vietnam, he felt “the heartbeat of Jesus”: the love of
Jesus for humanity that made him cry very painfully. Ever since his return from
the trip to Israel, God started linking him up with people whom he would not have
been able link up with under his original circumstances. Sunny shared with us
some of her recent studies in “the life of Jesus”, and “healing and deliverance
counselling”, which was interesting.At the end of
the crossover, caught a taxi home without excessive delays. On 1Jan, whilst
reading a book Dr Lin gave me on the plane, a rainbow shone through the window onto the page
I was reading (which is quite memorable because this never happened to me when
I was reading on the plane before).
During this trip, I sensed that my mom had
put a lot of effort in trying to link up the family. As the firstborn of the Lin
family, she recruited my maternal family for short trips and meal gatherings.
As the widow of the firstborn of the Wang family, she recruited my paternal
family for meal gatherings. On the last day of my trip to Taiwan she became
very sick but still accompanied me to church. Need to pray her more frequently.
I came to this realization: If I want to
develop the spiritual eyes of Martin Luther King Jr and dream with God, I still
need to work on the basics of the spiritual disciplines, so I can be better
aligned with God, be better spiritually formed, so I can look at family and
friends with the mercy of Christ and be able to impact on them more positively.
