There is definitely a big difference: The weather is not snowy, but gray, cloudy and rainy -- almost a perpetual twilight except for the few sunny days that break through. You do not hear Christmas carols, but instead blaring campaign slogans pumped out of speakers by little poster plastered trucks driving around the back alleys, for December is election time in Taiwan. And in Taiwan, Thanksgiving and Christmas are work days. People do not do much to celebrate unless they think about going out to a restaurant in the evening to have a Western-style meal.

These holidays, though, are a good time for evangelism. People who would not normally come to your house or your church would accept an invitation for an event related to a Western holiday. It is a great time for Christians to have an excuse to get together and bring their non-Christian friends along.

How was our Thanksgiving?

We did celebrate Thanksgiving. Fortunately there is a Costco in Taipei. Costco here only carries frozen turkeys around this time of year. When we initially got to the store, they were sold out of turkeys. We asked the manager to check availability at other stores and they realized that they had just gotten a shipment in. The manager went into the cold freezer rooms and found only one box of four frozen turkeys. We snatched up all four turkeys. The manager was shivering as he rang up the order because he had not had a coat on when he went into the chilled storage area to look for the turkeys.

On Thursday night we were invited to a Taiwanese family's home. They also celebrate Thanksgiving because they have lived in the U.S. for over twenty years and only returned to Taiwan recently to start a new bio-tech company. At the party there was one other Christian, a world-famous Taiwanese composer. There was also a world-famous violinist and his family and a conductor. So it was a good time for relationship building with everyone there. That night there was no turkey but they had steak and a whole chicken on the grill. The host joked that it was "Taiwanese Turkey." They had also tried to buy turkey at Costco but there were none left. (Judy and I must have bought the last ones.)

On Friday night we cooked one of the turkeys and had some of Judy's relatives who are not Christians over to our house -- again, the chance to spend time together and develop relationships.

On Saturday lunch, we had our New Hope Christian Fellowship church over to our house. It was feasting all afternoon. There were Taiwanese and also some foreigners -- Canadians, Brits, South Africans, Malaysians in addition to Americans. And everyone contributed to the feast. A few non-Christian friends came as well.

In the middle of the afternoon, I and a friend Richard, had to step out and go to a nearby German restaurant for a few hours. Why? One of the members of our Taipei church owns the restaurant and a Discovery Channel (Travel & Living) television crew was over there to do a piece on his restaurant. They wanted Germans to come, but the owner did not know many Germans in Taiwan so he invited us (both of us looked a bit German). So after already having eaten a full meal at our apartment, we had to continue to eat at Bernie's restaurant as a camera crew filmed us talking and eating.

There was another man there, Milan, a professor of literature originally from Serbia. He had been a boy during World War II and saw the Nazis then the communist take over his country and finally had had to flee to Canada. After being required to retire at age 65 in Canada, he was invited by a university in Taiwan to continue teaching. He listened to Richard and me talk about the Bible and how people do not think Christianity is relevant any more. We had some good discussions with him after we moved to sit at his table.

Some links you might be interested in:
taiwanchurch.org/~linton

For family photos: judylinton.com/Judy

Church Plants in Taiwan
New Hope Christian Fellowship
Lotus Hill

Mission to the World: mtw.org
Taiwan Church Planting Partners: taiwanchurch.org