Taipei 101

by Larrisa Seah

Wednesday . 21 May 2014

 

Greetings from Taipei City, Taiwan!

Today is our first day exploring the amazing city of Taipei…

 

In the morning, we began by foot from the busy Xing Yi Street to Taipei 101. Along the way, we encountered a mother who was trying to bring her son to the garden across the street. While crossing the road, her son fainted and passersby (local and foreigner including a few of our gentlemen) were trying to help him to prevent him from falling to the ground. One young man called the ambulance. I realised people are still warm and proactive. Another encounter was when Tai Meng was taking picture of the postbox. An elderly deliveryman (carrying a helmet) was curious and asked Tai Meng, "Doesn't your postbox look the same?" He initiated the conversation and Tai Meng responded by explaining how our post box in Singapore looks like. The people here are friendly and warm. This reminded me of the "kampong spirit" that we have not seen for a long time. After walking 3.8 km, we finally arrived at Taipei 101 under a heavy downpour.

 

 

We took the MRT to Ximen to visit the Aroma Cafe runs by Envision, we tried to be punctual but we overlooked the street name instead of hunting for the door number! We had actually passed by the café. It was eye-opening to meet a young American missionary couple, Chris and Jamie who first came as English teachers to survey the land. Subsequently, they decided to leave their country and settled in Taiwan to touch people's life. They not only touched the lives of others but they begin to mentor believers to be Christ-followers. They started a discipleship program at "The Aroma," a coffeehouse where conversations about God are made over green tea or coffee, because they desire for everyone to have a strong foundational understanding of their beliefs as Christians.

We truly need to improvise our approach to spread the aroma of our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

We ended the day at Shi Lin night market with the local street food e.g. fermented tofu, chicken chop, fried egg with oyster, etc.