draft - Growing through TPCSTL - 20190924 -first week of a new era

The first week of our interim pastor, Rev. Aline Russell.  

中繼牧師，（承先啟後的牧師）羅素阿鄰牧師的第一週。

The sermon last Sunday is entitled "An old-fashioned word". It was one step of interpreting the concept of "providence", which is difficult to find an equivalent  Chinese term. 上主日的講道題目是「一個舊式的詞彙」

Cambridge Dictionary an influence that is not human in origin and is thought to control people's lives 天意 (will of heaven)，天道 (law / road /way of heaven)，天命(command / determination of heaven) 。牛津英漢字典採用天意、天道、天命來說明這個字的意境。

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Google translate  「估哥」沒有提供中文翻譯

the protective care of God or of nature as a spiritual power.

Man's worship ascends upward, and the Divine providence descends thereby.

sysnonym:

fate / destiny / nemesis / kismet / God's will / divine intervention / predestination / predetermination / the stars / one's lot (in life) / one's portion

the capital of Rhode Island, a port near the mouth of the Providence River, on the Atlantic coast; population 171,557 (est. 2008). It was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams (1604–83) as a haven for religious dissenters.

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The children-message, following the praise-n-worship, has been on-and-off several times.  This could be one of the attempt to mark a new era of our history. This is an opportunity for us to study the methods of handling children-message and learn it by trying it in the Sunday School classroom. Click here to find one tried last Sunday  Study this sermonaid and think about how you might do it differently. It was too difficult for those at the kindergarten level. Thanks to Meishi who ran around to help the young children participate in the children sermon on "growing continuosly". We all expect to see a successful execution of something and ignore the fact that we learn more from failures. 緊接在「敬拜讚美」之後的兒童講道已經試過很多次了。這也許可算是我們踏入新時代的嘗試之一。這也是讓我們「研究向兒童傳道的要領」的機會。點擊這裡好下載一篇上主日在兒童禮拜中使用的「講道助聽器」。研究這一篇好想看看你或許會用什麼樣的不同方式來怎麼處理。這一篇對幼稚園年記的兒童是太難了。謝謝玫曦姐繞場移動協助兒童參與這一場探討「不斷成長」的兒童講道。我們通常期待「成功的執行」，而忘了我們從失敗的經驗中學到更多。
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 Last Sunday a meeting started on the fly. It was initiated by Peggy and attended by Michael, George, and Tony for explore the forming of a collective ministry of “sermon translation”. They decided to keep inviting new heads to join the collaborative work of “sermon translation”, which is a special challenge and opportunity to a church of immigrants. This opportunity provides opportunity to elevate the language skills as well as the levels of “theology and faith” of the immigrants. A new mission was conceived out of the meeting for start compiling a dictionary of theological and congregational idioms. While this appears to be an unique requirements in our congregation to help the new hands of sermon-translation it might be useful worldwide.

上個主日有一場臨時形成的小小會議，由佩芬姐號召討論讓「翻譯講道」形成一個「集體協作」的體系。建誠兄、榮輝兄、與希三兄回應參與。決定繼續努力增加參與這個自創的「獨特事工」的人數。翻譯講道是移民教會特有的挑戰與機會。這樣的機會無形中提升大家的語言能力與神學水準。會議中產生一項新的事工，就是要編篡「神學/教會慣用語」字典給新手做參考。這雖是我們自己的需求，應該也是普世所需。

Gardeners of Hope

(Beginning this draft on 2019/8/23 at 15:30 for Rev. Aline Russell of Taiwanese Presbyterian Church of Greater St. Louis)

Derived and extended from my experiences in serving the Garden of Hope Foundation, the idea of the Gardeners of Hope is an extension of the Garden of Hope Foundation, which focuses on providing shelters to women and girls who have gone through trama.

While shelters provide places and facilities for safe living that is a foundation for those being protected to breath normally and start new lives the Gardeners of Hope is to provide manpower as well as the system of developing manpower to help people with their new lives.

The basic concepts:

1. Human beings exist, live, and work on the foundation of hope.
2. The human energy is utilized based on hope.
3. While the people are endowed with hope by nature, or so-called "by the creator God" the hope might be easily lost, deprived, or stop growing and losing the function.
4. One of the key factors in Christianity is hope and the Christians are supposed to live with hope and helping one another with hope and cultivating hope.

The basic applications of hope:

1. People need the ability and the methods of identifying hope, the source of hope, and the roads to having, maintaining, and growing hope.
2. People can help one another dealing with hope.
3. Nurturing and nourishing hope is a foundation of all kinds of helping.
4. By helping with the nourishment of hope the helpers would gain the perspectives, the strength, and the methods of dealing with his or her own hope and challenges.
5. The Gardeners of Hope Foundation as a non-profit organization exists to study, promote, train, accompany, and cultivate the growth of hope for those in need of help by guiding them to play the roles of the gardeners of hope.
6. The Gardeners of Hope movement invents and utilizes all kinds of methods to facilitate companionship which is essential to everyone's existence, growth,  and problem-solving.
7. The Gardeners of Hope Foundation might raise funds to provide mechanisms that are helpful but not in existence, such as a simple acquisition/provision system for people to have some taste of managing activities and visualize the potentials both in benefits and in deficiency.
8. Chat with individuals or groups to participate in the development of some careers.
9. The basic actions of a gardener include 1) listening to or reading of others ideas or plan 2) raising questions to help expanding or deepening the thinking of others 3) providing sentences of encouragement, without judgment such as "good", by utilizing "I message" 4) providing ideas to help stretching the thinking 5) providing words or letters of recommendation with a special methods, using the methods of "lab report", to be disclosed in this blog.

Race between a Hare and a Tortoise 歸兔競賽

It was 2019 in Taiwan. A hare jumped up and down telling the media that he was the best and the only racer to beat the tortoise who won the world-face face or presidency of a nation that would not claim to be an independent nation. But he refused to participate in the race for nomination in his camp. He was recruited to run the race against the tortoise for the once in four year event.

Actually there was a fox that challenged the nomination by obtaining a special honorary membership of that camp and got enrolled in the race for nomination. The fox lost the race and tried to find another way to race against the tortoise for presidency ruling all species of the animals.

 The hare, mocking as a foolish fish, was feverishly campaigning with large trend-setting show in many places before the race for nomination and continue after winning the nomination and before actual enrollment for the final race against the tortoise.

The whole nation was immersed in the speculative news and talk-shows around the racers and the race. The fish and the fox, and later a white senile hare stormed the news with their joking remarks, premature judgments, and misleading gestures. The tortoise did not participate in the eye- and ear-catching news-making except continuing to announce, quietly, new policies made and new plans for leading the nation forward.

It would be a new way of testifying the theories in the stories of racing between the hare and the tortoise.

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A Hare was making fun of the Tortoise one day for being so slow.

"Do you ever get anywhere?" he asked with a mocking laugh.

"Yes," replied the Tortoise, "and I get there sooner than you think. I'll run you a race and prove it."

The Hare was much amused at the idea of running a race with the Tortoise, but for the fun of the thing he agreed. So the Fox, who had consented to act as judge, marked the distance and started the runners off.

The Hare was soon far out of sight, and to make the Tortoise feel very deeply how ridiculous it was for him to try a race with a Hare, he lay down beside the course to take a nap until the Tortoise should catch up.

The Tortoise meanwhile kept going slowly but steadily, and, after a time, passed the place where the Hare was sleeping. But the Hare slept on very peacefully; and when at last he did wake up, the Tortoise was near the goal. The Hare now ran his swiftest, but he could not overtake the Tortoise in time.

The race is not always to the swift.

 A Hare was making fun of the Tortoise one day for being so slow.

“Do you ever get anywhere?” he asked with a mocking laugh.

“Yes,” replied the Tortoise, “and I get there sooner than you think. I’ll run you a race and prove it.”

The Hare was much amused at the idea of running a race with the Tortoise, but for the fun of the thing he agreed. So the Fox, who had consented to act as judge, marked the distance and started the runners off.

The Hare was soon far out of sight, and to make the Tortoise feel very deeply how ridiculous it was for him to try a race with a Hare, he lay down beside the course to take a nap until the Tortoise should catch up.

The Tortoise meanwhile kept going slowly but steadily, and, after a time, passed the place where the Hare was sleeping. But the Hare slept on very peacefully; and when at last he did wake up, the Tortoise was near the goal. The Hare now ran his swiftest, but he could not overtake the Tortoise in time.

Moral

The race is not always to the swift.