Hong Kong Day 10–Biking in New Territories

This morning started with laundry – exciting, I know, but it really had to get done!  We have a washing machine here, but no dryer, and I learned the hard way that we have to stay on top of laundry or we run out of places for it to hang around the apartment while it dries…and because it is so humid, it can take a while to dry.  Then we got ourselves ready for our outdoor adventure, and finally sat down and listened to Wed. night’s church service online.  We had talked about attending a church here (the Baptist church that runs Ka Hei’s school), but with the commute and needing to get to Ka Hei’s apartment in decent time, it just didn’t work.  We enjoyed listening to Morton’s service online, and I wrote the thoughts I had about the service at the end of today’s post :).

Yesterday we told Ka Hei that we would take him biking.  We had been told that he liked to bike, so Andrew did some research and we took the train to Tai Po today.  If you look on a map of Hong Kong, Tai Po is in the “New Territories” and about 2/3 of the way North toward China on the part of Hong Kong that is connected to the mainland.  It is on the Eastern coast and surrounded by mountains.  It screams – take some pictures of me!

 

Tai Po also has a beautiful waterfront park and a ton of very well laid out bike trails.  We biked just over 3 hours all around these bike trails and it was fantastic!  It was so wonderful to get out and enjoy the natural beauty around us!  And we clearly were not the only people who thought so.  We shared these trails with a few thousand of our closest friends :), but somehow, it usually didn’t feel like there were that many people riding all around us.

  

Taking a break to look for crabs and enjoy the breeze off an inlet of the South China Sea.  And of course, what little boy can resist throwing rocks or sticks into the water to watch the ripples?

This morning, as we listened to the story of Jonah and the Whale, we were reminded that our decisions have ripple effects.  The sailors on that ship to Tarshish were first negatively influenced by Jonah’s decision (and the storm God brought because of it) and then positively impacted when Jonah acknowledge his sin and the almighty God who was chasing him.

In reality, our family is here today because of decisions made by a man and woman we will likely never meet.  Their decisions have caused incredible pain in our son’s life.  Yet, just like God brought the storm and fish to intervene in Jonah’s life and ultimately bring the message of God’s mercy and salvation to the Assyrian people, He has brought us here to step into Ka Hei’s life and show all of us more of who He is….His heart for the fatherless and His mercy that extends salvation to all.