Tallest Building

Yesterday we went to the tallest building in the world. At least it used to be. I'm not sure if it still is. It's the 101 Building in Taipei, Taiwan. Becky teaches business English here and has some clients (students) with whom she meets one-on-one and some of them work in the 101 building. So after such a session, we went to the top of the building. The building is 508 meters tall. Tourists can't actually reach the tippy top of the tower, but you can get pretty high. We rode the elevator from the 5th floor to the 89th floor. Would you believe that it took only 37 seconds to go from 5 to 89? The elevators are pressurized like the cabin of an airplane and still our ears "popped" at the sudden change in elevation. Then we used the stairway to get to the outside walkway at the 91st floor. Even though it was a hazy day, the scenery from that elevation was pretty spectacular.

The reason I say that the 101 building used to be the tallest building is that someone is Dubai is building a much taller building called "Al Burj" which, when finished, will exceed the 101 building in height by quite a lot. I don't know what their progress is to this point nor when they plan to finish.

Today Nancy and I are crossing from Taiwan to the mainland. We have some tension about the weather as there is a tropical storm (threatening to become a typhoon) bearing down on us from the east right now and a 60% chance of rain where we are going tonight and a 70% chance tomorrow, when we need to catch a flight near the coast. And, of course, we don't want the authorities to quarantine us when we get to the mainland. Not that either of us is sick, but if anyone else around us has suspicious symptoms, we could find ourselves staying a week on the coast at the expense of the government. That is not how we would like to spend the next week! Thank you for thinking of us.

While in Taiwan, we have had some wonderful opportunities to get to know a couple of local men. One is a young man who is a recent believer and who is searching for how to discover his spiritual gifts. The other is a man about my age who is very close to putting his faith in God but struggles with the fact that he is "not yet perfect enough to become a Christian." We have helped Becky explain to him that he has a serious misunderstanding about being a Christian. We hope that when we come through here again in October, he will be a smiling brother who recognizes that he never could have qualified. (None of us ever has!)