Acts of Love in Asia

November Newsletter

2010-11-16T06:08:00.000-08:00

October Newsletter

2010-11-16T06:06:00.000-08:00

August/September newsletter!

2010-10-03T02:21:00.000-07:00

July 2010 Newsletter

2010-07-08T22:05:00.000-07:00

June 2010 Newsletter

2010-07-08T22:03:00.000-07:00

International Education

2010-05-19T19:59:00.000-07:00

Before I left for my trip to Mainland in April, I spent a week with two Lutheran educators from the Chicago area visiting the Lutheran schools in Hong Kong. They also had the opportunity to visit Concordia International School in Shanghai. Here is the link to the blog I designed for their trip: http://steinbrennersinasia.wordpress.com/

India Schools Video

2010-05-19T19:55:00.000-07:00

The India Evangelical Lutheran Church runs schools throughout Southern India. Some of these schools serve blind students, students with cognitive disabilities or deaf students. Here is the video I made after visiting these schools: India Schools Video

May Newsletter

2010-05-19T19:47:00.000-07:00

April!

2010-04-29T00:41:00.000-07:00

April has been a very busy month.

The first week we had Lutheran teachers visiting Hong Kong to see Hong Kong International School. I helped to lead them around the city and visited the schools with them. I learned a lot about HKIS and international schools in general. During their time in Hong Kong I kept a blog for them. You can visit it at: http://steinbrennersinasia.wordpress.com/

On Easter Monday, I took the teachers to the airport so they could fly to Shanghai and I flew to Chengdu in Sichuan Province with a service team from Hong Kong. We visited Nan Ba, a very small village about 5 hours outside of Chengdu.

The Nan Ba area was devastated by the earthquake two years ago, and CWEF has helped to build cisterns and donated many books, computers and table for the library at the secondary school.

My team was comprised of mostly teachers, which was helpful as we were teaching English for two days. It was a really interesting experience and CWEF has been asked to send people to do a summer training program for the English teachers in Nan Ba!

After I finished my time in Sichuan, I flew down to Kunming in Yunnan province. I spent the weekend with my roommate (who lives with me in Hong Kong) and my friend who lives in Kunming. We had a great weekend with massages and lots of delicious food.

On Sunday evening we were invited to a BBQ at another friends home. He actually owns four restaurants in the Kunming area, so we were very exited to have a BBQ at his house.

We had a variety of different grilled vegetables and a chicken along with many types of tea. He taught us about each of the different teas he served. It was a great night with good food and good friends.

The following week my friend led a service team from Southern California to dig cisterns and teach hygiene lessons at two schools in very southern Yunnan.

On the way to Jing Pin county we stopped at Yuan Yang which is famous for beautiful rice terraces. Not only was it a beautiful place to stop, but it made the 11 hour bus ride much more bearable.

We had a great week, even though our time in the village had to be cut short due to poor road conditions after a big rain storm.

Even though we were all disappointed to have to leave earlier than planned from the village, the rain was needed. Southwestern China is in the worst drought in over 100 years. In an area where agriculture is the main industry, a major drought makes life even more difficult.

Overall, my time in Mainland was a great learning experience and I glad that I had the opportunity to serve with CWEF.

March newsletter

2010-03-16T21:35:00.000-07:00

India Schools Project

2010-03-02T23:45:00.000-08:00

India became the first foreign mission field of the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod (LCMS) in 1895. Many LCMS missionaries served in India from 1895-1960 many mission compounds were built. The mission compounds are still used today by the India Evangelical Lutheran Church (IELC) as schools and boarding homes. Many of the buildings are falling into disrepair. The IELC and school administrators are requesting the support of the LCMS to help repair these buildings so they can continue to serve over 18,000 students and their families. If you would like to support the schools and boarding homes in India, please visit: http://www.lcms.org/?6450.

February Newsletter

2010-02-20T05:18:00.000-08:00

Trinity Lutheran Church and School

2010-02-03T23:30:00.000-08:00

Trinity Lutheran Church and School in Battambang, Cambodia is the only LCMS supported church and school in Cambodia. Seth and Shannon Hoeppner serve as Globally Engaged in Outreach missionaries teaching English classes and sharing the Gospel at Trinity.

January Newsletter

2010-01-03T00:36:00.000-08:00

Lutheran Church in Korea

2009-12-12T23:24:00.000-08:00

The Lutheran Church in Korea (LCK) was established more than 50 years ago and has been growing and reaching out the Korean people ever since. As the partner church body of the LCK, members of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod in the United States have the unique opportunity to work along side the LCK—including short-term mission opportunities.

Bizzare foods in Beijing

2009-12-12T04:32:00.001-08:00

One of the days we were in Beijing, Josh and I set out to try some new food. Earlier during our trip we had cow lungs with our lunch, a recommendation from our tour guide Hannah. They were not bad, pretty chewy, but the sauce made them edible.

After talking to some of the English students we decided that we should go out to an area famous for street foods. The students told us we could eat scorpions and crickets, plus a lot of other types of meat.

We ended up buying both scorpions and crickets, plus snake all deep-fried and covered in salt. Basically the scorpions and crickets were crunchy and tasted like fried salt, but the snake was an interesting texture. It was very chewy and reminded me of octopus tentacles. After our more adventurous food purchases, we finished the night with pumpkin cakes, yogurt and bubble tea.

Although there were many more types of food at the vendors, we decided that we had enough since we did not want to be ill on our 24 hour train ride back to Hong Kong.

December Newsletter

2009-12-12T04:24:00.000-08:00

A New Day in Beijing

2009-12-12T02:25:00.000-08:00

After a busy week of traveling around Hong Kong and finally being approved for my work visa (after only three attempts), I was able to take a vacation to Beijing.

My coworker Josh has five siblings, and three of them came on a short-term team to teach English in one of the Lutheran schools in Hong Kong. After their week of teaching his brother Dave and two of Dave's friends from the team organized a trip to Beijing. Dave's friends, Josh and Mary-Susan, graduated from Oral Roberts University in Tulsa and through a friend at ORU they know about New Day Creations in Beijing.

New Day is a multifaceted business with a factory, foster home and an education center. In the factory they produce Christian and traditional Chinese poly-resin figurines and other trinkets. The village where the factory is located (just south of Beijing city limits), is poor and the average wage is just over 2 RMB per hour below the minimum wage of about 4.5o RMB per hour. New Day Creations pays nearly twice the minimum wage and they are never short on people wanting jobs. New Day Creations is also constantly striving to improve work flows and find more cost effective, environmentally friendly ways to produce all of their products. With the profits from the products made at the factory, New Day started the foster home.

The foster home has 20 children living on-site in Beijing, but through a program some of the children live with families in the community. In the last few years, New Day has been able to open additional homes and in all about 90 children are served. Most of the children have some sort of physical or mental disability and their families cannot afford medical care so they are either given up or abandoned. New Day takes in these children and pays for the necessary surgeries. Sadly, the New Day Foster Home is always at capacity and some children die before they are able to get a bed in the foster home.

The education center is the newest part of New Day. After only opening a few years ago, the center is already drawing in students from all over China. The center is an English center with all native English teachers. Some of the students are in university, others just graduated and some are elderly people. I was able to talk with many of the students and I was amazed at how well they could speak English after only studying for a few months. I know that I would not be able to speak Mandarin that well in such a short time!

New Day also has tours for their visitors to all of the sites around Beijing. Our tour guide was Hannah, a former student in the education center, and she gave us an amazing tour of the city. In the course of two days we were able to see the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Temple of Heaven, the Great Wall and the Summer Palaces. Hannah also took us to two great restaurants, a famous Beijing noodle shop and to a Peking duck restaurant.

I had a wonderful time at New Day and traveling around Beijing. The Christian products made at the New Day Creations factory can be purchased at Christian bookstores that carry Lighthouse Christian Products.

November newsletter

2009-11-06T18:14:00.000-08:00

Here is my newsletter for November. Enjoy!

Hiking!

2009-11-05T19:29:00.000-08:00

It has been quite a while since my last post. I have finally started exploring Hong Kong more. Being one of the most densely populated cities in the world I have been surprised at some of the beautiful nature hikes.

So far, I have hiked on Hong Kong Island, Lantau Island and this weekend includes a hike on Lamma Island.

All of the islands are slightly different. I was very surprised on my hike last week on Lantau when I saw cows walking along the path. One cow did not get out of the way as we hiked by, and even let me touch it.

I have more photos on my picasa account.

A different world

2009-10-07T06:37:00.000-07:00

This weekend was my first time out of Hong Kong since my arrival just two weeks ago. I traveled to a few different towns and villages and got my real first taste of Asia.
I knew that Hong Kong was not very similar to the majority of Asia, especially compared to the poorer areas, but the chaos still shocked me. As we walked along the side walks we had to dodge the scooters/motorcycles who use the sidewalks, store fronts and street corners for parking lots. All of the parked scooters had alarms and they sounded every time the front of the scooter was touched. It was a bit of sensory overload to say the least.
The villages were much calmer. Although the group of ten foreigners drew a fair amount of attention, it was not nearly as overwhelming. Over the course of the four and a half days, the group passed out twenty scholarships to middle and high school aged students and taught a variety of English classes.
We stayed in three different cities and spent a great deal of time riding in vans. At one point in our journey we went through what has to be the worlds longest, poorly ventilated tunnel. Driving at highway speed it took almost five minutes to get from one end to the other. Unless there was another vehicle going the opposite direction the tunnel was completely dark. We were all relieved when we finally saw the daylight at the end.
I was glad that we were able to spend two days in one of the cities. The first day we saw many of the students as our group split up and made house visits to give personal care bags to the scholarship recipients and to meet the families. These scholarships were based on need only and so nearly all of the students had a great deal of adversary in their lives, but most were still happy and excited to be able to continue with their education.
Overall, it was a great learning experience. It was my first real assignment and I was able to see how other people live in Asia.

October Newsletter

2009-09-30T20:54:00.000-07:00

Here is my newsletter for October. If you would like to have it emailed to you, please let me know!
Blessings!

Arrival in Hong Kong!!!

2009-09-25T23:30:00.000-07:00

After a nearly six hour delay in Chicago, after my five hour layover I was finally on my way to Hong Kong! Although I was not overly impressed about spending almost 11 hours in O'Hare, my boss was on my same flight so we were able to have a good talk. I arrived late Wednesday night in Hong Kong and Josh the missionary I will be replacing dropped me off at my apartment so I could unpack and sleep.
Thursday morning Josh picked me up from my apartment and we set off to find a cell phone for me and show me some of the city. It was quite a search, but after about five hours of walking from store to store I finally decided on a phone. Friday I went to the office to meet the rest of the staff and they took me out for a huge variety of dim sum. After lunch we explored the mall at the train stop for the office and found the best deals for a new work computer. Later in the evening we met up with a two of the other missionaries and a girl who has lived in Hong Kong for seven years for dinner.
Today I have been busy buying the rest of the necessary things for my apartment. I had a fun journey carrying back my nearly 50 lbs. of purchases from the IKEA that is about a mile away. It is nice that I am able to walk through the shopping centers connected to my apartment complex, but it was difficult navigating through the thousands of people also walking with a variety of bags in the shopping centers. I have nearly everything that I need now, so it will be much easier to get back from the stores.
I am supposed to have my internet set up on Monday morning so I will have more updates and photos at that point!!!

I am now... fully funded!!!

2009-08-24T20:31:00.000-07:00

Thank you to all of my supporters! Your prayers and financial gifts are greatly appreciated. I will be leaving for Hong Kong in just four weeks and I have secured all of my funding for my 16 months of service!

It is a huge relief to have the burden of raising support finished and I am truly blessed to have so many faithful supporters!

Blessings!

The journey begins...

2009-07-20T17:36:00.000-07:00

When I first learned that I needed to raise $40,000 per year to serve as the communication specialist I was momentarily overwhelmed. I knew that I had the Mission Central team on my side, but it seemed impossible that I would be able to raise that level of funding over the course of a summer.

After orientation I truly began to understand how blessed I am to have Mr. Thies and the rest of the Mission Central volunteers helping me to raise funds. I was confident that God would provide, but as of June 1st I was just over halfway to my goal. World Mission has a strict rule that all missionaries must have at least 70% of their funding in place before they leave for the field.

I continually prayed that I would reach my 70% mark by July 1st. It would be a huge burden off my shoulders to know that I was going to leave for Hong Kong sooner rather than later, and having an exact date of departure would really help me to plan out the rest of my time in the US.

Over my lunch break on June 30th, I checked my email and opened the message from the Mission Central team informing me of my newest gifts. I was once again overwhelmed when I saw that the five gifts that arrived that day not only put me at my 70% mark but pushed me all the way to my 80% fundraising mark! God truly exceeded my hopes!

I bought my plane ticket for Hong Kong a few days ago, so I will offically be leaving on September 22.

Thank you to everyone who has continually supported me through prayer and financial gifts. I am truly blessed to have each one of you as a part of my team!

Support forms

2009-04-15T16:45:00.000-07:00

It can be difficult to raise support. I have to raise nearly $40,000 to be able to serve in Hong Kong and Asia. This summer I will be making presentations at churches throughout Nebraska. If anyone is interested in partnering with me, I have attached my "Official Adoption Agreement" from Mission Central and my prayer card from LCMS World Mission.

All donations are tax deductible if checks are made payable to:

LCMS World Mission

Also, please write "For the support of Megan Kincaid" in the memo line.

Blessings!

A change from my plans

2009-04-15T12:43:00.000-07:00

Even just a few weeks ago I could not imagine that I would soon be on my way to Hong Kong. My interest in missions started in high school, and developed into a full-fledged passion during my college career, but I always figured I would move over seas after working for a few years. As always, God reminded me that He is in charge, and He opened up the opportunity to use my skills to serve Him in Asia.
I was born and raised in Kearney, Neb. In 2005 I graduated from Kearney High and that August I headed to Seward, Neb. to begin college at Concordia University. Initially I thought that I would attend Concordia for a year, get a grasp on college and transfer to a larger school. I did not bring my initial plans for college to fruition, as I am graduating from Concordia this May.
Concordia has been a wonderful experience for me. I have made some absolutely amazing friends and been challenged both personally and academically. During difficult situations God was able to show me the strength of my support network in Seward. I have never been a fan of being overly comfortable, so I decided that for my last semester of college I would remove myself from my comfort zone and take part in the Concordia University System visiting student program and attend Concordia University Chicago for the semester.
Although I has been difficult to leave all of my friend behind in Seward, I appreciated the challenge of moving to a place where I do not know anyone and develop relationships with new people.
Through my experiences in Chicago God has reminded me of the importance of trust and a positive attitude. My transition to Chicago did not go as smoothly as I had hoped, and my fairly consistent less-than-positive attitude did not improve anything Midway through the semester I decided to embrace this experience and I have found myself enjoying my time in Chicago.
As I prepare for my next step in my journey, I am excited to be able to use my skills and talents to serve God. I cannot think of a more perfect way to combine all three of my majors into one position. As a communication specialist I will be able to use my business knowledge as I cover projects including microfinancing and economic development. My journalism and public relations skills will be useful as I figure out the most effective way to show how God is working through the mission projects in Asia. Finally, I will be able to use my interpersonal and intercultural communication knowledge to develop and sustain relationships with God’s children in Asia and America.
God had continually shown me that I need to trust Him in all decisions and this is especially important as I step out in faith to serve as the communication specialist in Asia with LCMS World Mission. If left to my own devices I would not be successful, so luckily God will never leave and He will guide me as I begin to serve Him in the Asia mission field.

Communicating what God is doing in Asia

2009-04-15T12:41:00.000-07:00

As I begin to tell people that I am going to be a communication specialist, I am often met with many questioning looks. I honestly had no idea what a mission communication specialist position entailed until I met the communication specialist for Latin America last August.

As a communication specialist, I will be making videos and writing about the mission projects, in my case, throughout the Asia field. I will travel a fair amount visiting the project sites to record video, take photos and gather information about both the people and the projects.

After my visit, I will go back to my apartment in Hong Kong and begin working on editing the videos and writing. Once the videos are finished they will be posted YouTube and my blog. Some of the videos may be distributed to partner churches in American and Asia.

Each project will be a new challenge. It will interesting to see how God is working at all of the different mission projects. Asia is a large and diverse field and I am looking forward to learning more about the different cultures.

I will actually have the opportunity to work on a few projects when I go to Panama in May to visit the Latin America communication specialist. It will be a blessing to have a better understanding of what I will be doing before I even go to LCMS World Mission training the first two weeks in June.

Once I arrive in Hong Kong, hopefully by October, I will have the opportunity to work the current communication specialist in Asia until December. This will be great preparation before I set off on my own.