Week 37

Week thirty seven begins with the third day of Chinese New Year. On Monday I woke up to a dream of asking Doris if she wants to have breakfast. However one of us was full. I think Doris also wanted to fill a form to do more studies! At noon we went to walk at the Peak with Doris' two sisters and two fellowship members, one of them feeling down every new years day since her mother passed away twelve years ago. Doris and I used to walk with her sisters a few years ago.

Tuesday, day four of new year, was still a holiday in HK, so I decided to return to Elements where Doris and I spent a lot of coffee time there, bringing my computer. Since I ate carrot cake in the morning, I could hold off lunch till a later time, hoping to catch lunch with a friend who lives there. After a while it was five hours. I had finished writing a gospel tract for a publisher, wrote the preface to Doris' new book 求祢使我痊癒 and answered publishers questions. Since my friend was not around I went to Tsingyi to have high tea but it was open cutthroat season, charging me $85 for my order that included additional soup. It saved me having to cook dinner. At night I have my big CNY gift when I finally recovered Doris Lent meditation questions that I had looked without success for months in her PC. Thankfully I remembered I had sent it to my email account and it was harrowing because three of the five files I sent were corrupted.

On Wednesday I could not sleep at night because of barley and ginger water I made for my mouth ulcer caused me sleeplessness. At 330am I gave up and took a sleeping pill retained from my USA trip because I had a 810am breakfast appointment with a younger coworker in the morning.

The next day my subscribed devotion text was from Psalm 73. It stirred within me a compunction to preach the text. I also wanted to find out why I did not choose the text when I preached on My Favorite Psalms last year. To my surprise I had prepared the sermon without preaching it, praise God because I did not want to miss it. Strangely I have two more Psalms in my mind to preach now, along with Psalm 13.

On Friday I bought four more coffee cards for coworkers. It came about when a coworker invited me for dinner two days ago. I gave red packets to the children but none to the parents, so I decided to give them a coffee card the next morning so they can take advantage of the buy one free one offer for the month. The more I thought about it, the more I felt that since I cannot give free coffee to Doris, who likes to sip mocha, I may as well give it to close coworkers to pay it forward. At night I joined ten former students from Queens University Canada for dinner. Three had returned to HK for the holidays.  

This CNY I had a double blessing when I woke to another dream of Doris on Saturday. I had a bad headache probably from sitting next to a friend of Doris who was coughing last night. The return was I slept for seven and a half hours, when the dream appeared last minute. It was a blurry one to which she said she cannot answer students' cable speed questions.

On Sunday the headache lingered, causing drowsiness during sermon time. After lunch I still could not concentrate, so I decided not to fight it and called it a day. At home I slept for a long two hours, yet I did not give up on my prayer walk. The week ended with gratitude I could dream twice of Doris after two silent months, unfathomable.

Jan 7, 2017