Our 6th Anniversary

We celebrated 6 years of marriage yesterday!

Our tradition is to go out for dinner on our anniversary. So we went (together with the kids) to Kinjo for Japanese food. Yum yum! The kids enjoyed it too. (To our Pocky-loving friends: They even give out free Pocky there!)

When grandma and grandpa were here, we also got to see a movie (Super 8 by Stephen Spielberg), our first one since Wesley was born. Thanks for babysitting, Ah-gong and Ah-ma!

It's been a real journey since the day we made a covenant before God as husband and wife. Since then He's taken us from Idaho to Dallas and now to Calgary. We've doubled our family size. We've gotten to know God better through studying His Word and getting our feet wet in ministry. We've been challenged, stretched and strengthened. We've made many new friends and had mentors who have lovingly discipled us. We are blessed beyond measure. As we celebrate and commemorate each anniversary that goes by, we also pray that on the journey ahead, God would be the center of our marriage and family and ministry, and everything we do would reflect His glory and His love for us.

Since I wasn't blogging last year, here is a picture from our 5th anniversary, when I was 9 months pregnant with Wesley. We had dinner at Abacus in Dallas (thanks to a generous gift certificate from Nora and Leslie). Our friends babysat Evan that night. It seemed such a long time long ago before Wesley was born! I remember being nervous that I would go into labor while we were out...haha. What a difference a year has made. Wesley has really brought much joy to our family.

And just for fun, here is a picture of our anniversary the year before that. Great memories!

Family trip to Banff/Lake Louise

Derek's parents are in town, so we took advantage of our proximity to the Canadian Rockies for a short family trip to Banff and Lake Louise.

Lake Louise in the early morning

Herbert Lake

Moraine Lake

This little guy wanted part of the action too!

Bow Lake

We took a gondola ride up to the top of a mountain across from Lake Louise to get a bird's eye view. You can see Lake Louise, very tiny, in the background.

We were feeling adventurous, so we went canoeing! They had life jackets small enough for Wesley. It was both boys' first time in a canoe. Wesley didn't like it very much at first, but he fell asleep on my lap. Evan loved it.

After the canoe trip

We even saw a black bear cub!

Going to Banff and Lake Louise sure brought back memories. We visited the Rockies frequently when we worked at GoodSeed (since their Canadian office is an hour from Calgary).

Here we are in 2003 and 2004:

And here is our family in 2011:

Here we are in Banff back in 2003 and 2006:

And here we are in 2011:

It is a blessing to be living so close to the Canadian Rockies! To me, this is one of the most beautiful places on earth. Even though we had been here multiple times in the past, God’s creation never ceases to amaze me! When I stand at the shore of a serene turquoise lake, looking up at the towering mountains with their ancient creases and majestic snow-capped peaks, I can’t but help stand in awe of how great our God is and how small and insignificant I am. Just think, these mountains and lakes have existed—beautiful and pristine—for thousands of years even before the explorers came and "discovered" them, naming them after British royalty like "Louise" (fyi, Louise was the daughter of Queen Victoria). They stood here before the hoards of tourists came and took millions of pictures, making them popular. Before any human beings ever set foot on them, they existed purely for the enjoyment and pleasure of God Himself, who formed them by His mighty word.

“When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?” (Ps 8:4).

Yet, by His grace, we are now able to enjoy the natural beauty that God created for our pleasure, too. The pictures do not do the scenery justice. Our God truly is an awesome God.

We are also thankful that grandma and grandpa got to visit us here. Both boys had a chance to bond with them and have grown very close to them. Evan would wake up every day saying, "Where are grandma and grandpa?" Thanks for visiting, Ah-Gong and Ah-Ma!

See more photos of our trip on Flickr.

Hello, world!

Hi! My name is Wesley Li-Wei Chen and I was born on August 9, 2010 at 6:35 p.m. at Baylor Medical Center in Frisco, Texas. I weighed 7 lb 6 oz and was 20" long. My mom says I sure took my time to make my entrance into the world! While my big brother Evan was born 10 days early—on the first day of mom and dad's finals week, as you may recall—I was a week past his due date when mom's doctor agreed to induce me since mom and dad's student health insurance would run out in a few days. Talk about cutting it close! Even more ironic, since grandma arrived from Hong Kong a week BEFORE my due date to help mom out (she thought I would come early like Evan...ha!), grandma had to wait a whole TWO weeks before I arrived! Needless to say, they were all thrilled when I made my debut.

Most people say I look just like Daddy. I also kind of look like my big brother Evan.

My parents and grandparents took me to get my first studio portrait when I was 2 weeks old. We also got family portraits that day.

This is my first passport photo. A lot of people say I look like Ah-ma (grandma on daddy's side) in this photo.

Am I not the cutest thing you've ever seen?

I had so much hair that mom and dad buzzed my hair at 5 months. Here I am after my first haircut!

Currently I am 10 months old. I am an expert crawler and stair climber (both up and down), and I can stand on his own without support for at least 10 seconds. I can wave bye-bye, play peekaboo, give high fives and shake my head to say "no." I can even play simple games like putting a ball on top of a spiral and watching it roll down. The other day, when my mom missed while throwing my wrapped-up diaper in the trash can, I crawled over and threw it in for her!

I have six teeth—two on the bottom and four on top. Since a month ago, I have been done with the mushy stuff (i.e. what the adults call baby food). Now I eat table food just like mommy, daddy and Evan—just cut-up pieces of it. Like Evan, I don't like to be spoon-fed either, preferring instead to pick up everything with my hands. My favorite foods are rice, bread, chicken, tofu, carrots, avocados, peas and strawberries.

Well, now you know a little bit more about me!

Time to "revive" the ol' blog?

I have been thinking about reviving this blog for quite, but never got around to it. My last posting was more than a year and a half ago. I think this was when I got pregnant and was tired all the time, so I didn't blog for quite a while. Then came graduation, moving out of seminary housing, Wesley's birth, and our big move up to Canada. There's never a "good" time to do anything!

Now that we are semi-settled in Calgary, maybe it's time to blog again. I hope this time I will be able to keep our friends and family up-to-date with news about our family, the kids who are growing up too fast, our ministry, prayer requests, and thoughts.

There is a lot to catch up on! I promise I'll start soon. Stay tuned...

18 months old

Evan turns one-and-a-half today! Not an official birthday, but a milestone nonetheless. It's incredible how much he has developed so much in the past few months. We are having so much fun with him.

He can say a bunch of Cantonese and English words (e.g. dog, cat, duck, horse, milk in Cantonese; mama, dada, hi, bye, ball, bubble, blue, snack, Elmo, and Amen in English). He can also make a bunch of animal sounds, recognize parts of his body, pick up his toys, draw with crayons, climb up and slide down the equipment at the playground, and blow his nose. He loves animals, balls, balloons, Elmo, bubble baths, dancing, musical instruments and books. He also loves playing with his friends Andrew and Evey from church, and Lucas, Eliana, Joel and Gracie from DTS.

Here he is dressed as a Chick-Fil-A cow for the DTS kids' costume parade last week!

Our 4th Anniversary!

We've been married for four years!! (That's as long as it takes to get a college education!)

This year we spent a relaxing afternoon at North Park mall and had dinner at Maggiano's, one of our favorite restaurants to go to for celebrations since college times. Evan also enjoyed the food...and the free crayons too :) I can't believe Evan was only 2 months old when we celebrated our third anniversary last year--and that he slept through dinner then.

Thank God for another wonderful year, in which our lives were made more interesting and fulfilling with the presence of little Evan!

Visions of Japan

Japan image by Mike George, used under the Creative Commons license.

Chens' Summer 2009 Prayer Letter

Time flies. Evan just turned one last month, and next month we will celebrate our fourth anniversary. A year from now, Lord willing, we will be graduates of Dallas Theological Seminary. So the obvious question then is: What’s next?

At this moment, we don’t know. We’re patiently waiting upon the Lord, but at the same time we realize our responsibility to make plans and take actions. James tells us of the need to plan, but at the same time being mindful of God’s role in directing and changing our plans (James 4:13-17).

To that end, our family will be going on a “vision trip” to Japan with OMF’s Serve Asia short-term missions program from July 30 to August 16, under the care of Mike and Rowena McGinty — OMF leaders in Japan and 25-year veteran missionaries. Our objectives are to survey the work and learn more about the needs there. The long-term purpose is to see whether God is leading us to serve as missionaries in Japan.

Why Japan? Personally, I (Derek) have had a burden for Japan ever since I became a Christian ten years ago. I knew that within my home country of Taiwan, the Christian population was already very low (about 2%). However, Japan, a country that has five times the population of Taiwan, has an even smaller percentage of Christians (about 0.4%). With that in mind, I took three years of Japanese in college in case God would call me to minister there in the future.

Since we got married, we have been open to going anywhere in the world — in fact, we thought little about going to Japan — but we both felt that it would probably be outside North America. During the DTS missions conference in March this year, we prayed that God would allow us to meet the right people who could help guide 
us in our future direction. There we met Mike and Rowena, who were representing OMF during their furlough back in the States. Somehow we really connected with them in our conversations. One thing led to another, and here we are, getting ready to see the work they are doing in Japan.

OMF largely focuses on reaching the northeast island of Hokkaido, which has the least Christian presence within the nation. That is where we will spend the majority of our time on this trip. While Japan is a first-world nation and is open to missionaries, historically the people have been very resistant to the Gospel. Most people are steeped in a mixed worldview of animism, Shintoism, Buddhism and materialism.

At this point, we don’t know if God is leading us to Japan for long-term work. We would be perfectly happy ending up somewhere else. But we believe that part of good stewardship means we have to be active in following God’s lead, and when He presents an opportunity such as this, we have to be ready to take it, even if risk is involved (i.e. the fear of the unknown — what if God is not calling us to Japan?). But as Hudson Taylor said, “Unless there is an element of risk in our exploits for God, there is no need for faith.”

Though this is not a traditional “missions trip,” it is a first step toward long-term vocational ministry. To do the mission of Christ’s church, we need the support of the church. Therefore, we would like to invite you, as fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, to join us on this journey of faith and support us by: (1) praying for us; and (2) giving to help finance the trip.

If you are inclined to pray for us, please pray that we will be discerning and sensitive to God’s leading, not only during the trip, but also when we return; that we will somehow be an encouragement to the long-term workers there; that God will grant us travel mercies, especially since we are traveling with a one-year-old. Please also send us an e-mail at derek.chantal@gmail.com, and we will update you about the trip.

If you can support us financially, it will help cover expenses for the trip, including airfare, lodging, food, transportation, etc. We estimate that the trip will cost about $4,000 for our family. Please make your check payable to OMF and attach a sticky note saying “Derek & Chantal Chen.” (Do not write our names on the check). Send it to:

OMF International
Serve Asia Program
10 W. Dry Creek Circle
Littleton, CO, 80120

Thank you so much for your precious friendship and partnership.

In Christ,
Derek, Chantal and Evan Chen