Well, cancel the plea for help, I'm all done. And it turns out that I will use the story of my Chinese name in the sermon, so since I mentioned it last night, this is surely poovidential, and I will now tell you the tale of my Chinese name.
Three years exactly right now I went to China for the first time. One of the things I was doing was taking a Chinese class at a university there. My laoshi, teacher, asked me what my Chinese name was. I told her I didn't have one, so she looked at me, and decided that my name would be Mei De. Which literally means Beautiful Moral, and can also be rendered as Virtuous. I was quite flattered to receive such a great Chinese name and so I wear it with pride, often signing my name with the Chinese characters for Mei De. But the pride is tempered with a healthy humility, or at least, I try, as I remember that on my own I am not in the least virtuous. Only through the redemption of the cross can I truly call myself Mei De.
In fact, Mei De is the only name I use in China (plus the Tibetan name I gave myself, Tenzin, but it doesn't have the same sort of realness- some Tibetan friends DID give me a Tibetan name, but I liked Tenzin better), and so there is a whole country who only knows me by that name, and even here at the University of Alberta it is not all that unusual to be walking on campus and to hear someone shout out at me, "Mei De!" as many of the Chinese students here only know me by that name too.
Of the many tattoos I would like to get, my Chinese name is one. So many people get Chinese characters, though, most of whom will never ever go to China.