Clarks: Early October

Cecely here:
I'm sitting here eating salted plums and Dove dark chocolate and drinking jasmine tea. A delicious late evening snack! Life in China is full and busy, very satisfying, but can be stressful at times. I just read Josh and Jen's last blog entries, and while reading Jen's I couldn't agree with her more about the Christmas deal. Do please lift us all up as we deal with this. We want to do it correctly in a way that would be right for a follower, and we definitely do want to try at least to get the policy changed. So I echo that you could please keep us in your petitions about that. Also, please keep our future placement in mind, and that we will all make wise decisions about who teaches and doesn't teach in the future, as I think each couple on the team considers that issue.

As for the work, we are indeed being blessed and led. We have been guided to a salon where many of the workers already have some knowledge or belief in j.c. So, some groundwork is already laid, they (some of them) would, though, need to answer his call and become more active and serious, which are huge changes indeed, and will only happen if this is truly His will. There is a lady there, Lorna, who has a really colorful background, and belongs to an ethnic minority. She is a single mom who never graduated from elem school. She is probably about our age or a little younger. She has a sweet spirit and we are developing a fledgling friendship, just as we are with another girl there and a couple of guys. So, please be thinking about that whole situation in the coming days. In addition to the salon, please also keep in mind the place where we live, the apartment complex that is. I am teaching Chris'ian yoga to a couple of ladies who come over twice a week. Please pr-y that the words I share will take root and cause curiousity and good questions to emerge. We also met a family while out on our walk last night, and the man has a passion for music, and the lady for yoga. They would like us to go sing karaoke with them sometime, and she would like me to attend classes at the yoga studio where she goes. So please keep those new relationships in mind. And, I have an idea in my mind about the teahouse that is on our school campus, as well. Please keep the ladies in mind who work there. The teahouse would be a wonderfully strategic location on that campus if we would one day turn out to have sisters who work there, if you know what I mean. Also, please keep us in mind as we deal with our students and colleagues, so that we will have discernment of who may be stable, local, and influential, in addition to curious and hungering for him.