Well, here's the so-called "cute picture" I mentioned...
Anyway, we decided on a lark to go to the local Chinese restaurant today for lunch, and there ended up being this white guy from Harding who had brought these two Chinese guys — one guy is for sure a Christian and does some ministry work with the Chinese students at Harding, and the other guy, I'm not sure about — and we were all in there having lunch at the same time. And... Phoebe is restless, so short version... Those guys are from Wuhan and they know some of the same Chinese Christians and American missionaries that we do, and it was pretty cool to run into them in Heber Springs, AR of all places. And well, it basically just made us glad that God had provided this cool little rendezvous in lieu of our actually being able to return to China. Oh, and we are planning to go to the Chinese student Bible study and church service tomorrow morning in Searcy. Cool, huh?
Postscript: It turned out that there wasn't any Chinese Bible study, per se, just an introduction, in English, by Milo Hadwin -- the dad of a former missionary in Jingzhou. He now kind of informally runs the Chinese student ministry at Harding. But we did meet a girl (English name Vivian) who is a member of the same house church in Wuhan that our good friend and former Jingzhou student Joanna worshiped with before moving to Hangzhou, and now Shanghai. So that was a "small world" moment.
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That's awesome guys. We had a similar experience. We were supposed to fly out on the 18th, but we ended up meeting 2 of the Jingzhou house church leaders who were in Murfreesboro, TN on that day. If we were already on a plane to China we wouldn't have had the honor of meeting these friends and co-workers in our own country. So I guess I agree - this "hiatus" is full of God's purpose.
ReplyDeleteYeah, we understood what you said, Bobby. Thanks for posting so much. We are very encouraged when we see the comments on here. Yes, we are trying to just hang in there. Some days are harder than others, but God is taking good care of us.
ReplyDeleteI was in Wuhan with work around 4 years ago. I understand that there is a good chance that I'll be going back to Wuhan in early to mid 2012. I think it would be good if I could attend a house church while I'm there (assuming I go). I'll touch base with you if the trip materializes.
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