Brief News Update

Hey everyone, Cec just posted a little something telling you kind of where we are in the ministry / in our spirits these days (look below this post, I guess); now, let me take a moment more of your time to share with you some of the activities, events, and goings on of the past month or so:
* Visit to Joanna Wang in Shanghai: We spent 3 days / 2 nights in SH seeing our dear and long-time friend and sister Joanna. We taught her (English & Bible) in Jingzhou way back when, and now she works for an international school and does lots of activities -- and even teaching -- for the local church there in Shanghai. The visit was spur-of-the-moment, and boy was she surprised and excited to see us! She had been feeling lonely in the big city far from most of her old friends, so she very much appreciated us coming out of our way to see her. It was good for us, too: she treated us to a big employee discount at a fancy hotel near her home & workplace, so -- even though Phoebe had a really bad cold -- we felt quite comfortable and enjoyed getting away from the house for a bit.
* Bread for Beggars: We've actually only done this a couple of times... we and a couple of students simply went outside, stocked with sacks of bread, fruit, etc., and handed stuff out to any beggars we happened to see. No big deal, really, but a good exercise for us, a good experience to share with a spiritually-seeking student, and hopefully a good example to Phoebe.
* * We've also been able to establish a fledgling relationship with one of the local beggars whom we see fairly often, usually with his children (and sometimes his wife). We've not asked what happened, but he's obviously been severely burned in some sort of accident, which has left him with bad scars on his head and face and missing fingers on both hands. We took some gently-used toys to his two little boys around Christmas / Spring Festival time. Maybe we'll ask him to worship with us some Sunday.
* Last but not least, Phoebe got 200 bucks (RMB) in a hong bao given to her at a recent school banquet! It's common tradition to give little red envelopes of cash to kids for the Chinese New Year, but we hadn't really expected the school to give her one, so that was a nice little surprise.
So that's about it... as Cecely mentioned, there's not too much going on right now... we might go to Hubei for a visit with Todd Wu (native church leader and longtime friend) and to see his little girl whom we've still never met; she's Phoebe's age (plus 2 months), so we think that might be fun and encouraging for us and them... otherwise, we're just chillin' -- quite literally (it's cold!)