Christmas Party on Tea Island

The day before Christmas we had a party on Tea Island. GaoYan’s first step in organizing a large party is to contact CoCo MaMa. Their family has an outdoor furniture business and they have loads of great stuff: lawn tunnels, fold up tables, picnic blankets, camping chairs, tents (to protect our skin from the sunshine), and a trampoline. CoCo MaMa also bought all the food and snacks. She gets so excited and does extra things like make a “Welcome to our Christmas party” sign. CoCo MaMa brought 20 Christmas lanterns. The tea house would not allow us to hang them up and we thought the kids would start a fire if we set them on tables, but we had 20 Christmas lanterns.
Dan, Shaq O’Neal, Bill Gates, and I set up the trampoline. Dan recommended using the directions which were written in German. I had helped put up the trampoline one time before so I tried to work from memory. Bill Gates, who is usually passive and shy, turned out to be our leader getting the legs assembled and springs pulled tight. A chance for guys working together to use their muscle and engineering minds always seems to be a great bonding experience.
One of my hosting responsibilities was to gather everyone together and sing two Christmas songs: Silent Night and Joy to the World. I can lead a song even in Chinese, but we always say, “God hears our hearts” after I lead singing. Turns out, there was a choir teacher from Zhejiang University at the party. GaoYan asked her to stand by me and help with the singing. She had spent the past summer traveling around China visiting many different churches to come back and encourage Christians in Hangzhou. I started in “Silent night, holy night…” And her grand voice took over. Everyone looked up surprised and smiled and started singing louder. I can imagine people by the lake and around campus would have heard the singing, it was so wonderful.
After singing, GaoYan handed out paper, ribbon, and scissors to make Christmas ornaments. She encouraged everyone to write something they were thankful for on the ornament. People became quite involved with making creative ornaments. Someone cut out a cross and another wrote John 3:16 along with reindeer and a Christmas caterpillar. We decorated the Christmas tree with our ornaments and people took pictures standing next to the tree.
We counted more than sixty people.
What a wonderful blessing that many of our Christian friends like Elaine, Margaret, Jane, Grace, and others could bring their families and mix with and meet our other seeking friends. “Joy to the world the Lord has come.”