Helped and Helping

Phew! We've had an incredibly busy couple of weeks here. First, we had a wonderful time with the Clear Creek group that came to Shaoxing from Saturday through Wednesday, but I'm sure there will be a lot more to hear about that later.

After the Clear Creek group left Shaoxing Wednesday morning, one of our good American friends had to go to the hospital Wednesday afternoon and later had her appendix removed. In the week since she first went to the hospital we've been busy taking care of her 2 kids, cooking food for the family, getting their laundry done, cleaning their house, and visiting her in the hospital. But the point of this post isn't to share how busy we've been (did I mention that we've been busy?). Instead, this time has been a good reminder that this is life. It's easy for our family to long for routine and regular rhythms of life that feel like "normal" life. But we realize that the interruptions and unexpected surprises are just as much "normal" life as anything else. How we respond to emergencies and people in need reveals a lot about who we really are and what our priorities are.

And that's why it's been great to see some of our friends and the people from our weekly study volunteering to help us so much. One girl and her boyfriend brought us all dinner one night and then helped Dale take care of the 4 kids while Lisa taught class. The next day another girl brought over more food. And people from the Salt and Light Christian group have been regularly asking us what kind of help we need. Meetings and studies together are super important, but there's something really real and concrete about learning to live together and learning to live like Jesus did that goes beyond meetings.

So it's been a busy week, but it's been a great week. We've been blessed to be able to help our friends and we've been blessed by the help of many of our other friends.