Pavilion Student Study

The student study at my university gained momentum in November. Dan invited two of his friends Will and student Elaine. Forrest invited one of his friends, but they were sleeping late that morning, and didn’t make it. Jackie, one of my graduate students, asked if I could help his English in preparing for the IELTS test. Sure, we have a Bible discussion each Friday. You are welcome to join. Jackie has been coming each week, and as a result Dan told him about Angela Thrasher’s Saturday night (good) book reading club. We have the student study in a pagoda sitting on the side where the warm sun shines in. One week another of my graduate students, Yuan (Chinese money), was walking by. Yuan stopped in the pagoda to say hi and stayed to listen to the Bible study. Yuan came again the next week. Ironic that Yuan would be studying the Bible with us. He delivered a beautiful communist propaganda speech in my English class. Certainly Yuan is not the student I would have chosen to take part in our study, but perhaps the Lord has chosen Yuan. We have studied through John 15 now. The students take turns preparing questions from the text to lead our discussion.

ShaoChuan

ShaoChuan is a young boy in our neighborhood two years older than Caleb. ShaoChuan MaMa was the key in helping us get Caleb into the so called foreign language elementary school. Now we share rides to school. ShaoChuan MaMa drives Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and I drive Thursday, Friday. ShaoChuan eats dinner with us every Friday night then we all go to the neighborhood Bible study. The mornings I drive we read the Lord’s Prayer at one particularly long stop light. ShaoChuan reads in Chinese. I ask could he read it slowly, but he always reads as fast as he can. Caleb reads in English, as fast as he can. So at our Friday night children’s study we were going to eat a snack and I asked ShaoChuan if he would pray for our snack. I was surprised, ShaoChuan stood and easily recited the Lord’s Prayer. Another week we studied the Christmas story. Confident that he was going to teach his mom something new, ShaoChuan asked his mom, “Do you know why we celebrate Christmas?” “We are celebrating the birth of Jesus,” she answered. “How did you know?” ShaoChuan was surprised. I study the Bible also with all the moms while you are studying with the children.

A Teenager!

 Hallie turned 13, on November 9th.  For her birthday, she asked her friend Bliss spent the night and they stayed up way too late.

The cake was a mustache…it's what she wanted

The next morning, we went to a mall and Hallie got to go to Claire's! She was so excited!  She loves this store in the US, and was very happy to learn that we now have one in our city.

Eryn was happy about Claire's too.  They both got some Christmas shopping done.

I still can't believe that I have a teenager! Where has the time gone? It takes my breath away sometimes.  She is growing into a wonderful young lady.  We are very proud of who she is becoming.