The team

I feel strange, we are not going to the U.S. this summer.  It is weird.  For the past 6 years we have spent at least 6 weeks in the US during the summer.  This year we are not going.  (we will visit in the winter).  

Most of our American friends have returned to the U.S. at least for the summer. 

Last year in Hangzhou it was a record-breaking summer.  The temperature was well over 100 degrees for more than two weeks straight!  So far, this summer has not been too bad.  We have had a lot of rain and that has kept the temperatures down.  In about a week, it will be really hot, but right now, it is not too bad. I am thankful for that.

Another thing that feels weird is that Josh and Gao Yan (and their kids) have returned to the US for good (at least for now).  The Clarks returned a year ago (and the Taylors too!).  

We are extremely thankful for our team mates!  We have been so blessed by Clear Creek and our team. I cannot imagine how things would have been if we had not had their love and support, especially during the first year or two.  

We miss you guys on this side of the world.  We also wish you all the best as you transition and continue to transition to living in the US.  We love you. 

These are not the best pictures.  They are pictures of a print that has been on my notebook for several years.  The first picture was  taken at the first time we were all at Hixson. The second was  when we were all together in Arkansas for some training.  In the bottom picture, Caleb is only a couple of weeks old.  Our families have really grown and changed!

Please keep praying for The Clarks in Louisiana, and The Davis' in Missouri and of course us in China.

Movie Night

I am terribly, terribly behind on the blog. I am sorry. There is probably no way to really catch up properly.  I guess the best way is to just jump in and post.  I do plan to look through my pictures and make some posts of old stuff.

We have started to hold "Movie Night" again.  We used to do this every other week, but until recently, we have only held one since moving to our current apartment.  Several people had been asking when we were going to do it again.

Every other Friday we night we hold movie night in our apartment.  We just watch a movie, have snacks, and hang out.  We watch either a DVD or streamed movie.  We watch things we think the kids can watch, but not just "kid movies".

We have watched movies like Soul Surfer, Courageous, Fire Proof, Indiana Jones (the kids were a little scared of that one), Despicable Me, Harry Potter, Narnia movies, and once, Jon downloaded a bunch of classic cartoons.

We use this time to invite lots of folks and have others bring friends.  It is a just a time of fellowship and fun.  We want to show others, that Christians are not weird and we do enjoy being with each other.  It is a great time to start having conversations and a chance to see if people are interested in learning more about what makes us different.

We had our first (again) movie night 3 weeks ago.  Two of Jon's colleagues came.  The group was small, but we even had a conversation about the Bible.  Shelly is planning on starting another study and she will probably invite Andrea (one of Jon's co-workers).

Last week we had a larger group, and we invited a girl that we met outside a noodle shop.  She seemed to really like it, and was interested in the fact that most of the folks there were friends from church.  I will invite her again next week.

Movie night has been one of the most enjoyable tools we have used to try to grow our ministry.  Please pray for this effort.

Easter Celebration 2014

GaoYan and I feel recharged after coordinating big Easter parties. There is always great help from our Christian brothers and sisters. We feel overwhelmed preparing, but when it is over thankful that many Christians from around Hangzhou can fellowship together.

David and I gave a short introduction evidence for Easter, Jesus is risen!

GaoYan was thinking of a way to get the plastic Easter eggs back to be reused next year. We took a big chance by putting only a Bible scripture in the eggs, with NO CANDY.

After the egg hunt the children recited a Bible scripture from inside their eggs to receive a small bag of candy. The children all lined up youngest to the oldest and recited their Bible scripture over the microphone. It was a real highlight. More than fifty percent of the plastic eggs were returned for reuse next year.

Elaine and Lucy McDougle organized some fun games for children

And for adults serious about balancing egg with spoon race.

Forest, a new comer to our church family, said it best, “I never knew you could have so much fun with eggs.”

That was our last Easter in Hangzhou. All the right people were there: long time workers Elaine, Margaret, the Hardin family, the Beamon family. New friends in the past year or two David and Annie’s family, McDougle family, Forest and family, Dan, Jackie, Frank, Shelly and Chuck, Maggie, Michael from JiuLian group, several families from our neighborhood and many others. Even Gerald and Bill Gates gave us a surprise. GaoYan, Caleb, Joy, and I look back and understand the Lord has filled our life in Hangzhou with goodness

New Sister Hattie

HongMei (Hattie) was baptized Easter Sunday April 20.

Hattie is one of Linda’s co-teachers of English at my former university. About four years ago Linda invited Hattie to attend worship at Hangzhou’s largest church. Hattie heard the voices of thousands of Christians singing praise to God and she was moved to tears.

Hattie has attended the Friday night neighborhood ladies study and our Sunday church family off and on over the past four years. She has witnessed many good Christian examples like Linda, Grace, Elaine, Margaret, and many others. We are thankful to God that Hattie’s baptism brought together Christians from our Sunday church family with Christian ladies from our neighborhood Bible study. Everyone said some words of encouragement and read Bible scriptures for HongMei. Thank you God that Hattie decided to obey the Gospel and get baptized.

Full House

We are always boasting about the amazing spring in Hangzhou. “You should come see the beautiful flowers in spring, you can stay with us.” For most of March we had several friends and family take us up on the offer. HaiBin visited one weekend from Beijing. HaiBin and GaoYan became good friends our first year in Hangzhou, and they have always kept in touch. HaiBin was an art major in university so she taught GaoYan how to paint. HaiBin has a boy Caleb’s age.
GaoYan’s sister, GaoLi, and little boy John stayed with us for two weeks. GaoYan’s parents didn’t want to miss out on the fun so they came also “to cook food and take care of John.” In our family we always call him Baby John, so Joy was really looking forward to playing with a baby. Actually Baby John is 2 3/4 years old and he runs at top speed everything he does. Joy learned a lot about sharing toys with a very active little boy.

One day after GaoLi and Baby John flew back to Shenzhen; Kitty, her husband, and their little girl flew up from Guangzhou.

Kitty was GaoYan’s college roommate. Kitty’s little girl is one year older than Joy, so they played with the toy kitchen set together and had lots of fun.
Actually GaoYan had 9 roommates and for 4 years they all shared a tiny dorm room at the Changsha University of Finance and Economics. GaoYan created a nick name for all her roommates so I could follow stories from the dorm room. Sports girl, her husband, and their little boy live close by in ShaoXing. We hosted a mini-reunion dinner at our house. All the ladies and husbands are graduates of the statistics department, Changsha University of Finance and Economics.

We were happy to spend some time with long-time friends before we move back to America.

A smoggy Winter

Thankfully the winter is over.  We are very relieved to see warmer temperatures.  We are more than happy to shed our thermal underwear, and heavy coats.  We are very hopeful that the air will be better now that warmer temperatures are here.  This winter, the air was simply terrible!

Now, we live in China, and we live in a really big city.  We really do not expect that the air is super clean, but this past winter was unbelievable.  In Shanghai in early December they broke the record for the worst smog/pollution since they started recording it.  The two days after that, it was just as bad or worse here in Hangzhou.  When everyone started talking about the pollution, I started to pay more attention to it and would look up "Air quality Index".  If the air was really bad, this is what we wore when we were outside:

We all would wear masks to try and filter out some of the pollution.


This is not a particularly clear day, but normally we can see across the river from our balcony.

However, several days this past winter, this is what we saw when we looked outside:

This is picture from the apartment of some friends, on another smoggy day:

 Several days the air quality index was this high or higher:

We are also extremely thankful that we were not really sick this past winter.  Jon ran to catch a bus one smoggy night and he had a cough for a couple of days, but other than that, we stayed healthy.

Like I said, we are very thankful that Spring is here!

Dinner and a Show

The weather has been really nice lately.  We had a bit of Spring fever and decided that we wanted some street food for supper.  We LOVE street food.  We especially Shao kao.  Shao kao is translated barbeque or grilled food.  Shao kao stalls have meat, vegetables, tofu and even some bread on skewers.  You just pick out what you want and they grill it over some hot coals .  Yum yum.

One problem with street food, is that the stalls are not always exactly legal and  many times they get run off by the city police.  The place we used to go to no longer has any vendors.  So we walked along some back streets until we found a few food vendors.  This street had several fruit stands and small vegetable markets and other various shops and small restaurants.  This is not an area we frequent, and there were several children around. They were very curious, and before we knew it, it had attracted a small crowd of kids that were asking us questions.   

While we were amusing the kids and waiting for our food to cook, a fight broke out at a nearby vegetable stall.  We heard some yelling and saw some scuffling.   There was lots of yelling and of course a crowd formed. 

Jon and I lived for a year in Changsha and we saw street scuffles several times, we were not worried or anything. 

Some guys broke up the fight and were leading a guy away, he was still yelling (but he was going away).  Everything seemed to calm down pretty well, and the crowd stared to disperse.  But then…

A different guy came up from the direction the last guy left.  He yelled something and he was carrying what looked like a big stick.  He smacked it on the side of a cart as he walked up and some people stared to act a little scared.  The kids and I backed further away. We did not want be run over if folks started running.  Then I looked up and noticed that the stick the guy had was not a stick, but a wicked looking knife/ sword thing!!!

There seemed to be some scuffling and yelling, so I turned to the kids (my kids) and said, “Kids, GO!”  They did not have to be told twice.! They left quickly.  After just a few seconds, Jon handed me the food and told me to go with the kids.  He was paying for our food.

I started down the street the opposite way from the fight, and there was hardly anyone around.  I did not see the kids.  I called their names, and a street food vendor pointed the way the kids went.  I found them pretty quickly, and Jon was just a few steps behind me. 

Jon said that before he left, a lady had taken the knife from that guy, so there was no real danger anymore. 

One of the kids that was hanging out around us, had followed my kids and was hanging around.  We asked if she wanted to go back, and she wisely said she thought she would wait a bit.  She did not want us to wait with her, so went on home.

I do want to say, that even though, it was a little scary, I do not think we were ever in any real danger.  Also, even though I sent the kids away, I knew they would stay together and that Hallie had a phone and I could call her if I needed to.  I am happy to know that if we are ever in a dangerous situation, and I have to tell the kids to go again, that they will .  They obeyed without hesitation.  Also, I won’t loose them because someone will always tell me where they are.  We do stand out.

We used this experience as a learning tool and talked with the kids about being aware of their surroundings and to make sure that when they get angry they do not loose control and do something stupid.

Of course this kind of situation does not only take place in China.  The news is full of stories where people loose their cool and do stupid things (road rage).  The hardest part for us, was not understanding exactly what was going on because of the language and cultural differences.

Well, it was not much of  a show, but it sure was some excitement! I hope our next dinner out is a little more peaceful.