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.

Halloween 2013

This year for Halloween, we were able to go to two different Halloween parties!  The kids were really excited about them.
While we were in the States this summer the kids decided what they wanted to be for Halloween, and I was able to buy the appropriate clothing.  Liam and Hallie wanted to be ninjas, and Eryn said she wanted to be an artist.  I bought Liam and Hallie some black clothing and black scarves to wrap their head and face.  They can wear clothing even when they are not dressed as a ninja.  Eryn just needed a painting smock (an adult shirt I bought at Goodwill) and a beret.  She had a blast painting her shirt!

The first party was at Jon's school.  It was ok.

Liam as the blue-eyed Ninja

Eryn as the excited artist

Hallie discovered, it is hard for a ninja to sip a drink while in costume

Some foreigners invited us to the second party.  Annie told me it was a party for her church group.  This party was also very close to our house.  It turns out that it was in a villa (house) where the local LDS (Mormon) groups meets.  They are really nice people and we had a good time.  The kids got to spend some time with some other foreign kids.  This group meets at the same time we do on Sunday morning.  We have run into some of them as we are leaving to go eat after our worship. Some time I will tell the story of how we met these folks and got invited to the party.

As part of the party, the kids went trick-or-treating (in different rooms of the house).  They got a respectable amount of some good (American) candy.

We all had a really nice time visiting with (mostly) Americans and meeting new people.

The kids are already talking about what they want to be for Halloween next year.

"pumpkins" the kids and I made for the foreign party

Witches fingers (cookies)

The kid's candy haul on Hallie's Bed

This is the group from the party.
Can you find us?  Hallie is almost hiding behind Jon

Pizza with Caleb's Teacher Wang

It was our great honor to welcome Caleb’s Teacher Wang and her daughter to our house to eat pizza. In China, when the teacher comes to visit, your house needs to be spotless and everyone on their best behavior. It feels like the president is coming. Teacher Wang has been a teacher 26 years and we are thankful for Caleb to have such a patient Chinese teacher. Teacher Wang’s daughter spent a year studying fashion design in New York City and developed a taste for pizza. She loved it, while Teacher Wang smiled and pretended to eat the pizza. Funny, Joy was not shy to sit in teacher’s Wang’s lap while we played a game. GaoYan did not hold back in sharing our Christian belief with Teacher Wang and her daughter. We prayed before eating. Teacher Wang’s daughter lives in Shanghai, so we talked about some church groups she could visit. Teacher Wang told us Caleb’s classmates are planning such and such activity on Sunday. We would like join the activity, but we go to worship God on Sundays.

What Ministry Should Be

Sometimes my ministry veers off track to organizing people, hoping for a good turn out, maybe a little stressful trying to make more people happy. I felt refreshed to read this essay from my student named Jo describing her grandmother, a unique person in her family.

I have never seen a person more smart than my grandmother in my life. Although she even never went to primary school, she is almost a goddess on the land who can solve all the problems of her neighbors. Every afternoon, I can always see “someone” in her house. They usually come with deep wrinkles between their eyebrows, and they are easily bursting into tears while they are speaking. My grandmother seldom breaks in and only looks at their eyes sincerely. Then instead of giving suggestions from “the old,” she will end up their meeting with a pray. However, the ones who come with sorrow and worry always go back home at a brisk pace. I was so surprised at her “super-power of comfort,” so I poured all my questions. She smiled and said, “Actually I did nothing. What I do are only two things. First, prepare a hot tea and a hankerchief before the meeting. Second, listening. Then I will tell all the things what I heard from people to the Almighty. He will do something for his people.” My grandmother is a devout Christian who devoted all her life to help others, and in turn, she gains respects from others. From her great deed, I know it’s bad to give advice to other at random. Usually listening is more important than suggestion. Now, I become a good listener of my friends.

Listening and “telling all the things what I heard from people to the Almighty” who loves us. This is what ministry should be.

Moving a couch

The other day, we looked out the window on the back balcony and noticed some ropes hanging down from the roof.  We looked out and saw some men preparing to hoist up a big and heavy looking couch.

They wrapped the 

couch and tied some ropes to it.  They used a bright red blanket to protect the sofa.

Then they pulled the couch up using a pulley system attached to the roof.  

The couch made it's way slowly up through the air, past our windows. 

This was an interesting distraction on an otherwise busy but uneventful school day.

We were not the only ones that stopped what they were doing to watch the couch make it's way up!