Dr. Kirt Martin Lecture

David and Annie reserved a nice big room at Cloud Coffee, close to the Yellow Dragon stadium. Cloud Coffee Shop had everything we needed: screen for displaying PPT, lights, microphones, a side room for watching children. Chinese Lucy invited a friend who video recorded the speeches for us. We counted about 35 adults and 6 children. The JiuLian church family came and several ladies from our neighborhood. There were about 10 visitors I had never seen before. Ronald, the Hardin’s friend, traveled from across the river.

David translated for Dr. Martin’s first class: geological evidence that the Earth is young, not millions and billions of years old. Elaine translated for the second class: there is not one bit of proof that one species has evolved into another species. The fossil record evidence shows many species all appearing at the same time, all fully formed eyes, spinal cords, limbs, skeletons, stomachs, intestines, digestive glands.

Dr. Martin’s wife, Nancy, arrived in China one week before he did. Kirt and Nancy have two girls, one in Ukraine and one here in Hangzhou. Kirt and Nancy visit their girls, sons-in-law, and grandchildren every year. So not only did we enjoy Dr. Martin’s lecture, we enjoyed Kirt and Nancy being part of our church family for almost a month.

Forrest A New Brother In Christ

David prepared a great flyer for our church family to invite friends to the lecture. David and Annie handed out flyers to parents of their sons’ soccer team. One father named Forrest was greatly moved by the lectures. Forrest had been reading the Bible and going to another church, so he was excited to receive the invitation from David and certain to attend. When I met Forrest, I asked him if he is a Christian. He said, “I believe in Jesus and I’m reading the Bible and I go to a church. I have not been baptized yet.”

After the lecture David and Annie invited everyone to a big dinner at a restaurant. Forrest was sitting between GaoYan and Annie. They started talking and Forrest was saying the same things he said to me, “I believe in Jesus and I’m reading the Bible and I go to a church. I have not been baptized yet.” GaoYan catches on pretty fast, “You could get baptized tonight. What are you waiting for?” Forrest wanted his wife and son to see him get baptized, so we planned for Tuesday night, New Year’s Eve.

So Forrest’s baptism was our New Year's Eve party. Forrest wanted Dr. Martin to baptize him. We all gathered at David and Annie's house. Forrest brought his wife, eight year old son, and his wife's sister. Annie invited another friend from their neighborhood. Elaine and Margaret and Margaret’s daughter came. We sang some songs. We took time to explain baptism carefully in Chinese. Dr. Martin prayed for Forrest’s new life in Jesus Christ. What a great celebration.

Christmas Party 2013

We felt greatly encouraged by the Christmas party held in the Little Peace Mountain (Xiao He Shan) Church. It was fun. God was putting this party together like a jigsaw puzzle and it was a masterpiece. In China you are not really having a party unless you have a variety/talent show. There were more than 100 people Christians, family, and friends from around Hangzhou. There were more than 10 acts in the variety show. Behind each act I can remember years of ministry and friendships connecting Christian brothers and sisters in Hangzhou.

1. Sunday church family adults sang Christmas carols in English. We practiced the whole month of December.
2. Margaret’s daughter and her teacher played violin. (Margaret’s husband was at the party)
3. Sunday church family children acted out the birth of Jesus. Caleb was an angel. Joy was Mary. David & Annie’s two boys were shepherds. The two McDougle boys were Joseph and a shepherd. Lucy McDougle prepared some crafty props. It is amazing what you can do with a cardboard box stable and pillow cases for angel and shepherd’s costumes. GaoYan narrated in Chinese, so the children did not have any speaking parts. One lady from the church walked up to GaoYan after and asked to keep the script. “Sure it is all straight from the Bible.”
4. LinLi’s mom played “Amazing Grace” and “As the Deer” on the flute. LinLi’s Dad gave a short testimony about his faith in Jesus. (Just one year ago LinLi’s Mom and Dad made a big change to believe in Jesus. They brought LinLi’s grandparents. LinLi’s Dad is also teaching his mom about Jesus.)
5. Our neighborhood ladies performed a funny skit. A popular TV show in China stops ordinary people on the street to ask questions. The question for the skit, “What do you know about Christmas?” CoCo MaMa was a business woman and she had many items on sale at her shop for Christmas. TongTong MaMa was a Christmas shopping girl carrying her real Gucci, Armani, and three more parties to attend that night. Teacher Linda’s life was deeply troubled, and each Christmas seemed to mark another sad depressing time. Finally they stopped Grace on the street, a Christian who shared about the special gift of Jesus in her life. CoCo MaMa, a real life business woman, and TongTong MaMa, a real life shopper, are not Christians. We pray that acting out, performing those roles would help them realize that Jesus is the greater purpose and plan for their life.
6. Neighborhood children sang “Jesus Loves the Little Children” and other songs in Chinese.
7. JiuLian group performed “You Are Special” a children’s book by Max Lucado. There is a society of puppets called Wemmicks. Every day they go around sticking stars on each other for good things, or dots for bad mistakes and mess ups. Poor Shelly from JiuLian only had bad dots. Until she met one girl who did not have any stars or dots. The stars and dots would not even stick to the girl. She recommended to Shelly, “Each day I go and talk to Eli.” Eli was creator of all the puppets. Eli told Shelly it is not important what all the other puppets think of you. I made you. You are special and I love you. Interesting, Clear Creek church gave that book to our family for Joy’s baby shower. Many friends wrote their best wishes on the inside cover. By chance, GaoYan had two weeks earlier just read/translated the book to our neighborhood ladies and they loved it, loved it.
8. Angela and ten of her students sang Christmas carols and “Amazing Grace” accompanied by LinLi’s mom on the flute. Angela is a new English teacher in Hangzhou. She has a reading and book club each Saturday night with her students at ZUST.

Margaret was the master of ceremonies again this year. Dan ran the computer, PPT, sound. Many friends helped decorate the church. The JiuLian group came with servant hearts. They served food until everyone was served, then they ate. They stayed after until everything was cleaned up.

Watching the performances and seeing everyone working together I was thinking we are surrounded by great Christian brothers and sisters in Hangzhou.

The picture is kind of blurry but you can see what a small local church looks like. Everyone is sitting in the pews but we are eating and fellowshipping.

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