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.

Laws

We were driving to GaoYan’s hometown for the Spring Festival. Just before we turned at a traffic light to get on the highway, a policeman stood in the middle of the road and stopped our car. “Turn over there and pay your traffic fines.” I remember back, being stopped by a policeman in America when I was much younger. My heart was pounding and racing and my hands sweating. This time was all very friendly. The policemen were laughing and joking. Another man was smiling paying his traffic fines. He communicated two words to me in English, “pay money.”

600 yuan! What did I do? It’s not really what I did, but the traffic eyes of Hangzhou have been well developed in the past year. There are radars and cameras at every intersection now. A speeding ticket, four parking tickets, and an unauthorized right turn on red.

Of course, I have a perfectly good explanation for my speeding ticket. We were driving across this long bridge, speed limit 40 mph. Suddenly without warning the speed limit changes to 20 mph at the end of the bridge with radars and cameras. That’s not fair.

We were over the limit so GaoYan had to walk to another office to pay the money. Our Sunny car was all loaded up for the journey, Caleb and Joy sitting in the back seat. I was circling around probably amassing more traffic tickets. Phone call, “Josh, they need you to come sign the paper.” “There’s nowhere to park. How can I come in and sign the paper?” Poor GaoYan had to put all the points on her driver’s license, but they were mostly my mistakes.

Two weeks later driving in downtown Hangzhou. I slowly eased up to a red light centered perfectly in my lane. I was studying the intersection planning my path so I would not get another violation. I noticed policemen had stopped a group of seven or eight pedestrians who had just walked across the road. They were digging in pockets and purses for their ID. Yes, that’s right, walking tickets! The policemen were pointing down the block to the walking overpass. You have to walk up the stairs, across the overpass, down the stairs carrying your heavy bags of vegetables. Walking across the road at this intersection is very dangerous.

Drive perfectly in the center of the white lines, park just right in the box, walk inside the fence. You better do it right or “pay money.” I guess if you have a lot of people you need a lot of laws. As time goes on the new laws keep piling up and they feel such a heavy burden

Amazing the law of the Lord is so old yet revives the soul, makes wise the simple, …

Psalm 19:7-11
The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.
The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple.
The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart.
The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes.
The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever.
The ordinances of the Lord are sure and altogether righteous.
They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold;
They are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb.
By them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.


Caleb and Joy delighting in the law of the Lord posted on the walls of a church.

Selling Our House Conversations

We have loved living here, the views of the mountains and lots of space to run and play on the university campus. However, there is not an elementary school really convenient, and we live on the sixth floor with no elevator. And we live a good way out of the city. So other people do not think our house is amazing as we have.

In America you can just tell one realtor you are selling your house and they will take care of the rest. China is different. The more people, realtors and friends, you tell you are selling your house, the more people will come and look at your house.

We are praying that people who come to look at our home will know we love Jesus.

So in the month of February we had these conversations:

Teacher Wang and her husband came to look at our house. One of Teacher Wang’s responsibilities is to keep relationships with students that graduated from the university, especially the ones who become very successful and might donate some money. She is Communist but Teacher Wang’s personality is bubbly and she races everywhere she goes. Teacher Wang is friends with 1000 people, surely one of them would buy our house? GaoYan and I have been friends with Teacher Wang for five years now. She lives in our neighborhood. When Caleb was little and got sick she arranged a car to take us to the hospital. “You call me when Joy is ready to be born. I will send a car in 10 minutes.” For two years I taught Teacher Wang’s daughter YiYi and some of YiYi’s friends English lessons. Now YiYi is studying in Oklahoma. GaoYan’s parents had cooked up a big Spring Festival visiting dinner to welcome Teacher Wang and her husband. I asked, “Does YiYi have some good friends in America? She needs to be careful. Some friends can be a bad influence.” GaoYan suggested, “YiYi should go to a church in America. They will really love her and take care of her.” I have tried, but I estimate that I have not planted any spiritual seeds in Teacher Wang’s family in the past five years. Then GaoYan’s Mom and Dad started in, “You need to go to church. Believe in Jesus.” It was like turning on a bright light of truly considering on Teacher Wang and her husband’s face. Same culture, same generation, the words of GaoYan’s parents carried so much greater influence than my two years of visiting Teacher Wang’s house for English lessons.

Shelly came to see our house along with Shelly’s sister, sister’s husband and their son. Shelly is such a strong evangelistic Christian leader in the JiuLian church. We were all sitting at the table, chatting, and cracking sunflower seeds. Their son was playing Legos with Caleb. “So is your sister a Christian?” Actually they are strong Buddhist believers. GaoYan’s parents were busy boiling up a big batch of meat filled jiaozi. The husband said, “No thank you. I can’t eat that. I have been a strict Buddhist vegetarian for 10 years.” GaoYan’s parents said, “We’ll make some vegetable jiaozi real quick.” Shelly is a strong Christian and her sister’s family strong Buddhists, I wonder if they ever talk about their faith or avoid the topic to keep peace? We are grateful the topic came up at our kitchen table.

A group of three realtors came to see the house. The one named 雅各 saw a Bible sitting on the coffee table and asked, “Are you Christians?” Then the two other realtors said “雅各is a Christian too. His whole family are Christians.” 雅各 YaGe is James. Praise God that James the realtor is shining his light for Jesus in his workplace. (That is the first time I have met someone in China with an actual Bible name.)