Questions and Answers

After a week of preparing for so many changes and waiting to depart for Sichuan, we've finally purchased the plane tickets and have a departure date of this next Monday evening...this last week has been a little strange coming to grips with this whole thing. It's been a time of excitement for what the next step will be, while just as much a time of anxiety as I take my eyes off the controller of it all and think of all the things that could be going terribly wrong...



I think that I might be there for a while, but we'll see how that works out. As to the details of the trip, no new information really... More supplies are coming in and it looks like we'll be adding to the goodies we'll be taking up until next teusday.

Things have been interesting at the house lately. It feels like everyone is kind of on a break or something with all the changes in process of taking place. As a result, we've been letting our guard down a little bit at the house, it seems, and so the enemy has been gaining some foothold into peoples relationships and especially the way we've been spending our time...as we get more comfortable with living here in China, it's also getting more easy to lose focus on Him and His plans...

Oh! Something amazing that took place last night! I got to eat Chao Bing for the first time last night! : ) Imagine a fruit slurpee/smoothie thing that's solid, but yet can be drank with a straw... : D But I was kind of sad to find out that they won't have this deliciously amazing dish in Chengdu...

Thing are going good...Tomorrow will be my last day at school here. I'm going to miss Cong Laoshi... She's definitely my favorite teacher... If you're reading this, please lift up Mrs. Cong that she would come to know Him. Another foreign student once gave her a copy of His Word, but I hope that she might one day be drawn to Him...

Goodbye everyone...

For you know not what tomorrow might bring...

I wrote this last week, but never finished it....I wanted to post it anyway instead of just deleting it...If you would like to skip the old entry, just scroll down a little further...









And so it goes...





I think I have very little understanding of the concept of change. I mean, ofcourse I know what change is and that it is "the only constant", as some put it; but really, it's as though it is always a mental speed bump when change occurs. I suppose that's why it's often met with an emotional response, because it's something different, something new...something.





As some of you might know, the guy who I've come to live with is currently in Chengdu, Sichuan helping out with recovery efforts there. The situation is quite serious, but with thorough efficiency and an awesome heart of compassion, the government and the people of China have responded in great ways. People all over China are sending in aid of all sorts to help people out, as well as bringing things into the region from surrounding areas. Their is no shortage of sympathy and compassion in the minds and hearts of the people, and even tonight I've heard of public gatherings being called together to lift up the disaster victims! This is the same country who years ago would have never dreamed of organizing something of the sort! I say all this, because I want to talk about what changes might be taking place here shortly.





As Tim has been in Chengdu, he has been seeking our Father's will about what to be doing and how he and others around here might be able to assist in the long term recovery efforts. I guess yesterday he ran into some people that he knew who were working for an organization assisting the Red Cross in the region. As they got to talking, Tim was told that if people living at this house would like to come and help with what this organization is doing, that they would be taken care of for as long as they would be willing to stay. The organization is apparently somewhat like the Billy Graham Rapid Response progam, or other progams that we have seen the Billy Graham organization orchestrate. Basically, spiritual and emotional assisstance for disaster victims. I don't know all the details right now, this is just what I've heard so far. So Tim contacted us back here at the house and asked us if we would all gather together, lift up the idea of going to the area, and then figure out who might be coming.





To keep a long story short, it looks like I'll be going to Sichuan for a while.



Words on my mind...**James' book, the fourth chapter about not knowing what tomorrow might bring**

**the words of a carpenter in John's book chapter 3 about us being like the wind...**

**the 11th chapter of the NT book to the Jews**







* And Today*



More information...

It look like we'll be leaving for Sichuan either Wednesday or Thursday. It's still not certain yet. All the details are slowly coming together. We'll be moving into an Apartment in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, and working with an organization called "Heart to Heart". This organization is under the umbrella of the Red Cross, and so we could be doing anything from helping in the refugee camps to helping in a distribution warehouse. Right now it looks like the crew that's going up this week will be there for a while; possibly about four months. Many of the details are still being worked out, and there's a lot of supplies that we're still working on acquiring; mostly tents and things of that sort.

So, big change coming up. I think that I might be there for a little longer. Just have a feeling. We'll see what happens. I'll try to keep everyone updated.

The final list of those going up to Chengdu is Tim (the boss), Alice (the Italian), Kristen (the house translator), Rachel, Tim's son (who will join us in a few weeks), and myself. There will also be traveling with us people from different bodies around here. I'm not sure who all is going from other places and groups, but this will be the house team. Please keep us lifted up. It will be the first time two of these girls have ever lived anywhere other than Hainan, and the second time they've ever left the island.

Our King is good!

Pictures

And so, I now have a few pictures.... : )

A good friend of mine let me borrow his camera for the trip to Hong Kong, so here's the pictures from that as well as some pictures that were left on his camera from a while back. I hope you all enjoy them as much as I have...





So, people always make comments about Asian people eating strange foods...I guess after living here for long enough, you just don't think about it anymore...

Rick, his Grandma and Marija on the left, Glenn and Rick's mom in the middle, and Rick's aunt and I on the right.

Rachel's B-day party...fun fun.

Aaron playing Doctor. There's never a dull moment at the hospital. : )

A protest that was going on in Hong Kong during the Olympic Torch Run. It was interesting to see the reactions of the crowd. If the police hadn't been there, these people would have been seriously hurt...

A village outside of Hong Kong near the border. It was interesting taking a bus just outside the city and seeing such a simple little village and actual gardens and farms. Hong Kong is a pretty fast paced and packed city, so it was nice to be able to retreat to the jungle for a little bit.

So we hiked back to a buddhist temple and found a set of statues of the Chinese year-zodiac thing. We couldn't help but try to be our animals, which then led to a long discussion about how a Tiger and a Bunny really would get along...hmm.

A side walk...

And here's a picture on HK island. It's crazy how packed everything is and how many levels there are to live on... i mean, it seems like people are more like ants or that they live in some kind of complex colony when you go into these big cities.

And here I am, now back in Hainan. These are pictures of the Olympic Torch coming through our city. We kind of stumbled upon this great vantage point for the procession. Good times.

And there it is...or at least one of them...

And our patriotic young Chinese friend, "Titan". I love his name.

And in this picture a patriot of different sorts... : )

Because I had Rick's camera for a couple extra days, I decided I wanted to take some more pictures of the college campus and things, so here they are...

This is at a beach up the street from us.

We live on just about the northern most tip of the island, so from here we can see both sunrises and sunsets over the Ocean.

And here's my "wife", as Rick like to call her. Doesn't she look so beautiful with the sunset in the background and everything? But really though, I love this bike and am so very glad I could buy it. It has an aluminum frame and some other sweet little accessories that make it a pretty enjoyable ride. I would be handicapped without her.

more pretty pictures..

And that's all..

I hope you all enjoyed the show. : )

Hong Kong?

Well, I came to Hong Kong for a couple of days over our Labor Day Vacation. Exactly how all that worked out, I'm not entirely sure (well, I guess I do understand how it worked out, but I'm still confused as to the exact reasons why..). Originally, a friend's mom really needed a certain kind of medicine from here that couldn't be found inside China, so that was the original primary motivation for coming. However, a guy was going to be coming back over to Hainan from Hong Kong anyway, so it turned out that he could take the medicine instead. We found this out during the course of the week, and I was kind of already anticipating coming out by then, so I really wanted to still come...Anyway, it turned out to be a really big question whether I should or shouldn't, but in the end, I decided on coming and our Dad has really made it out to be a great time. It's been so encouraging and refreshing to be with some of these people here and to see some of the work they're doing for Dad. A friend took me all around the city as well as to some villages and rural areas outside the city that I never would have imagined as being there. It was nice spending time with her because she has done quite a bit of work in different places of Asia and China, as well as spent time in the place I'm living now. I'll be able to talk more about our journeys through the city after I get those pictures off my friend's camera. All in all, it was a great time, and this time I can post up some pictures of things!......Just not right now. I have a friends camera that I took with me, but I forgot the camera-computer cord so I can't get the pictures off the camera just yet. I'll try to post them within the next couple of days, but for now, I can post up some other pictures of things that have been going on in my life...

So, first....School!

In this picture I'm with our classes' favorite and yet most challenging teacher, Mrs. Cong. She's by far the best teacher I think, and we have her most frequently throughout the week, as her class is the Comprehension Class which covers a little bit of everything. I must admit that at the start of the semester I had a bit of a crush on her, but once we found out she was married, I figured a relationship would be too complicated, so I decided to kill that idea. : ) haha.

Here's where our classroom is located, as well as a shot of the inside of the classroom above. Our classroom is really small, but now that we're about half-way through the semester, we only have about 6 or 7 students coming to classes on any given day, so it's not bad. At the beginning of the semester we were supposed to have like 14, but that soon turned into 12, and the 12 turned into 10 maybe, of which not everyone shows up regularly...so...we have a pretty small class.

And here's our college. I don't really know the name of our college at the University, but it's basically the college of foreign students studying Chinese. The building also contains some dorms for both foreign students and Chinese, so that's why it's kind of big.

This last picture is of our brother Paul. He's been in the hospital now for over a month and will finally be getting out tomorrow the 5th. He originally went in to close up an open wound in his back that was caused by a tree cutting accident 3 years ago and the resulting infections caused by lack of care and real lack of medical knowledge. The surgery went pretty good, but the wound developed another infection about 2 weeks after the surgery, also to be accompanied by some kind of cyst that formed on the left side of his butt. The cyst was a little bigger than a half-dollar coin and came out nearly half an inch. It was a pretty bad situation, and performing all the care for it after the surgery was pretty sketchy. The staff at the hospital do nothing more than doctoral duties and washing of sheets. Everything that a nurse would normally perform or do is expected to be done by an assistant to be hired by the family (who is really just some local person who can buy food or help take out waste). Tim had some bad experiences with hired nurses, and the real hospital nursing staff, the last time Paul was in the hospital, so we've been taking shifts 24-hours a day to do what a nurse would normally do. It's been interesting, and has consisted of things I never would have imagined myself doing before, but it's amazing what we're able to accomplish with the comfort and strength of our Father. The wound in his back is looking good now and I think the infections have been pretty much taken care of. I would ask that anyone reading this would please keep our brother lifted up. He's been going through a lot and another infection would be really bad. But it's such a testimony to the sovereignty of Dad to see the way that through this there have been so many people in the hospital who have heard the good news, and been able to see what His love should look like. We're by no means great vessels for the work, but through us He's done some good stuff as well as been teaching us some very important lessons.

..Well, I have to get going. I have a flight back to Hainan that I really shouldn't miss, so, I need to be on my way. : )

..More to come soon. I really wanted to make some calls from here, but I managed to forget my microphone, so that didn't quite work out. Take care everyone. Thank you everyone who has been keeping me lifted, He's been doing some great things and teaching me lots of good stuff. As I sit in a 16th story apartment of a certain group here, looking out at the evening sky, I am in awe at the way He does all this. Good stuff.