I greatly enjoyed singing at church with all my family around me. We had some awesome harmony happening on our row. It was the best singing I'd heard since returning to America.
As I was walking out of the church building, one of the ladies pulled me aside and shared her heart with me. I'm not naming any names, but you know who you are. It was very touching and I appreciate that moment so much. Thank you for being open and honest with me and for being able to see the areas in life where you can do more and be more to the people who need you. It's a blessing when God opens your eyes like that and allows you to grow a bit more spiritually. Those moments are so precious.
After church, we went out to lunch at Arby's with the family. Colonel and I didn't really eat much since we had another dinner that evening around 4 pm. We just sat and enjoyed good conversation. I was sad to say goodbye to the family, but I know we'll meet again so it's okay.
At 4, we headed out to Ettrick (?) to visit with some folks from Edgehill. The food was definitely good. We had baked chicken, barbecue, hamburgers and gravy, macaroni and cheese, corn, biscuits, apple pie, ice cream, and some other foods that I can't remember. It was lots of fun. We stayed there for several hours just shooting the breeze. Of all the people we've been hanging out with, this family actually feels like they're becoming our friends.
On Monday, we rushed to pack our bags. Colonel rushed out to some place 1 hour and 30 minutes away to take Cyprus to an eye doctor who specializes in dyslexia. They ran several tests on Cyprus and found that he doesn't need glasses and he's not dyslexic. It kind of feels like a waste of time and money to hear that there's nothing at all wrong in those two areas. Especially when there's still an issue and we don't know what it is. We'll keep praying about it and keep working with him though.
I managed to get most of our bags packed after we bought an extra suit case.
We stayed with mom on Monday night. She borrowed her friend's van so we could get all of us and our 5 suit cases out to Dulles airport. We ended up getting there early, which is really great.
All of our flights went through basically without a hitch. We did come close with our last flight from South Korea to China. We had to split up so Colonel could exchange our money and the kids and I could rush to the airplane. We made it with roughly 10 minutes to spare. That's cutting it too close for me.
Once in China, we had to find the bus to our city. I used my broken Chinese to get us some tickets. I worried the ladies there to no end trying to find out which bus was ours. Finally the bus came just and Cyprus and Colonel had left to go to the bathroom. I rushed to the bus to load our bags and Aolani had to help me push the luggage carts out to the bus. I thought Colonel wasn't going to make it, but he did just in time. We loaded the bus and made it safely in Shangqiu after 2-3 hours of waiting.
We got of the bus and I had to haggle with 2 taxi drivers to take us to the campus. They wanted to charge us 30 rmb per taxi when the actual cost should have been around 10. I pushed for 20, which was still too high, and they wouldn't accept it. I grabbed our suit cases and made like I was walking away with them. The taxi drivers relented and said they'd take us for 20 rmb per taxi. That was irritating, but it China, haggling is like a game. You can't get too upset about it. The Chinese get real dramatic with their haggling. They talk about how you're taking food from their children's mouths and such. It's pretty funny and everyone laughs as we go through the motions.
Once we were home, we lugged the suit cases up to the third floor and walked into our apartment. Everything was as we had left it, mostly...We found weird brown spots on the floor and one of our towels looked like it had been used. There were also ashes in our toilet and on the toilet seat. It was weird. I called Mr. Yu, our FAO guy here and he said to check our belongings. Nothing was missing, so we left it at that.
Quick Update
Jet lag has hit us terribly since we've been back. We still haven't recovered, but we've got to get ready for our next journey.
Thanks to the folks at Edgehill Church who wired the fundraising money to the Chinese school here. That was a big help. The school, Miracle Mandarin, received the payment yesterday.
Our buddy Mark helped us to buy train tickets on the fast train. That was another expense we weren't really prepared for. It's about a 6 hour ride by fast train to Shanghai. We tried to get first class seats so we'd have room to rest, but the seats were sold out. We took second class. It's cheaper, but we'll pay for it in other ways.
We spent the day today packing and cleaning to prepare to go to Shanghai. We had to buy a duffel bag because we dared not take a suitcase on the fast train. There's too many steps and long walks in and out of the train station. We thought it was better to carry all our bags on our backs for faster movement.
So now, I'm armed with the Chinese address of our school. When we step foot in Shanghai tomorrow, it's going to be tough. We don't know anyone there or where anything is. I'm praying that we can get to the school safely without being ripped off too much by taxis.
I may not be able to update the blog much during this month. We'll spend 40 hours a week in class, and another 10-20 hours studying outside of class. It's going to be tough and none of us are really looking forward to it. Please pray for us to have a breakthrough with the Chinese language. This is detrimental to the work we're trying to do and to the people we're trying to meet. We really need God to be with us every step of this journey as we try to overcome the mental blocks that stop us from learning this language better. It would be awesome if some of you out there would shoot us some encouraging emails during this time as we'll surely want to give up some days. Some days, we may be physically and mentally exhausted or feel that we're making no progress at all. It would be awesome to sit down at the end of the day and get an email just telling us to hang in there or whatever.
Sorry for the long post. Thanks for reading!