There's not much happening right now...
Meeting We had a small decrease in the number of folks at our meeting this week. We had pretty bad rain on Saturday and on Sunday. Usually folks don't go out in the rain here - I don't know why. Even so, we had 4 people come. Here's hoping that next week the numbers will be up again and the weather will be nice. Dentist On Sunday morning, I spent 3 hours with the dentist. He finished up all the work that needed to be done to my teeth. He ended up fixing four teeth. Now my mouth is like new. It cost me an extra 2000 rmb to get my teeth fixed. Most of it wasn't too painful, but one tooth just about made me walk out of the dentist office. He drilled the tooth down to the root. Apparently it was one step away from needing a root canal. The drilling didn't hurt too badly, but when he squirted that freezing cold water into my tooth I nearly jumped out of my chair. The pain was like nothing I've ever felt in my life. Two days later, I'm still having phantom pains in my tooth just like what I felt when he squirted the water on it. It's much better today, but whenever I have a moment of stillness, I feel a slight twinge. At least it's getting better. I honestly hope that I never feel that pain again. It really makes me resent the lack of availability of dental care in the US for people who can't afford it. These problems could have been fixed 7-10 years ago when they would have required minimal time and pain, but because of the expensive dental prices, I couldn't get it fixed. The only option for poor folks is to get the teeth pulled or live with bad teeth. In the end, I would still recommend this dentist to anyone. He was always so kind, even when he had to cause me pain. He's good at what he does and he takes pride in his work. The cost is even affordable. You can get cheaper dental care here, but the work is shoddy at best. Anyway, it's a blessing to finally have this worry out of my mind. Now I can rest easy about teeth. Visitors The number of visitors to this site has really increased. We went from about 7 people visiting to around 47 people visiting. That's great. I hope that people will keep checking in here and I also hope that you will leave comments. We need to hear from you. It does get lonely out here even though we're surrounded by people. Let us know that you care. End of the Term We're ending up our classes now. There's about 4 weeks left and then we'll be on our winter break. It's a much needed break after this round of classes. Here's hoping that next term will be a lighter load for us. Summer Plans We're still planning to return home next summer. The dentist visits set us back by about 5000 rmb. That's a huge deal because we need 20,000 rmb to get home. That's not even including travel money and food money once we get home. I hope that we can pull it together. The overtime we're working now should help out a little bit, but we'll have to pull some money out of thin air if this trip is going to work. We had been saving, but as I mentioned, we had some setbacks. The main problem is that we only have until February to save up. If we had until the summer, when we actually take the trip, then it wouldn't be a problem at all. Anyway, we'll keep praying about it. I'm sure it will all work out one way or the other.
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Our little group is continuing to grow. After more than a year, we're starting to see steady growth each week. This week we had two join us for the morning session: Allen and Mark. For the evening session, we had Mark, Allen, Frank, Sophia, Jane, Celina, and Catherine. It's really nice to see that Allen and Mark are coming twice even though we just repeat the same lesson at night. The conversation is really exciting and people seem to really understand the things that Colonel is teaching. Our singing was greatly improved with this new group. We attempted some new songs that none of the folks had heard before and we all managed to pull them off just like pros. It was great. It's interesting to note how our group is bringing people together. Colonel met Mark at English corner, and I met Frank at English corner. Through Mark, Sophia began to join us. She's a student here and Colonel and I invited her several times, but it was Mark who got her to come join us. Through Frank, we met Jane. This week, Jane brought Celina. It turns out that Celina and Sophia are actually very good friends who rarely ever get to see each other anymore. So, our group managed to bring two old friends together. I meet and talk with Catherine 3 times a week outside of our normal first day meetings. I'm constantly working with her, teaching her, and helping her to understand some Life Lessons. I wish I could meet with Allen a bit more, but we usually hang out together most of the day before and after our meetings. She is usually the first person to come and the last person to leave. It's a shame that Allen is a senior. She'll be leaving us soon and we'll really miss her. Most of the people who are coming now are seniors. This means that next year, we won't see them around anymore. The good thing is that Frank and Mark are locals to this city, so they won't leave. It's because of their efforts that we're growing more, so I hope that this will continue even after our little group starts to separate. Encouragement from an Unusual Place Frank has been quite an encouragement to me lately. From the beginning, he's been as constant as the moon. He's always there, and if he can't be there, then he gives Colonel and call. Frank always has some uplifting words to say. At the beginning of our evening meeting, he said that our little group was really growing. He told me, "All big things start from scratch." He said that word is spreading about our group and he knows that more students will be coming. He also said that it doesn't matter if no one else comes, he'll be there. We never have to worry about Frank. Maybe to him, the words are a small thing. But to me, they mean so much. Colonel and I have struggled this year with the decision of staying here, or searching out some more open place. The progress here has been unusually slow and we had begun to think that it was all a waste. Now that things are slowly moving along, it encourages us to keep pushing forward even when we feel that it's pointless. Without Frank, we would have little to no encouragement at all. I just hope that one day Frank will make the decision to become our brother. He's spreading the Good News, but still isn't a believer himself. More Birthday Fun! Cyprus celebrated his 10th birthday on November 12. We had to postpone his celebration for a week because of our busy work schedules and my tooth problems. At any rate, we finally got it done. I knew from the beginning that it would be a struggle to make him happy. He asked for a gun, so I got him a gun that shoots nerf discs. It turned out to be pretty huge, so he said he wanted a smaller one. Then he asked for some toy cars. He managed to complain about every single gift that we bought him. Even though the gifts were on his list, he managed to find a problem with them all. The only thing he did like was the black licorice that I bought. He was happy about that. He gave most of his gifts to Aolani and doesn't really play with any of them. He said the only thing he really wanted was a DS, so I guess he's just not going to be happy. We're not buying a DS. Root Canal
I finally got my tooth fixed completely. It's pretty decent and I'm glad it's over. I have three more teeth that need to be fixed, but the dentist says they're relatively minor. The plan is to fix all three in one go on next Saturday. Then I should be finished. In the end, I'll have gotten a root canal and four fillings for less than $500. Take that US dental care! For years I haven't been able to afford dental care in America. It's been twelve years since I've gone to any dentist in America and had any work done simply for lack of health insurance. I'm very thankful to find a great dentist here. It turns out that he also does orthodontics. Let's hope that the kids won't need any braces in the future though. We've really just had a great beginning to our week. This morning we had 3 folks visiting with us: Mark, Sailing (a girl we met last year at English corner), and Jack (one of Colonel's students). We had a great conversation that lasted for 2 hours. I was really surprised with Jack. He showed a great understanding of what was taught. I also learned that Sailing's mother used to take her to meetings each week when Sailing was a child.
For our evening meeting, we had Mark (yes, twice in one day), Catherine, Allen (she's back!), Sophia (she came with Mark a few weeks ago and returned tonight), Frank, and Frank's friend (I forgot her name). We had another good conversation that lasted for 1 hour. Then several people left, and a few more stayed to talk with us for another hour. It was really fun and also really exhausting. Between the meetings, I had to rush to get my lessons for class done. We also took a lunch break and went out to the new shopping mall here. To our surprise, the new Pizza Hut was finished and we got to have some real pizza, spaghetti, and a salmon and spinach lasagna that was an awesome culinary delight. On top of that, we got hot chocolate and hot pear tea. It truly was a good day! On Saturday we celebrated Aolani's 8th birthday. We had a very small party with just our family and two Chinese friends. I ordered some cake stuff online and made a birthday cake for Aolani. It was rainbow confetti cake with cherry icing and sprinkles. I placed each chocolate sprinkle by hand to spell out happy birthday. It took a while... She had about 15 gifts. I bought her 2 new outfits, a ukelele, some candy, jewelry, scarves, tights, a nail kit, and a bunch of other stuff. Mom sent her some dolls, a coloring paper, a light up toy, and some play jewelry and a few other things. Allen bought her a box of blocks (large legos).
The only decorations we had were some balloons that mom sent from the dollar general and some cheap balloons I found here. We put tape on the balloons and hung them up around the walls and on the windows. The kids really liked hanging them up, but they liked taking them down even more. We had about 12 balloons. Aolani drew on each balloon after the party. She gave each balloon and name and talks to them like they're her friends. She even named one after Joey, the girl who used to live here. Cyprus was a good sport about it all. This was the first birthday where we didn't buy any gift for the other kid. He didn't even seem to notice. I really worked hard to get all this birthday stuff together. I ordered everything online and had our Chinese friend, Allen, pick them up at the front gate for us. Then I wrapped all the gifts after my class on Friday and baked her cake on Friday. Then on Saturday morning, I cleaned the house and put the decorations on the cake. Colonel helped me to blow the balloons up after he got home from his class. The kids and I hung balloons on the walls. It was a tiring day. Dentist On Sunday, I woke up early and drove my e-bike out to the dentist. It was so cold and foggy out. I thought I was going to freeze. Even with two shirts, a coat, and gloves on, it was still cold. The dentist office wasn't heated and he insisted on blowing cold air into my tooth and spraying cold water in my mouth. Then he gave me cold water to rinse with. At one point I just had to stop and let my mouth warm up. The cold was very intense and my teeth never have liked the cold very much. I was shivering as I sat in the dentist chair. He tried to fix my tooth, but ended up postponing it yet another week. I can't understand why it's taking so long. He just keeps saying that he wants to wait and see what happens. I don't know what he's waiting for. I'm thankful that he's given me anesthetic the past two times, but I still feel some pain when he shoots that cold water and cold air into my tooth. I have to say that this dentist gets and A+ for effort. We have a serious language barrier. He knows about as much English as I know Chinese. Sometimes he calls a translator and puts her on speaker to translate for both of us. Sometimes he pulls out his Ipad and I pull out my Smart phone and we type our questions and answers into translator programs. He's even written out some basic questions and answers translated into English so that I can respond quickly and he can work quickly. It's getting better, but we still have our struggles. Today he held my hand up and said "tong", which means 'pain' in Chinese. I said "bu tong", which means 'no pain'. Clearly I wasn't understanding him because he said "bu shi", which normally means 'is not', but the meaning in this instance is "that's not it". After a second, I realized that he wanted me to hold my hand up if there was pain. It was a sort of ah-ha moment. Anyway, we're getting there. It's no more or less painful than going to the dentist in America. It's clean, sanitary, and this dentist knows his stuff. He studies before each procedure to remind himself what to do. He takes pictures of the inside of my mouth to show me the problems, how it's healing, or what he's going to do. If something isn't sanitized, he postpones our appointments until the equipment is totally clean. He's very patient and I really appreciate this. He never laughs when we misunderstand each other, which I also appreciate. It gets tiring to hear someone laughing every time I speak in English or when I mess up my Chinese. I would recommend this dentist to anyone. I just wish that the office had heat, but it's typical of China. Either there's no heat at all, or you have to be sure to wear a t-shirt under all your layers because it's so hot that you'll be taking clothes off or risk passing out. Meeting Because of my dentist trip, I was late getting to our meeting. I came back about an hour into the meeting. Only Catherine was there. I was glad to see her though. We were supposed to have a boy there too, but he cancelled this morning and said he'd come tonight. Well, at our night meeting only Frank showed up. The boy who cancelled earlier called and cancelled again. Guess he's not going to show up next week either. It's often like that here. Anyway, we had a great discussion with Frank. Normally we have to keep it at an hour, but tonight we ran over by one hour. Frank was amazed at how fast the time went by. We really talked about some deep stuff and for one moment, I thought Frank would make the decision. Then he quickly changed the subject. It's so frustrating when this happens. He even said that he believes. He just doesn't want to commit just yet. I do believe he might be our first convert, but it's not up to me. He just seems like he's almost ready. I hope he can cross that line of 'almost' and make it a sure thing. Please lift him up to the Father. |
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April 2015
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