A Beautiful Sunday

Today is the best day of the week!! It is a day of celebrating life and creation. I am blessed. The last 24 hours have been a great mix of events. We have had our first few moments of "wow we're in China". The first cultural mix-up happened last night when me and my friend/teammate Megan went to order smoothies while our group waited for dinner. We went up and quickly realized the workers did not speak English. Shoot. Well, we wanted the smoothies bad enough we pressed on anyway! We begin using hand motions... exaggerated hand motions. Megan points to the signs and to me and her and I was shaking my head yes and no as we tried to bridge the communication gap. Finally, they repeated our hand motions and finger pointing and I got really excited that they understood! The first word out of my mouth comes "si!!" I spoke Spanish of all things!! Are you kidding me?! I quickly turned a couple shades of red at my blunder and slowly began backing away from the counter as Megan stared at me in disbelief. Then we both busted out in laughter and the poor workers behind the counter had no idea what was going on. As if that wasn't bad enough, when we picked up the smoothies we tried relaying the message that we wanted an extra cup to share and mix the smoothies in. They had NO idea what we were getting at. Our teammate Josh came riding to our rescue. However, he quickly made the situation worse! We were all talking- the worker in Chinese, me in babbled confusion, Megan trying to point to me and her and the cups, and Josh trying to use charades to show splitting the smoothie up into two cups. All this led to us laughing, the worker frustrated, and MEgan pulling us away with a thumbs up sign at the worker. What an experience!!

With last night's great cultural interaction under our belts, we woke up this morning a bit more enthusiastic because we would have the opportunity to go to fellowship! First tho, our running crew went out again at 6 am for a morning "jog" :) We ran along the river again and it was great! However, our team had our second welcome to China when each of us was hit suddenly with sick stomachs! We all felt really poor today and spent a good amount of our time running in and out of the bathrooms. We all had the same noodles last night and let's leave it at this: we wont be returning back any time soon to that noodle shack! Despite sick stomachs, we made our way across the city to a government registered fellowship. It was a huge building and when we arrived thirty minutes there was a line a couple hundred long to get inside the building for the service! I was in awe that I would have to wait in line to go to fellowship! That has NEVER been the case in America! (the worst we've had is getting up early for the good seats at Reality!) But this had a couple hundred nationals waiting patiently outside for entrance. As the line moved forward into the building I was awed that I was here, in Beijing. I was surrounded by brothers and sisters from a different nation! He is soo Big! We fail to realize this! The fellowship did not have a translator and this was really hard and distracting. I wanted so badly to understand the message. Fortunately, the Father spoke to me in these words from Habakuk "Look at the nations and watch- and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told". I was astonished when I was flipping through the Book and I stumbled across these words. What was written in the Book laying in my hands was parallel to what I could witness as my eyes looked up and scanned the room. It was full of people seeking Hope with freedom. What a beautiful scene to witness! We also got to partake in the elements today. Truly a blessing in our first Sunday in China. As we left, I believe I will always remember understanding how big the fAther is! He is of the nations- capable of understanding any tongue. This is mind-blowing and humbling! After the service, we went to my candidate counselor Rebekah's favorite restaurant, "the Green umbrella". We ordered her favorite dishes (it's her last night in Beijing before she returns to the US) and her fav. dishes are definitely some of mine! They have a great garlic broccoli dish! They also had a great lemon chicken dish! They also have this great bread thing that reminds me of chapati from Uganda. Oh how I miss that food, but I love Chinese Food too! Following lunch, we just relaxed until we had another class meeting with great discussion. And for dinner we were blessed with MEXICan food! We also had dessert: a brownie and scoop of ice cream- um yes please i was in HEAVEN! That was a great dinner because we got to know a few of the other teachers that will be at Changchun. They are returning from last year's group of teachers! They are very excited to be back and have us join them in Changchun. I am so pumped to get out there and begin life there. My heart feels so much love for my students already and I am so excited to share and give this love to them! I can't wait to get over there! But there are valuable lessons being taught in these weeks here in Beijing so I am trying to continually live in the present! Anyways, I miss and love you friends and family! You are always a part of my thoughts and I am so thankful for your support/encouragement and love! Please update me on your lives!!