Travel

Lexi and I are headed to Shanghai this Sunday. Looking forward to visiting Shanghai Ballet, be interesting to see what happens. And of course we are excited to visit the city!

We get back Thursday and on Saturday after Lexi’s SAT, we jump back on a plane to Guang Nan where Lexi will be dancing and performing before a large audience and filmed by Yunnan TV. It will be…………very interesting. Lexi will be dancing en pointe on carpet while lip syncing a Chinese love song! I have no idea what we are in for, but ready for the adventure. We will keep you posted about when the show will view.

Good news. The college is not moving the foreign teachers for at least 2 years. This will help our decision making and planning for next year. We should have a good idea, where things stand once we return from Shanghai.

Wyatt and I will return to RWC June 8^th and Jeff, Savana and Lexi will return June 20^th. Looking forward to seeing family and friends! I can’t believe how fast this year has gone.

A Different Kind of Week

A Different Kind of Week

There are good weeks and there are hard weeks here. This past week was definitely one of the most difficult. Friends under hs arr_st, and a friend ab_sed have downcast my spirit for sure. Feeling helpless, yet there is one greater even than all my thoughts of bravado.

It seems timely that yesterday I would be enlightened on some of the butchering happening in the neighborhood. For 6-7 months now, every single morning about 7:00am we here the most disturbing noise. At first I thought it was a dog hit by a car or being beaten. But, since it happened every morning I started to think it was just a dog with a hideous bark. Now I realize it is the sound of the pigs screaming while being butchered. E-v-e-r-y single day……. Just can’t get used to it.

You may or may not know that the Chinese eat a lot of dog. Apparently they take to torturing the dogs before they kill it because this releases adrenaline that gives the meat a better taste. All this and more I learned on Easter Sunday. I’m sure this may be hard to read. It’s hard to be in a foreign land experiencing it, yet it is just the way of life for the locals.

So much to learn, and so many ways to grow. I am grateful for the 7 months of ignorance!

Sober,

B

Savana in Wenshan

By Savana

I went to visit the center to meet the kids the team is working with. And in just a couple words, they are SO PRECIOUS. As each of the kids and their parents came in one by one, my heart melted more and more. They are all so unique and special, Gd's perfect masterpieces, and I have fallen in love with each of them... I was able to watch what the team did with the kids, and realized it's exactly what I was picturing it would be like, which usually you never get what you expect, right?

There are currently five kids total that come to the center for therapy, each of them with cerebral palsy, and some of them with autism on top of the CP. (If you don't know what CP is, it's really easy to look up). The team has personal plans for each of the kids, a schedule of what exercises and therapy stuff they need to do each day. I shadowed A (the girl who I'm "replacing") as she worked with a little three year old boy, Ha Han. He has both cerebral palsy and autism. Even though he is only three, he has an immense history of illness with severe disability as a result. He is very tense and jerky, and easily falls into throwing tantrums, using his extremely strong will and body to fight against A and the therapy when he doesn't want to obey. But there are also times that he enjoys himself and responds well. I was able to see him active in both situations.

I watched A take Ha Han to the bowls of different beans and rice, which are used to stimulate the senses on the kids' hands and arms, making them more aware of the sensory world and such. Immediately, Ha Han threw a tantrum, and fought with all his strength and screamed to get away from touching the beans. But A stuck with him and forced him to finish the session. It was an intense 2 minutes... I realized free will is where the battle and challenge will be with these kids. They will not always be willing to do the work they need to, and surely they face what they see as dead-ends every day and want to give up. But I'll have to work to remove those walls and to help them keep going, since they can't do it alone.

What an amazing Gd we have that he does the same thing for us every day...

I talked to A more about her work with Ha Han, and she said it's been a hard 7 months because it's a constant battle with him. He started out with showing no emotion, would not respond to any sensory stimuli, and had all the bad symptoms of CP and autism. But as she kept working with him, she has seen him improve dramatically. He now giggles, screams, walks around, and is more aware of his surroundings. I was privileged myself to see improvements in Ha Han that A pointed out: he tried to reach and grab a ball on his own, which is something CP kids at his severity level rarely endeavor to do. He did a couple other things that he had never done before that day, and I shared the excitement and joy with A and the rest of the team.
Gd knew what he was doing in having me watch Ha Han. He didn't show me an exceptional, awful, or typical day. He showed me what all the days will be like in one. I saw both the challenges, and I saw the rewards. Gd's presence was heavy with me that day, in a way that confirmed to me that he will bring me to Wen Shan to do his purpose: to love these children and to fight the enemy with them, (which is not their disabilities. I have come to believe disabilities are gifts from Gd…)
Another way Gd confirmed my spirit is the comfort I felt in that room. I kept getting the sense in my core that Wen Shan and that room is where I will belong this next year. There was peace amongst the chaos, great assurance that this is what I'm called to.

I still feel very sober about living in Wen Shan and taking on this undertaking to work with these children. It's not going to be very exciting and certainly not easy. A herself said it's a hard thing to do, especially when most of the time you rarely see improvement and you feel like your work is getting nowhere. But she also said it has been one of the greatest things she had ever thought she would do in her life.

So, the fight will be worth it. Not because of the gain or for the sake of just doing something difficult. But because it is serving our good Lrd and loving his blessed children, a passion he himself placed in my heart.

Hats and Sun

What to tell you? We have felt for several months now, we are in a holding pattern waiting for what's next. We have to learn not to wait and live today. It is drastically different from what we faced in the U.S. The kids are moving along happy as ever to be in China.
Savana is currently in Wenshan where she plans to serve next year. This is her first trip there and today she will visit some water projects and the clinic where she will be doing physical and musical therapy with disabled children. We are anxious to hear about her trip.
Wyatt is currently at basketball with the local school's team. He is making fast friends and the kids are great with him. We are trudging through school. Wyatt and I are currently teaching each other what we are learning about Napoleon. Wyatt is reading the 12 Most Decisive Battles and I am reading medical chronicles of Napoleon's campaign in Russia Anno 12. Quite interesting. What is not so interesting is diagramming sentences. Who really cares where gerunds go on the diagram chart? Do you?
Lexi is dancing a lot, preparing for an audition at Shanghai Ballet the first week of May. Shanghai is a boarding high school, we are looking into it for next fall. Not really sure what is in store for us for next year, but we keep opening the doors.
It has definitely warmed up here. It's nice, but heating up quickly and that means it gets........smelly. Yep......smelly. And along with the sun comes hats and umbrellas. It is not uncommon to see a man or boy in a woman's hat. Lacy, frilly, flowery, pink, purple, white anything will do to keep the sun off the face. Today a man with a large brimmed lacy hat and I had quite the stare down. He of course was looking at me with astonishment because.......well because I am a foreigner (big nose), very strange looking. And well, I was looking at him because I admired his hat!

Babbling through the dark night of the soul

Several months ago, we took this picture from our balcony window, straight down into the courtyard. It's a funeral procession.

Today I started reading The Ascent of Mount Carmel/The Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross. After living ‘cross-culturally,’ I relate to this quote in the prologue more than I would have before:

“[Unhelpful spiritual leaders] are like the builders of Babel, who, when told to furnish suitable material, gave and applied other very different material, because they understood not the language, and thus nothing was done.”

I never thought of the fact that they probably tried to keep their gigantic building project going, but because of the language difficulties, it became impossible!

I especially related today while in China Mobile. Savana’s cell phone was stolen near the end of January at the place where the youth group was having their retreat. The thief used up all our remaining money on our simcards. Within a few days of the theft, I went to China Mobile’s office next to the college and Christine (the student we’ve mentioned before) went along to help. We told them the phone was stolen and to cancel the number. Long story short, they didn’t cancel the number. The thief got another 272 RMB to spend on Savana’s stolen phone. And ours didn’t work again. I went twice this week to make sure the number got canceled and try to get the money back. The language barrier makes this almost impossible. The only reason it got this far was because the guy helping me did have limited English (better than my extremely limited Chinese). No dice on getting the money back though...‘nothing was done.'

I realized that I had heard St. John of the Cross’ poem ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ before. Loreena McKennit, whose music our family likes a lot, put it to music. It describes soul's journey to be united with God.

You can hear it here if you are interested: Dark Night of the Soul

Movie time

Wow, we haven’t blogged in a while, sorry! The weather has been gloomy, most of us have had bad colds the last week or so. Lexi went on a service trip using power tools and building greenhouses! Savana has been plowing her way through school to get graduated, it’s just around the corner. Wyatt is on a campout with boys scouts this weekend. I was supposed to go, but my cold kept me out of it. The sun is finally out today though!

At the beginning of the semester, I showed Miss Potter. Good movie if you haven’t seen it. Then week before last, I showed Pursuit of Happyness. Because I was sick I showed Secretariat right after. I usually never show movies back to back, but my cold was so bad I couldn’t talk in class without going into a coughing fit. It wasn’t intentional but these movies give a consistent message. I didn’t realize it until we finished Secretariat. They are all biographies and all of the main characters had a dream but were told “You can’t do it,” often by immediate family members (parent, spouse, etc.)

The students liked all three movies and after it was over I wrote the three main character names and “You can’t do it” and “That’s impossible” on the board. I asked them what the characters dreams were and who told them you can't do it. I crossed out both negative sentences. I told them that part of why I came to China was to tell them that they matter, they are important. I hope I get asked “why am I important?” and get to tell the rest of the story.

PS - The picture was taken on our trip to Fu Xian Lake