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Subject: China Ramblings 6

We have come to the end of our first week of teaching. It is Saturday night and we have had a full and very interesting Sabbath. But lets go back to Thursday evening. The “China Project” Board was in town with members from Loma Linda, Hong Kong and locally. They were kind enough to include several of us outsiders at there special dinner social occasion. We were bussed to a resort where a multi-course vegetarian (mostly) dinner was served. It included a hot soup served out of a decorated watermelon tureen. Desert was a whole hot mango laying on its side sliced open with a hot fruit soup in place of the seeds. In between there were all kinds of vegetables from boiled peanuts, corn on the cob, boiled green soy beans in the pod, green peas with pine nuts, lotus root, small roasted yams and roasted water chestnuts and I don’t know what else.

Friday we were back to work. I had two hours of lecture followed by a practice quiz. The quiz told me that there are several students that need a lot of help. Darleen met her English class for the second time and has found them to be very eager to learn and very friendly.

In the evening we ate supper with the Welches, Tom Zirkle and James Wu, from Hong Kong ­ President of the China Mission. The visit was especially informative. We learned that the China Mission helps about 60 churches each year acquire their own churches. Pastor Wu had the morning sermon when he spoke about walking with God like Enoch. He used many other illustrations from the Bible to develop the theme. A lady who is a retired English teacher translates for us. Today we were sitting almost outside and during the sermon 3 young girls dressed in PE uniforms came in curious about what was going on. They stood just in front of us looking down the hallway at the speaker and listening when one of them noticed that it was being translated into English. She started watching the translator and then some folk brought chairs for them to sit down but the one still turned to face the translator. I made room for her to sit on a chair near me and motioned that it was for her. She accepted and then invited her friends to move their chairs so they could listen to the English. When the service was over our translator engaged them in conversation showing them a bilingual Bible. They showed a great deal of interest so Carlyle Welch gave them such a Bible. Later we learned that they are finishing middle school and had just failed their PE test so they were a bit discouraged when they came by. Carlyle told us later that he always takes a bilingual Bible to church for just such occasions that are not infrequent.

We had lunch again with the Welches, Tom Zirkle and two School of Nursing Faculty (Dee Hart and her Colleague) who arrived at Midnight Friday. They are here to teach for a week at the School of Nursing. In the wide ranging dinner talk we learned much about China culture and geography. In the afternoon Dr. Welch took us for a walk to visit the large (seats 6,000) almost new Christian church ­ very impressive. A choir of young people were there practicing and anthem and in the annex chapel a “rock” band was practicing. And a young man sang Amazing Grace. The church is about 3 blocks from our apartment. We then continued our walk down to the Quiantang river front. Along the way were large billboards depicting what the new Hangzhou will look like in 5-10 years. It is staggering to see all the construction going on. We arrived home at about sundown and so we are ready to start a new week.

God bless you all, Darleen and Paul