A good day "off"

Enjoying a beautiful spring day in Beijing. Pulled out a lighter jacket and donned sunglasses today. Mark & I rode bikes to the Olympic Park then walked into the park this afternoon, observing the cherry trees and forsythia blooming. Partway through our walk, we just sat on a bench to listen to the peaceful quiet of a spring day. Now cooking for the guys and listening to Keith & Kristen Getty at the Gospel Coalition. A good day "off".

Our Weekend

Our homework for this weekend was to create a monologue telling about our weekend. Here it is, edited by our teachers.

周末我们做什么了？我们的周末很忙。一个星期一边星期六，我们的朋友 Bessie 来我家住了。这个星期六下午四点我们的朋友Hector和Bessie 结婚了。MoQiSen 做婚礼。多朋友帮做一个美婚礼了。然后，三十六朋友在一个烤馆里一起吃晚饭了。Hector和 Bessie 特别高兴。Hector说了“我没有词。”

星期天：

星期天早上七点半我起床了。我洗了澡，然后看了圣经，吃了早饭。八点半MoQiSen 和我在教堂坐了出租汽车。MoQiSen 是外国人的牧师这么星期天我们去了我们外国人的教堂。人一起唱了歌，做了祈祷，听了圣经。然后我们的朋友一起在面馆吃午饭了。两点MoQiSen 在咖啡店和朋友聊天，我跟朋友们的孩子玩一会。六点我们回了家。我很累。我要休息了。以便喔睡觉，我还抽时间做了汉语作业。

Yes, it is as difficult as it looks. But then I realized, years ago I learned shorthand. So I can learn this. It's not so different from the idea of shorthand - only this takes longer. 

BBC

Recently a friend from the States wrote us asking what BBC is like.   

BBC is like any other ch that meets in a hotel conference room. We meet in a small to medium sized room where the  bigger area is in the front of the room so that latecomers end up walking in front of the lectern to go to the back of the room. Our worship service is simple, a blend of traditional and modern hymns, prayer & preaching.  Depending on the musicians, we use a combination of electric piano, guitar, and vocalists. Currently we are in the process of recommending and interviewing men for the offices of elder and deacon, a situation that BBC has not had to date. One of the reasons we fell in love with BBC last spring was the way the folks reminded us so much of GBC in their friendliness and fellowship.  People like to hang around before and after the worship service to fellowship and drink coffee together.

About 50-60 people from 12 different countries attend on any given Sunday. Many of our people traveled over the Spring Festival break of January and February so although we missed our regulars, we seemed to have lots of visitors. If all our regulars and our visitors came on the same day, we would have a packed room indeed. We meet once a week on Sunday morning. Because people live so far away, some come 1 ½- 2 hours, more than one worship service is impractical.  Even attending a mid-week study is difficult for most people. Company employees work long hours; school children have long days and lots of homework. Some English teachers teach afternoons, evenings, and weekends.

Our body consists of university students, English teachers, business people, and embassy workers. Some of these make use of opportunities to connect with their students.  Some of these include families. Most of them stay a year or two. We do have some young couples and singles who have committed to stay a few more years. Now that Mark & Diane moved to Europe, I think Mark & I are the longest-married couple here, with the oldest children.  The average (mean) age of the adults seems to be about 32, with a kids’ average of just under 7.

No matter where we are in the world, Christ unites His body.  We can grow together, learn together, worship together, and watch God work miracles in our lives. I am thankful for God’s goodness to BBC.

Back to Language School

This morning we started back to language school. Boy, did we feel like we were greeted by a brick wall. Last semester the first of our two classes was the introduction class that covered pronunciation, grammar, and conversation. The second class was the spoken, conversational class with little English. We found the spoken class harder due to the nature of the class. This semester the classes are switched and we have a different teacher for our conversational class. Then we learned that the school told our teachers to only speak Chinese with us, including in the introductory class. So, although Mark & I had a tutor for the past two months, we both had the 'deer in the headlights' feeling today. At some point, I just listened to absorb the content. I am sure we will adjust after a while. A couple of us students talked with our introductory teacher to see if we could ramp up to only Chinese instead of starting off totally in Chinese. We will see how that goes.

I have heard that one way to keep intellectually active is to learn another language. Ok, but Chinese? Maybe this will keep (or make) us mentally healthy. Actually I enjoy learning the characters. I have always liked puzzles, detective work, figuring things out. Mark likes to talk. Maybe I will let Mark do the talking, and I will do the reading. If we stick together, we make a good team.