Monday was the beginning of New Bridge, our language school. Jaime and I are finding that being a student again is a lot of work. Jaime is in the beginning class and I am one level up from that. With all of our classmates being Korean, we are doubly challenged. Koreans are taught 1,000 Chinese characters as children and use them to some extent in daily life. They are ahead of us to put it mildly. Imagine a Korean taking Spanish classes with a bunch of Texans... that's about the equivalent.
We have already met with fellow teachers & new friends from Shiyan! We went to Pete's Tex-Mex near the Lido Hotel - a Holiday Inn that is famous, very famous, yet many people have never heard of it - go figure. Then we met up with Yulin, a friend and LST Reader from the University at Buffalo work. And a few of our Chinese friends/students from Shiyan are here in Beijing studying or doing internships. We hope to get a group going from these friends - one of them is a faithful brother.
We are working on preparing our home for all of you to come visit us! We will have an open house policy something like this: 1. Tell us when you are coming to visit, 2. Consider working with www.LST.org (a separate apartment is provided!), 3. We will arrange for your arrival with a special reception and tour.
We are still needing to spend a good couple of days buying small appliances and most everything for the kitchen. The kitchen came with a fridge and a cooktop with two gas burners - that tells you how much we need to shop! However, we like to eat cheaply in the local hole in the wall restaurants, so the kitchen isn't super important - until you realize our next endeavour.
We are wanting to establish ourselves in our building and community. The building has 30 floors with 10 (?) apartments each. Let's say that 75% of those apartments are rented. 300 x .75 = 225 families in this building. If we made a dozen cookies for each family, that would be 225 x 12 = 2750 cookies... I don't know that we'll be able to do that. 12 is a good number in the states when making cookies, but 8 is a good number here! What if we only made 8 cookies for each family? 1800 cookies? That is still a lot of cookies!
Our friend and family member told of his cookie conversion. "When I ate the cookies that Marcus & Julia made, my mouth opened and my heart opened, and I began learning about true Love from the Creator. I kept eating cookies, the cookies changed me, but the Creator's Love changed me more." (This is a very poor translation of a great story!) This is why we want to make cookies... we'll start with the families on our floor, that'll only be 72 cookies.
Many of our friends in the States are asking how they can get involved in the work here. Some are wanting to come to China as teachers, others with Let's Start Talking, and still others just to visit. We want you to know questions are welcome, we would love to share more with you, and to share China with you! So bring it!
We have already met with fellow teachers & new friends from Shiyan! We went to Pete's Tex-Mex near the Lido Hotel - a Holiday Inn that is famous, very famous, yet many people have never heard of it - go figure. Then we met up with Yulin, a friend and LST Reader from the University at Buffalo work. And a few of our Chinese friends/students from Shiyan are here in Beijing studying or doing internships. We hope to get a group going from these friends - one of them is a faithful brother.
We are working on preparing our home for all of you to come visit us! We will have an open house policy something like this: 1. Tell us when you are coming to visit, 2. Consider working with www.LST.org (a separate apartment is provided!), 3. We will arrange for your arrival with a special reception and tour.
We are still needing to spend a good couple of days buying small appliances and most everything for the kitchen. The kitchen came with a fridge and a cooktop with two gas burners - that tells you how much we need to shop! However, we like to eat cheaply in the local hole in the wall restaurants, so the kitchen isn't super important - until you realize our next endeavour.
We are wanting to establish ourselves in our building and community. The building has 30 floors with 10 (?) apartments each. Let's say that 75% of those apartments are rented. 300 x .75 = 225 families in this building. If we made a dozen cookies for each family, that would be 225 x 12 = 2750 cookies... I don't know that we'll be able to do that. 12 is a good number in the states when making cookies, but 8 is a good number here! What if we only made 8 cookies for each family? 1800 cookies? That is still a lot of cookies!
Our friend and family member told of his cookie conversion. "When I ate the cookies that Marcus & Julia made, my mouth opened and my heart opened, and I began learning about true Love from the Creator. I kept eating cookies, the cookies changed me, but the Creator's Love changed me more." (This is a very poor translation of a great story!) This is why we want to make cookies... we'll start with the families on our floor, that'll only be 72 cookies.
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