Latest & Greatest

Praise
1. Our new minister Jacky (English name of course). He has been acting as the minister for quite some time now, so it wasn't difficult for the church here to begin paying him for his service. This is a great step for the congregation! Their first local minister. Jacky is a great servant. He has a wife and child. Please keep them all in your prayers.
2. Praise God! We had several guests on Sunday! Our church family is growing in many ways, one of which is evangelism.
3. Thanking God for fun times! Jaime arranged an ice skating trip on Sunday. Children from the orphanage, some folks from Haidian, and our group were all represented quite well. (The rink didn't have Andrew's size skates, so he went to the coffee shop to keep warm.)

Plans
1. Our team will all be doing a bit of traveling January and February. Some to the US, others to former ministry locations, and still others for a bit of vacationing.
2. The university area group is planning to start a new church this year and they have already targeted an area in the southern part of the city. Praise God!
3. Our church is reading through the Bible in two years. What we read through the week will be used for preaching on Sunday.

Ongoing Efforts
1. The Sichuan families have been receiving regular prayers, phone calls, visits, and 1000RMB/monthly from a fund that churches in the States and a few throughout China have contributed to. We ask you to faithfully lift up these children and their families to our Father:

1. Tong Zhong Cheng (boy--14)--lost one leg
2. Ma Cong (boy--11)--lost one leg; lost his father and older sister
3. Luo Ying (girl--9) lost one arm and one leg
4. Shang Ting (girl--10) lost one eye, index finger on one hand, and both legs; buried more than 120 hours.
5. Wen Jing (girl--12) lost right hand; 2 broken legs
6. Wang Xiao Wei (boy--12) lost one leg
7. Jiang Ping Ping (girl--10) one leg badly broken and mangled
8. Zhao Chen (boy--11) broken shoulder
9. Ren Si Yu (girl--6) severe leg injury; nerve damage on one side of body; lost her father

The major injuries have been listed above, yet nearly all the children had severe cuts and wounds all over the body. Many of them have deep scars in their scalps from head injuries. All of them, except for Si Yu, were inside school buildings that collapsed during the earthquake. Si Yu ran outside with her class (first grade being on first floor) but they were all covered up by the landslide when a huge piece of the nearby mountain can down. She was the last one out the door with her teacher so her teacher put her arms around her to protect her. The teacher and all the other children perished, only Si Yu survived.

2. Wednesday Night Seekers Study
We have had a new wave of people coming to our Wednesday night studies. It might be a blessing, but we are not sure how just yet because many of them are already believers and their English is quite good. We have asked a few to allow the non-believers to be involved more and reminded them of the purpose of the study - to reach the non-believers.

3. Building Relationships
On different occasions, we had folks over for Mexican and a pizza & game night. While we are busy with language studies, Bible studies, and various other appointments, we are wanting to reach out more. We really want to deepen our connections with the local brothers and sisters. Of course the difficulty is that we are not even close to being conversant in Chinese.

My Facebook account (or Jaime's) has recent pictures of travels and fun times.