New Year in February

Threw our New Year’s bash tonight. Shot off some fireworks, ate some dumplings, and played some games. It’s strange to light fireworks right on a city street. It’s going on all over the city and the echoes off the building cranks the volume up a few notches. Overall though, I find the Chinese, the inventors of the dumb things, to be remarkably timorous when using them. They treat sparklers like grenade launchers, bottle rockets like nuclear warheads. More fun to watch them prance around for fear of being blown into oblivion by a gram of gunpowder than it is to actually watch the fireworks themselves. 

Last time I’ll see St. and T. for a while. They’re leaving in the morning to head home – one lives one province south, the other two provinces south. One by train, one by bus. Even though they’ll only be gone for a couple weeks, I’ll miss those guys quite a bit. I really have to praise the Lord for giving me the opportunity to work with a couple guys like these two. They’re both hard workers, and their labors are starting to see some exciting fruit. Please pray for both of them this week as they both are hoping to share the Gospel with their families. 

Another church not far away from us has a few students that stop by our meetings pretty often. Most of them have been Christians for much longer than anyone in our group, so their Bible knowledge is also, for the most part, far greater. One of their students has started participating in our Friday night ministry class. Apparently, their church was started several years ago by someone in full-time ministry. A couple years ago, though, this guy left for some reason, and, not wanting to see the church disband, one of the members of the church volunteered to act as the pastor of the group. I really pray that in the future we will be able to be a real help and blessing to the many house churches like this one in this part of the country.