Shaken Not Stirred

Another weekend in the books. Hanging on for dear life. Had to postpone our baptismal service to next week due to apocalyptic forecasts. I tend to doubt weather forecasts as much as the next guy, but when people are unloading sandbags on the main streets in town before it’s even started to rain, that gets my attention. Naturally, it turned out to be a beautiful day. Tough call, really. Didn’t want to seem faithless, but didn’t want to be stupid, either. We had prayed for good weather all week, and, in the end, we got it. Our faith wasn’t strong enough, though!

So between finals (students are still testing and finishing classes here) and the weather, our attendance was down a little bit, but still a strong weekend, praise the Lord. The American students are starting to see some fruit from their labors, now, too – there were three professions of faith last night, plus a few more in the previous few days. Ryan preached twice this weekend – did a great job. Preaching to people in their second language is a little tortuous, but these guys are adapting very well to it.

This weekend we tried to honor our graduating seniors. Just two or three of them in each service, but we got them a cake, gave them some little gifts, etc. One of the guys, J., sang a special last night and then gave a short testimony. Pretty awesome – we’ve never really done anything like that before – I’m still a little terrified about what people will say when they’re in front of everyone. But he talked about becoming a Christian (he was a Buddhist) and what the church has meant to him. Sang a song called, “I deeply love you, Jesus.”

Another senior has been one of my wife’s best friends since we got here, T. She has volunteered to go work for a year in the area affected by the earthquake in Sichuan. Well, she was pretty much having an emotional breakdown all service. She’s had to say goodbye to all her friends in the past couple days, and the church service was kind of the capstone to her woes. She gave a testimony and said she was an “Omega Christian.” Pretty neat part of the service, but kind of depressing to think about having to say goodbye to people like this every year. Exciting, though, to think about the changes that have happened in their lives and how the Lord could use them in the places they’ll end up in the future.