A Week Of Sundays

Quite a week! It’s been fantastic having our field director here – he’s flying back to Beijing this morning. He preached and taught for us four times in the couple days he was with us, and really made quite an impression on the students (Chinese and American). It’s really a joy to work with someone so gracious and so willing to “spend and be spent” for the cause of Christ. Definitely one of my heroes – I was thinking this week that he was actually the first foreigner I met that could speak Mandarin. So Wednesday and Thursday we had special evening services, and there was a profession of faith each night, praise the Lord!

We had an activity last night after the service to hopefully encourage a good number of first-time visitors to come hear the message. We all went to a bowling alley after the service – rented out the whole place (ten lanes in the second floor of a hotel) for a couple hours. Pretty cheap, actually – bowling is hardly a favorite activity here. I don’t think any of the students that came had ever been bowling before. So everyone was on kind of an even level, which made it lots more fun. I think it was a pretty good activity, though – lots of good ties made. I saw some of the least social people that come to our church having a good time with a bunch of other people on a lane.

I guess I don’t mention them too often, but our team of American students is really doing wonderfully. I think they’ve all built so many relationships with students here, and I think they’ve all seen a little fruit. The Lord is really using them to get this new location for our church up and rolling. I still don’t know who most of the people are who come – they’re their friends. These professions of faith from this week are their contacts – don’t know if they read the blog of not, but if you do – keep it up guys! They’ve only got about another week and a half with us – we’ll sure miss them when they’re gone!

Some of the students were laughing at me last night because I was so nervous to speak Chinese in front of my field director. His Mandarin is awesome, and mine is quite less-than-awesome. I managed to make it through my intro’s and stuff without bombing too awfully bad, though – and my field director says that we’re making good progress in the language. That’s a major praise.