Good day All ---
First, let me wish you all a Happy New Year and a belated Merry Christmas! (This was intended to be sent out before that holiday.) As usual so many things to write, and since I know that some of you thought I disappeared let me just cut to the chase:
Mid-November until now has been so filled with lots of things! Changes and growth continue to be a part of my life here in China. Both the busyness and the changes have sometimes made me grit my teeth out of dread for all of the forthcoming activities. As a foreigner, people both expect and assume a lot from me; mix in major cultural differences and what you get is a lot spontaneous mandatory things for me to do. I am still trying to get used to that major difference in the culture and the rest of this email will help you understand better. All in all though, Jah has led me into a season of contentment and given me a real hunger for more of Him for this coming year. I am eager to see how much Dad grows me as I am away from so many friends, family, and American culture.
In mid-November, I set off on what was planned to be a three-day visit to one of my best friends. He is living in Guangzhou now where he attends a university. Dad has totally deepened our friendship and broken through much cultural differences to make our friendship super tight! And, at the time of my trip to see him he was really needing some encouragement and strengthening from Jah. (His university and the environment in his new home is very discouraging and filled with much darkness.) I personally had really been missing him and was looking forward to seeing him again. The visit was a truly wonderful time! Dad allowed me to do some sharing, be an encouragement to a weak brother and sister, and see more of why I am here. It also gave me many opportunities to eat McDonald's and Pizza Hut both of which mean more than you can imagine unless you've been without real American food for almost six months! And, on that same trip I finally got to eat some bugs ---- silk worms! They were very good although nearly everyone else was reluctant to even try them.
My trip to Guangzhou was cut short by one day, yet what I returned to was mostly good. A friend who had worked here for almost two years came back into town (the day I got back) to my surprise for a week; I hadn't seen her for more than a month and was super glad to hear that she had returned and was able to stay for so long! That week was just before Thanksgiving and was spent almost entirely with her. It was truly wonderful to catch up on things with her and learn about things in her new location in China. (I've visited there twice, and I have a handful of friends working with her there.) She really encouraged me, and I was able to do likewise as I got to share of my visit to Guangzhou. (She is also friends with my best friend in Guangzhou.) So many people (friends, former students, other Americans) all wanted to see her, and I was there when her bus pulled away from the station headed back to Fuzhou. Two of my students/friends (her friends/former students) were with us and that experience taught me a lot about Dad's power. You see, I am a really emotional person, and my time here in China has significantly magnified how emotional I get. It's really crazy how in one minute I can very literally go from extremely happy, to silly, to sad. I say all this to share with you how enormous Dad's power is; for you see, when she left my friends --- who are usually the strong ones --- they were sobbing and totally crushed by her departure, and it was I who was the strong one showing very little emotion and giving them comfort. What a work on Yah's part!
Then, the week of Thanksgiving came and oh my what a story to tell! This was my first Thanksgiving (and major holiday for that matter) away from my family. It was very rough on me. I tried my hardest not to let all of my thoughts get the best of me, but they continued to do so. At my house, my family always celebrates Thanksgiving like three times --- once with my dad's side, once with my mom's side, and once with just my family with all the leftovers from the other Thanksgivings. We have lots of turkey sandwiches for days after the holiday which is making me laugh as I think about how you can't even find one turkey here! Some people don't even know what a turkey looks like because they've never seen one, not even on tv. So, to continue my family's tradition of multiple Thanksgivings, I decided to celebrate on Thanksgiving Day with the other foreign teacher at my school (she's from Canada) and a good Chinese friend who could translate and order for us. It was really cool for the other teacher to celebrate with me because this too was her first Thanksgiving away from family, and it was also very difficult for her to be away for the holiday. (Canadians celebrate their Thanksgiving in October though.) So, the three of us went out to eat at this really nice Western restaurant where I hoped to get a steak. No steak (they were out of steak), but it was a really nice evening and a fabulous supper with real bread and butter (you can't buy it anywhere), salad (terribly difficult to find or make it because of a major lack of lettuce), and salmon in shrimp sauce with a baked potato (special request and totally impossible to get without our Chinese friend to translate). And, the evening brought myself and the other teacher together a little more which is and was really good to have happen.
And then, there was there was Thanksgiving with 26 of my students on the Saturday following the holiday. What a hilarious night! Before I came to China this summer, one thing that I really wanted to do was to teach the meanings of American holidays. We had been discussing American holidays in class, and this came at just the perfect time to make Thanksgiving a real learning experience for my students. They knew virtually nothing of the holiday, so I invited my classes to my house not knowing how many would actually show up. In the past, I've had 15 show up for special events, so I expected more this time. But, I never dreamed that Thanksgiving would turn out like it did with my students! That morning I went with a friend and spent two hours shopping to buy all of the food for the Thanksgiving supper. All in all, it took six and a half hours to prepare and cook all of the food. I made chicken nuggets, green beans with cream of potato sauce, yams with sweet glaze (brown sugar and cinnamon), mashed potatos, and Southern sweet tea. All of that was cooked and prepared from scratch. No joke, in 20 minutes all of the food was gone!!!! Not only that but my announcement to bring a plate and a spoon hadn't gotten to any of the students, so I was pulling out all the dishes, forks, spoons, and cups I had in my house to feed everybody! These students had already eaten supper, but they came with major appetites and not only consumed all of that food I cooked but also nearly all of a three-pound bag of roasted peanuts! All I could do was laugh about how quickly they had eaten everything and cleaned up all the dishes too; it was like I turned my head for a second and a swarm of locusts had invaded my apartment. I still laugh about that night and am so thankful that I got to share of Jah and the truth behind that holiday with so many students! (I also celebrated Chanukah --- which started the day before --- for the first time too; it was nice.)
December came and with it came major growth from Papa. He began the work in November and it carried through to December. With that growth came deeper understanding of the culture here and of why I am away from people back home. He has shown me so much and helped me to understand the languages more. I celebrate that victory in a very small way each time I go to the shop right by my school and buy a coke in Chinese all by myself. That may sound insignificant to you, but to me, it is so wonderful to see how much He has taught me. I realize that I need to do a better job of learning the languages here and I really hope to do that all the more in 2003. I'm just barely conversational, and I don't know if I'll be somewhat fluent when I leave in January 2004. Yet, I know that I've got to try harder and learn more of the languages. It will really make things more effective although Elohim is still able to use the little that I know to speak His truth in Chinese (more on that a little further down).
On my five month anniversary of being here (Dec 11), one of my friends opened a coffee shop. I love coffee and having his shop very close to my home makes this town so much more wonderful! Not only that, but he's made it really Western including the menu. So, despite seeing one of my favorite Western restaurants close around that time, I was very happy that I could still enjoy Western food when those cravings came upon me. Not only is the food good, but the atmosphere there is really relaxing too which greatly helps on my long days and during the times I miss America. I don't know what will happen between myself and this friend, but I am starting to really see our friendship grow deeper. I think that it will last a long time and that we will both be able to benefit the other even after I leave and go elsewhere. That deepening of our friendship also helps me understand the culture better, so it's good for many reasons. This same friend really wants to see more foreigners come to China and Meizhou specifically. He has offered to act as a host for anyone who can come. He is very serious about his invitation to help more foreigners come to China; if interested, please let me know as there are many opportunities for you here.
Immediately following the opening of the coffee shop, I was presented with a truly unique experience to learn of Chinese culture. I have a student who has both an uncle and an aunt who both live in temples; one is a head monk while the other is a head nun. So, I went with her to visit them, but little did I know just how amazing this trip would be! Not only did I get to visit them, but I got to live in her uncle's temple for three days and eat with the ladies of her aunt's temple. How I wish I share openly of that experience, but I can't. Anyone who wants to read about that experience in full can read my journal when I get back to the States though. Our Father was so wonderful to me during that trip and taught me so much about how fake anything but His way of life is. I was given access to everything at those temples, so I saw and learned so much. Although I really wanted to share verbally with them so much, Papa had other plans. He let my life be the example in many ways though including waking me up both mornings there at 5:30 am (so Him!) and changing my food cravings to a vegetarian diet which turns out to be exactly the diet of Buddhist monks and nuns! Only the children I met really understood the deep things of Jah and were willing to consider it (childlike fth, eh?). And, like I hinted at up above, Jah used my limited Chinese to speak His truth. He gave me the honor and the words to share directly in Chinese with an old man at the temple. Though he didn't accept it, ptl that he was given an opportunity to know the truth!
Then the week before Christmas and Christmas itself came. Having endured my first major holiday away from my family, I expected this one to be hard on me. It was, yet it was also really wonderful to be here to share about Christmas with all of my students. For them (well, eight of them), it was the first time to decorate a Christmas tree (my real tree!) and learn some Christmas songs. For me, it was a chance to understand the importance of m work more, to continue a family tradition (Christmas breakfast), and to once again be with the foreign brothers/sisters after two months of forced separation. I was showered here with so many presents and warm wishes for both Christmas and New Year's. I enjoyed so much good food and received a letter from a good friend at just the right time making Christmas very meaningful rather than just busy. The week of Christmas was extremely busy. I had something to do every night for nearly the past week. And with it too came New Year's celebrations, peformances, and dance recitals. Attacks from the enemy came too. Yet, I was also bl to grow in my understanding of what Christmas really means and to be able to share that with many people for the first time! What a wonderful time to be here.
As I said before, I am learning so much of the culture here. That has taken new meanings by being able to ride a bicycle here. For those of you who didn't know, I learned how to ride a bike from my best friend a week before leaving for China (July 2002). So, I am still getting used to riding a bike here. Traffic here is so different from traffic in America! It scares many foreigners; yet, I was not one of them until I started riding a bike here in December. Lately, I've been riding it everywhere and sometimes even by myself in the dark to get back home. I plan on writing a short story about that so people will understand just how crazy it can be to ride a bike here. Having said all that, it is wonderful to finally be able to ride a bike well enough to go all across town; it's just still scary and very frustrating at times. Thus, I pr out of neccesity for the safety of my life every time I get on my bike.
So, that's everything that's been happening with me. It's a lot I know, but I don't know when I'll get to send next month's update out. Thus, this one's a little bigger than normal. I am leaving for Hong Kong to renew my visa two weeks from today (Jan 13), and after that I will be off to Beijing to see friends and help a friend out. Know that February 1 is the Chinese New Year and so things over the next two months may be very crazy especially emailing people back because I'll probably be gone a lot. But, by March 2003 things should return to normal. I will reply to your emails and check my email, but things will probably take a while.
As far as requests go:
(1) Follow through with my New Year's resolutions -- I really want to grow deeper this year so I've been led to read His book through in a year and try and memorize two parts a month
(2) Languages -- I'm going to try and study an hour a day at least five days a week over the next year. I definitely want to leave being conversational in at least Mandarin and know a lot of Hakka (the local language). But, I've got to put more work and pr into learning the languages.
(3) Growth for the family -- My school only has seven in the family and possibly an eighth. Ask Dad for more people to want to know and for Him to adopt more kids.
(4) Persistence -- Those who are in the family here must endure so much. I have only suffered a little here, but the costs for them are much greater. Pr that they continue to endure and shine the light.
Thank you all and may this be such a wonderful year in Him for you!
All my love,
Amanda =)
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