Good morning!

It is 9pm here in China but I know that most of you are just waking! I surely am not looking forward to readjusting to a new time zone when we come home :/

To say the very least, me and my American friends are regarded as celebrities in China. For the first couple days it was cute and exciting. Then it reached a point of utter frustration all the time. It can be a little draining when everyone that walks passed you gawks with their mouths open. They whisper and take pictures. We often have people (of all ages) ask us to take pictures with them as if we are truly people to brag about meeting. It was a little out of control! But now we have reached what we like to call the “Golden Years.” In marriage terms, this is the time when we just love everything again. The honeymoon is over, the routine middle years are just behind us and we are pleased to enjoy and relish in every moment.

Yesterday we went to a musuem. “Oh, how interesting” you might be inclinded to say, but I object. Musuems can be fun, yes, but when it is the 5th musuem you’ve visited in a weeks time and EVERYTHING is in Chinese (including the tour guides) it gets a little tiring. We decided to make it fun and we made ourselves an exhibit inside one of the main exhibit rooms. I think that Dad was smiling on our desire to have a little fun and we found 6 wooden benches just sitting in a little nook. Our team of Americans sat down and posed as statues while Chinese patrons wandered past and gawked at us. I mean, they gawked anyways, so we decided to give them something to stare at :) We had our Chinese friends play along and they would pretend to be visitors as well, even to the point of convincing other random visitors that we were not real. When a large enough crowd gathered our Chinese friend, Quinten, would yell “1, 2, 3!” And we would all awake from our statue state, terrifying the Chinese gawkers. It was one of my favorite moments of the trip thus far. So much fun!

Tomorrow the University is having a going away party for us. They have invited their entire school and are expecting around 500 Chinese students to come. Last week they asked us to prepare acts to perform at the party, along with Chinese performances. Since few of us are wildly talented we’re just having fun with it. Jeff, Nicole, DavRog, and Melissa are singing worship songs. Yes, I said that and it is okay! :) When we arrive I will expand on how this is possible but it is truly a mighty work!! The American girls are singing a special song for one of our American boys, Derek and I are lipsyncing “A Whole New World” and the Americans are doing a step dance. We just had dress rehearsal (they take it far more seriously than we do!) and everytime we took the stage the errupted in applause. The real performances should be great :)

We have only two short days left with the students and I beg for you to lift my team up and lay us at His feet. There is still work to be done and we don’t want to leave anything that is ready for harvest. Keep us in your thoughts! Can’t wait to share more details!!

I’m thankful for you all! See you soon!

Jennifer