Birthday Party

I am prepping for my Celebrate Recovery meeting tonight. This is a group dealing with our “hurts, habits, and hang-ups”.   There are over 20,000 such groups in meetings all over the world. It has a specific structure and is very helpful. Two years ago, I went through the process as training for leadership. We have met as this group for about a year now.   To finish the materials, we will continue into the winter months, so about a year and a half overall. These ladies have become dear friends through our weekly meetings. One of them has a birthday today. It slipped out when she and I were talking individually last week.   So I have tried to do things that will make this week’s meeting special. However, prep for something like this, here, is interesting. I could order a cake, but most of us do not really enjoy commercially baked goods here. My best comparison is sawdust, although the results are better than they were 30 years ago. Baked goods have just not been prese...

Reflecting

I am being obscure. I have been reading a book about a brother from here who was jailed and tortured and miraculously survived. It was more than 40 years ago and has little physical relation to today,   but is a very touching biography. He was the head of the meetings in homes. I was also reminded today in my reading in Romans that Aquilla and Priscilla had such meetings as well. It is a very ancient and on-going concept of growth and spread of the Word.   We know that many such meetings are held today. We were just told by the administration that someone who had come to teach here this summer was deeply suspect because it had been published in a very obscure hometown newspaper that he was coming to teach at the university and hoped to contact the meetings in the homes here. It was enough to cause trouble for him and our organization. Just that simple statement. We have plainly been told not to reach out to such meetings because we endanger others by doing so. My heart is he...

Childhood Experiences

Our Friday group continues to be such a source of profound joy. A few weeks ago we started to talk about "what you sow, thus shall you reap", "whatever is lovely, honorable....think on these things", self-fulfilling prophecy. It was just an off hand remark, but the two friends locked eyes with each other and then turned to us with mouth agape.(I do not know if I have ever said, or written "with mouth agape" before, but they literally had their jaws hanging open.) They blurted, "No one has ever told us this before." They said it was a life changing concept to them. They had no idea what they fed upon, would be what they became. How can this be? It is deeply embedded in Scripture, and also in psychology. How can they not know this? But they brought it up the next week again. They often say that they wonder what they were taught in school, that our hour on Friday nights are the best education they have ever had. We assume they are being thankful for...

Cold, Cold Rainy Day to Bike 5 Miles to Church

Cold, cold rainy day to bike 5 miles to church. It was well worth it, however. We are now relocated to the new hotel. It is crowded, but next week we will be in another room in the hotel, which can better accommodate our 700-800 people. The preaching team has chosen to begin the school year with the book of Ecclesiastes. This is   a brave choice. It tells us that work, education, pleasure do not bring us fulfillment. Now, most of our international congregation are students getting advanced degrees at the most prestigious universities in Asia. It takes a bit of chutzpah to tell these students that their education is “vanity of vanities, all is vanities”. But it truly points us to what is eternally fulfilling. On our long trek to the hotel this morning, I saw my first open air church service here. It was at a green space leading up to an underpass for one of the big “ring roads” that surround the city. In the rain, a group were out with mics and keyboards singing.   Consid...

Student Essays

This are some direct quotes from my latest set of essays. I think most must be direct translations of Chinese. Some make a weird kind of sense. Some are just incomprehensible, and some are hysterical. Enjoy: “As Napoleon once said, the default powerless undoubtedly makes an opportunity of failure” “Too many corrupt officials, entrepreneurs, big bosses, and so on, because too much money and material too heavy, and finally because of the loss of things than want to get a lot more, the price paid is regrettable.” “After losing only regret not to cherish is a very stupid behavior, and the real life is no regret medicine” And finally, a whole paragraph: “In my childhood, filled with a lot of interesting young Fun, will not help laughing sometimes question that all of us should ask. On thing that made me worry a new memory. I remember that during the last one year when Sunday morning, I was sitting comfortably on the sofa and watch television with relish. Inadvertently, I...

New Worship Location

At celebration times here, our internet and firewall circumventing app become very difficult. We have been struggling for a week. It is the 70th anniversary for the founding of modern C, a big deal. Please remember us during this time. We have been told to stay home quite a bit and we are, but there is no real reason to feel that this is necessary except that there are many people out and about. Our international church was told in May that we had to find a new location by the end of July. That was extended to the end of September. Until last Sunday we still did not have a new venue. We were told on the first Sunday in October we should just visit other churches. (Where? This is more difficult to asses than it would be in some places.) However, last Sunday we were told that they had found another venue that will house the close to 800 members. Tomorrow (Thursday, as we have a vacation break) we are going to bike to the new locale to make sure we can find it. It is 5 miles away. The o...