Yesterday some of Jenni's students came over and enjoyed a meal with us [sandwiches and chips]. One of the boys was very disappointed that there was no rice with the meal!!! Tonight we are having some of my students over for dinner. I think I am going to cook them some fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy. Chinese really don't like western food, but most of them can tolerate chicken [after all they do have KFC here]. After that I imagine we'll chat with the students a bit and then they'll go home. This will be the first time these students have come over to our house, so we are very excited about getting to know them better.

Oh, by the way, I found out that I made an 80 on my kou yu test. The teacher told me it would have been better but I didn't prepare for it, which was totally true! There were a lot of phrases that we had learned this semester that I was supposed to include in my dialogue with the teacher that I just didn't use. It's not that I don't know how to use those phrases, but I wasn't in class the day our teacher gave us the test requirements. But I was very pleased with an 80. Tomorrow is my Zong He class, there's no way I'll be making an 80 on it!

I know I will pass this semester, but I think I have decided to retake these classes anyway. I'm not interested in a diploma; I want to learn the language. And when you're out for two weeks, there's a lot you miss. So on a bright side, next semester should be a breeze. Oh, I almost forgot, I wanted to include a joke I read on my coffee mug today: 你知道怎样把一头大象放进冰箱吗？

Sorry, there was no punch line on the mug.....But I think I've heard this one in English before, and if it's the same one I’m thinking of then the answer is:
第一，打开冰箱
第二，把大象装进冰箱
第三，把冰箱门关上

I know I'm way overdue for a post....I guess I have just been avoiding getting on and talking. Life has been very rough the past few weeks.

But we did have a meeting this past week and it was very productive, lots of new faces. I took a midterm today [pretty sure I did bad on it]; with all that has been going on I just couldn't make myself study. So I'm pretty sure that there will be no scholarship this semester. I have three other midterms later this week, though sad to say that I don't even know when they are. We've been apartment shopping lately and we found the perfect one. We put down a deposit and everything, really thought that this was OUR apartment, only to have the real estate guy call us the next day and tell us that it had already been sold by the owner through another agency!!! So that stinks.....we've found some other apartments that we like, but we just can't get that first one out of our mind. Jenni has been really sick lately and so has Nate.

We have been attacked on every side and are just ready for the battle to let up a little.

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.

Because sometimes we just need some cake, even if it's not anyone's birthday!

Wow....what a crazy week! There's been joy and sorrow, highs and lows, exuberance and discouragement. Lots of refining has happened this week.

We're all ready for the weekend to arrive, particularly Sunday afternoon. I've been doing lots of writing this week [poems in particular]. Sorry, but I am not going to post them on the blog. They are more therapeutic in nature....never really meant to be read.

But God is good! Even in the midst of culture stress we see the light of the one who has all power, wisdom and ability. I've been listening to Andrew Peterson's new cd online, it's really good. you ought to check it out.

We are leading worship this Sunday, we're really looking forward to that. We'll that's all right now. I'll keep you updated.

I just found an excellent website for Chinese learners. It is a dictionary which also gives you examples of the word being used in sentences. I highly recommend this website to anyone who is learning Chinese. So I guess this post is just for Trace, unless another language learner happens upon my little blog.

We've had a pretty busy week so I haven't really had time to get on and blog any, sorry about that. Tonight we are starting back with our Sunday study group. We're all looking forward to getting back into our regular meetings. Tonight I think I am going to try cooking a little Gong Bao Ji Ding for them. Which is pretty intimidating to say the least, seeing how they are Chinese and I am cooking a dish that they are very familiar with! Whenever I cook something American I don't really worry about the taste all that much. They've never had it before so they don't know what it is supposed to taste like. But tonight will be a true tell of my abilities as a cook. I just hope I don't Americanize it too much.

Today at Church I picked up the worship DVD that was recorded at BICF. All in all I think it turned out pretty good. I'll share a couple of my favorite moments from the video with you guys, hopefully if Mark ever accidentally navigates onto this page he won't be too mad. And no, the first video isn't one of my favorites because you can vaguely see Jenni, Noah and I in the background!

”东西“给我坚持

We all started back to school today and I don't know which of us hated going back most, me or Noah. It's not that I hate Chinese, I love it. It's not that I hate my teachers, I love them. But Chinese is SO STINKING HARD!!! I suppose the challenge is good for me. After all if we are content to do that which does not stretch or challenge us intellectually then we are settling for a life of mediocrity. And I don't feel like a mediocre life is a God centered life. I am not saying that we must all be intellectuals, but I am saying that we must constantly strive to reach the full potential of our abilities that God has granted to us.

So I guess this means that even if our mediocrity is far superior to our colleague's best efforts, to US it is still mediocrity. Therefore, for us it is sin. Ephesians 6:7 - “Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men.” Col. 3:17 - "And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." Somehow I don't think mediocrity can be done to the Glory of God. So I will persevere. I will continue in my studies, even though there are days when I just want to drop out and go to work full time. I know that acquiring the language is very important, I just wish that it wasn't so hard.

Oh how I look forward to the day that I can pick up a Chinese Bible and just start reading, without dictionaries, without thinking about the sentence structure, without wondering if that character is a person's name or an actual Chinese word. Right now, it seems as if that day willl never come, But I know it will.

I am reminded of the first Chinese book I purchased in Beijing. I can remember when we first arrived in Beijing I went to Wal-Mart, yes we have Wal-Mart in Beijing, and found a children's book with characters and pinyin. Being a book lover and having a desire to be able to read in Chinese, I immediately bought this book. Now remember I had been studying Chinese for less than a month, so I didn't expect to be able to read the whole thing, but I thought to myself: this is a CHILDREN'S book, how hard can it be. Then I started reading it and found out just how hard it was. I came upon so many unfamiliar words, I came upon grammatical structures that I didn't have a clue about, heck I even came upon familiar words that, in the context, just didn't make sense to me. For example, in this book it talked about a wolf who hadn't eaten east or west for several days. Or, at least that was how I translated it in my head. The sentence actually read: 在大森林里， 有一只狼几天没吃东西了。东西 [dong xi] was where I was having problems at. I knew I knew those words. I knew for sure that [dong] was east and [xi] was west. BUT, what I didn't know was that when those two words were combined they formed a completely different word which didn't mean east or west or anything like that at all. The actual definition of 东西 [dong xi] is thing. So the sentence actually meant that the wolf hadn't eaten anyTHING in several days! Now that makes a lot more sense. But at the time, I had no way of figuring that out. So a year ago I was in the same place I am today, frustrated over the language and my inability to read it. But I have progressed. Today I can sit down and read that story from start to finish without any problems.

So I know that the day will come when I will be able to sit down with my Chinese Bible and just understand it, but the question remains: how much longer........

By the way, if you're interested in learning Greek I came across a website the other day when I was trying to freshen up on what little Greek I know. You might want to give it a try. Koine Greek really is a beautiful language, and it's a fairly simple language to learn as far as vocabulary is concerned. Besides, there is no equivilent to studying in the actual language. So check it out here. You also might want to go to Bill Mounce's site.