Pastor A

My blog has been blocked here in China so I am going to type quickly before it goes back down. It is actually around 23:45 on a Friday night here in Beijing. I just finished a four hour dinner meeting with three of the supported families here in Beijing.

A couple new adventures have happened outside of the scheduled events. Everything we do is by taxi cab, so I have been in a couple hundred taxi cab rides in all of my trips in China. Yesterday the taxi cab driver missed the turn to get to the hotel – so instead of going to the next exit and navigating his way back to the hotel, he does a u-turn and goes against the expressway traffic back to the exit! People were blowing their horns and flashing their lights. I was ducking for cover! First time that has ever happened in such a scary manner; only to be followed today with an even more frightening event. I jumped in the taxi this morning and the female taxi driver turns left out of the hotel into oncoming traffic. The highway in front of the hotel is a two-lane highway and it is one way. She is talking on her phone and trying to use her stick shift and going the wrong way. A huge bus is coming toward us blinking his lights and blowing his horn and she does NOT move out of the lane. The bus swerves and misses us by a few feet. She is oblivious to the fact that she almost killed us and that she is going the wrong way on a one way street. I said “STOP!” I open the door and get out of the cab! I still don’t think she has a clue what happened.

The second incident which was interesting to behold and all of my China team members will be able to picture this… I arrive at the Silk Market today for a couple hours of walking around and looking for any deals. As I walk in I see my “best friend” as she calls me. I said that I would like to pick-up an X-large North Face jacket and that I would come back later to pick it up. I didn’t want to carry it around while I was at the market. She said, “OK” and that she would hold it until I came back. I walked around the market for about one hour when I noticed something strange. There were police all over and they were carrying bags and dragging the bags on the ground. They were full of… you guessed it… North Face jackets. They raided the market today and took every North Face jacket they could find. You must understand that there are seven stories and hundreds of vendors!

I go back to see my “best friend” and she said, “You should have come back sooner. Would you like a ‘Jeep’ jacket now?” I guess North Face had complained about all of the knock offs and so the police handled it. So no North Face jacket on today’s trip to the market!

I met a genuine Chinese Christian at the market today. I was looking at her shop and she asked me, “Do you worship Buddha or God?” I said I worship God and asked her who she worshipped. She said she was a believer and that she goes to a house church in her apartment building. Even through broken English she was able to tell me her testimony and it was sweet.

Yesterday I was helping one of our supported families with their daughter’s coat. Her sweater was pulled up inside the arm of her coat. She looked at me and said, “My mommy does it better.”  Although, after reading her a Dr. Seuss book, we were pretty good friends.

The Chinese government is now allowing bookstores to sell Bibles. This is a major breakthrough and really eliminates the necessity of ever smuggling Bibles into China. It is now legal for a Chinese person to own a copy of the Word of God and they can even buy a copy at the Three-Self Church or a bookstore. In fact, tomorrow morning I am going to the local bookstore to look at the Bibles on sale and to take a couple of pictures before I begin my journey back home.

I am meeting for breakfast with one of our supported families to discuss camp. There is a real need for workers so I am going to find out the details and see if there is anything that TBT might be able to do to help.

Tomorrow much will happen… breakfast at 7:30, walk to the bookstore, gather up luggage and take taxi to airport, check-in and wait for flight to leave, travel for 18 hours before arriving back in Tucson. I guess it is time to head for bed.