More pics

Some more pics from China

Way Wanderings

We have thoroughly enjoyed our time here in China. Shanghai is huge! For the first few days I struggled with claustrophobia, and a strong desire to see the sky. I went to the top floor of a building-what I thought was the tallest-and looked out the window to get a glimpse of the sky. What I found was taller buildings. Tons of skyscrapers squished together so tightly that all you could see was steel and concrete. I read that more than 40% of all the cranes in the world were being used in China. I think it is more like 80%. I have never seen so many cranes in all my life. And the smog made LA look pristine.
Klynt and Dana visited us here in Shanghai and we toured the Yu Gardens, the Bund, the famous Pearl Tower, took a cruise down the river, and stayed in the new Pudong area of the city.

The second city we visited was Suzhou. Suzhou is a beautiful city. Clean with lots of parks and less people/congestion. Still very smoggy. We had a great time getting reacquainted with Klynt and Dana. They spoiled the girls and were wonderful hosts! We miss them a lot! Their apartment building looks like Disneyland at night, with the lighted cupolas twenty stories high, and the manicured parks in the middle. For the thousands of people that lived there, it was astoundingly quiet.

We took an overnight sleeper train to get to Beijing from Suhzou. It took 11 hours. That was great fun! Met some interesting people. Beijing has less people than Shanghai, but more than Suzhou. Klynt and Dana met us here and we toured Tien Men Square, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and some famous gardens. Dave and Klynt got a head start on the girls one day and visited the military history museum one morning.

We won’t know how to behave when we get back. We are sooo famous here! Everywhere we go, people want to take our picture or pose with us and have their friends take our pictures. Poor Zailey gets mobbed, and she is so patient and kind with all of the hysteria. When she finishes one of these impromptu photo shoots she usually says, “my cheeks hurt!”

So, yesterday we prepared to leave China for Korea. We got to the airport and were missing one of our passports! Needless to say, we could not fly out of China. We returned to the hotel that we just checked out of, tore apart everything. Left our room to clear our heads, and when we returned, we found the passport. Hmm. Anyway, most of the next day was spent tying to communicate in a language unknown to us, and arrange another flight out. Now in the US we are used to many flights being available and airlines only overbooking certain flights. I guess in China they overbook all their flights by a generous percentage. The soonest flight out was a week later!

So, now we make lemonade! It is too expensive to stay in Beijing, so most of today was spent finding and arranging a smaller city to stay in and a way to get there. So, if all goes as planned-which it never completely does-we will leave in the morning by taxi and train to Shijiazhuang. More later.

To those of you in SM, please take care of my son and brother for me!!

shanghai

We are having a great time in China! I had hoped to write sooner, but internet is not always dependable or available. We completely enjoyed our time in Shanghai. Now we are in Suzhou. This is a great city. We haven't been able to explore it that much since it has been raining for the past two days. We have been enjoying spending time with Klynt and Dana, and that's worth all the rain in China!

Throw It Down

I want to give a shout out to Daryl and Carolyn Platt who shared with our Sunday school class what God is doing in their ministry. Daryl had some wonderful words of wisdom worth pondering. So this is my digestion of what he served.

Exodus 4:1-4 Then Moses said, “What if they will not believe me or listen to what I say? For they may say, ‘The LORD has not appeared to you.’”
The LORD said to him, “What is that in your hand?”
And Moses said, “A staff.”
Then He said, “Throw it on the ground.”
So Moses threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from it.

First of all Moses, the privileged, had murdered someone. He fled to the backside of the wilderness. He was living as a fugitive in hiding for forty years. He must have felt utterly abandoned by God. He must have felt as if God had passed him over. He had blown it. Whatever good plan God had for him-sparing his life as an infant, allowing him to grow up in affluence and education-he had blown by killing a man.

When God appears to him in the desert, Moses is flabbergasted. He knows he’s a loser. He believes he has wasted a privileged lifestyle and a good education.
God appears to Moses with a mission. God had not abandoned him. God had a plan for him-deliver the Israelites from bondage...Gulp!

When Moses asks God what he should do or say if they (the Egyptians) don’t believe him, God doesn’t give Him a formula, God doesn’t give Him a script. God asks a question. “What do you have in your hand?”

That’s astounding. What do you have in your hands? Hello God! Stay on topic! I’m asking what spectacular deed YOU will do to back me up when they don’t believe!

Moses has a staff, of course. For the past forty years (give or take a few) he has been a sheep herder in the land of Midian. The time in the wilderness was not wasted time in God’s economy. It was preparation. (When I read the narrative of the wilderness wanderings of the Israelites, they DO resemble a bunch of bleating sheep.)
God wanted Moses to take whatever he had and throw it down at His feet. "Are you willing to give me whatever you have?" God says, "Not only can I use it, but I designed it specifically for My purposes. Do you trust Me? Will you throw it down?"

So I ask myself, what am I holding in my hands?
Am I willing to throw it at the feet of Jesus? To surrender my identity and livelihood to follow and obey Him? He can and will do miraculous things with it.