Life by Grace

JOIN ME IN MY JOURNEY PERMEATED BY THE GRACE OF GOD. "But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me." I Corinthians 15:10

Thursday, August 31, 2006

Team Xide Pics


This is Team Xide (without our fearless leader, BT, since he was taking the picture). We took this picture on one of our weekend trips into the mountains. We also had some Chinese friends with us on this trip.

We had to take a 10 hr. train ride southwest to get to Xide from Chengdu. This is us at the train station in Chengdu. There weren't any other foreigners at the train station when we were there, so we were definitely noticed. We had to be careful with our things because of all the people around, so that is why some people are wearing their backpacks in the front. From the time we came to the train station in Chengdu till we returned there two weeks later, everywhere we went we were pretty much the only foreigners. That meant that we stuck out like a light in darkness and were treated like the circus came to town.

During our time in Xide, we were able to be part of the Torch Festival. This festival is the biggest celebration of the Yi people. We went to the biggest city near us, Xi Chang, and had a grand old time one Wednesday night. This is a picture of some of the girls posing like some of the statues at this monument in Xi Chang. I will post more about the Torch Festival. It was so much fun and ranked close to the the top as our teams favorite adventure while in Xide.

We loved to do things as a team and usually didn't have much choice. There isn't much to do in Xide. One of our first nights there, we went out to a "Chinese Restaurant" (ha ha) and were able to celebrate Joy "little's" birthday. When we were leaving, we stopped across the street where they had a pool table. Pool tables were one of the biggest things to do in town. They were everywhere. Some of our guys played a game of pool while the rest of us entertained the towns people there by taking pictures of them and showing them their pictures on digital cameras. It was fascinating to see them laugh histerically at pictures of themselves. Usually the children were the most fascinated, but some of the old people were too. My brother, Ricky, told me we may have been the first person to take some of these people's picture.

On one of our weekend trips, we stopped by this village which was a place where travelers stopped as they went down The Silk Road. We were actually able to see part of the Silk Road on that trip.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Food in China


This was one of our favorite Chinese dishes. It was basically scrambled eggs with stewed tomatoes and some salt for seasoning. It was so good. Most Sichuan food is very spicy, so we were excited to find dishes that were not too spicy and a flavor we enjoyed.

In Xide, the Yi people seasoned much of their food with these tiny seedy things from little bushes. They would harvest them and then lay the out on the side of the road to dry. Before they are dried, they have this oil in them that numbs your mouth when you bit into it. The little seeds are about the size of a a b-b for a gun. There is a small pit in the center and a berry-like outside. Once the seeds are dried, they crush them up and use them to season their food. It actually is very good when it isn't in the form that numbs your mouth. Our Chinese friend in Xide that led our group, thought he would be funny and told one of the guys on the team and I to try the seeds straight from the bush. It was this burning numbing feeling. It was so weird.



One of our team's other favorite dishes was dumplings, boiled or steamed. One of our last days in Xide, we went over to our friend Tom's house and his mother-in-law and one our translator's, Vicki, taught us how to make them. It was neat to know how to make them ourselves for when we get home. These were boiled after they were made. It was very easy. Mix flour with water to make the wrap part. Make little balls and then roll them flat. The stuffing inside was pork and onions and maybe basil or other seasonings. I am forgetting exactly what was in it. Before I try to make it myself, I will have to check with one of the other girls from the team. We did have some other interesting meals or dishes while we were there. I tired the chicken's feet a couple times. Joy and Cindy, from our team, had cow stomach boiled at a hot pot. They said it tastes like basketball. They were so grossed out by it. I will have to post some pictures from the meal we had at the Yi village we visited on the weekend. They bought, killed, and completely cleaned a pig while we were there as the meal of honor for us. It was so fascinating.

Monday, August 28, 2006

Friends in China


I was blessed to have Joy Joy as my roommate this summer in China. We got along so well. We would talk and share our hearts together till all hours of the night sometimes. We just had so much fun together. My team in Xide was the only group from Team China that had team members from each of the other 5 colleges with Team China. Joy is from Clearwater. Justin (the first guy in this picture) was also from Clearwater. Nic has lived in Chengdu for the last 4 years since his dad teaches at the university there. We all got along great and loved to hang out together.


My class was the level 2 beginner class. The difference between Beginnger 1 and Beginner 2 was that 1 pretty much knew no English. Level 2 knew the alphabet, numbers, days of the week, and how to say "Hi, teacher." My class had 38 students in it. They had so much energy and were great students to teach. This was a picture from the last day of class when we had Christmas. They are holding up sockings we made for them with construction paper. They loved it.


Here is a picture of me and half of the "Xide girls" on the Great Wall of China. (from left to right) Me, Amy, Adrianne, Sam, and Joy "little"

This is my "museum buddy" Dale. Joy, Dale, and I hung out at a museum in Beijing. All of us also hung out all night with a big group from Clearwater the night before we flew home. We were trying to stay awake so we would be tired to sleep on the plane. The flight home was good. It was about 12 hrs long and I slept for a few hours of the trip. When we flew into JFK in New York City, most of us missed our connecting flights because we were late leaving Beijing. Dale was kind enough to help me catch a taxi to LaGuardia Airport on the other side of NYC. I had to spend the night in the airport there and fly out the next morning. Stay tuned for more pics soon.

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Earthen Vessel Moments

Do you base whether you feel loved on whether people call, text message, or email you? For fun, I often say "I'm not loved" when I check my email and find that no one has emailed me. But in the past few months or so, I have come to realize that I really do think like that. When I expect to hear from a friend through one of these three forms of communication and my expectation is not met, I get frustrated. I am usually the friend who has more time to contact my friends, so I am the one who usually makes inital contact anyway. But when a friend doesn't reply or someone says they are going to call and never does, I get bent out of shape. I have struggled with that all evening. Much of my struggle is based on the fact that I know that I am being very self-centered, and I wish that this didn't bother me so much. I want to respond so that I am reflecting a pure picture of how Christ would respond. But I just haven't been responding that way even when I recognize my sin. There is a great tension there. Over the past two weeks home, I have realized that God has allowed this to happend to me frequently so that He can reveal my sinful and selfish heart to me. It has been a very ugly and hard revelation. I have been driven to God's throne over and over again. Through His Word and honest words from friends and family, God has been revealing a lot about my heart lately. It has been overwhelming at times, but I need to see it. I need to be repulsed by my sin because most of the time I think I am a pretty good person. I feel like I deserve the praise that people give me. I don't see myself the way God sees me. But only when I see my heart and God's grace from God's perspective will I apporpriately praise Him for His grace and realize my need for Him. I have been reading in Galatians lately and Gal. 6:14 says, "But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." I desire for that to be true of me, but almost all of the time it is not. I am the center of my life and I boast in me. It is not until I see how utterly sinful and weak I am that I really run to God. Often I come back to the verse that I memorized this summer, II Cor. 4:7 "But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves." Let me just tell you that I have been having a lot of "earthen vessel moments" lately. The Holy Spirit has been opening my eyes to see my weakness over an over again throughout the day. Then He reminds me that the surpassing greatness of God's power can best be seen when it is compared to my weakness. I have seen a glimpse of how amazing God's mercy and grace really is. I stand in awe that God doesn't not give up on me because I want to give up on myself so many times. Instead, He lovingly and patiently draws me to Himself to show me that He is doing a work in my life. He reminds me that He will be glorified when people see the transforming power of His grace in my life. I know it is only God grace when I do respond like Him because I wouldn't respond like that in my own strength. My finite mind cannot begin to wrap itself around that. I just don't deserve it. That is the gospel at work in my life today.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Pictures from China


I finally am posting a few pictures from China. I know you have all been waiting eagerly to see some. I felt like I was dropped into a National Geographics magazine in the city that I taught in. These people had so much character in their faces and wrinkles.
I did get to see some old friends from last year. Here is Jodie, her boyfriend Tommy, Mikan and I the afternoon we went out for lunch together.
One weekend our team of 19 went up to a Yi village that has never had foreigners visit it before. The children were so scared to see us that they cried and ran to their mothers. They had never seen anyone but Chinese people before. This is most of the village all dressed out in their traditional Yi clothes.

And I was blessed to find that Starbucks had come to Chengdu. I was able to get some mugs from the Starbucks in Chengdu and one from Beijing.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Just for fun

Here are some hilarious pics that I just got from my friend's Jen and Brian. They got a new computer last winter and there is a photobooth program on it. If you don't know what that is, there is a camera on the top part of the computer monitor. There are different goofy ways that you can take your self-portrait with the camera on the monitor. It is so funny trying different angles to get a funnier picture. Yes, these are all pictures of me.







Friday, August 11, 2006

Finally home

Still no pictures up but I will put some up soon. I am finally sitting here at home dorking around on the internet with the high speed connection that my family got while I was gone. I safely arrived in the Charlotte airport last night at about 5:40pm. I had no idea how crazy yesterday was going to be for airlines until I got to the airport. I had heard from my dad and Jen's mom that something had happened in London and there was a big deal being made about it with fights all across America. It wasn't until I got to the check-in counter that they explained that they have the tightest security they have every had and this the biggest deal since 9/11, so I couldn't bring any liquids, lotions, gels, or anything of that sort in my carry-on. I couldn't think of anything I had in there, but I looked anyway. I had contact solution, toothpaste, NyQuil, liquid make-up, and lotion. My flight was delayed leaving Milwalkee, but I had a 3 hr layover in Atlanta anyway, so I didn't miss that flight out. We sat on the runway in Atlanta for about 45 minutes and were delayed a little getting into Charlotte, but other than that my day of flying went smooth. I was so thankful to finally be home and not wondering if I would have to sit in an airport overnight again. I had a great time hanging out with my family last night and sharing stories and pictures from the last month. All kinds of things have happened at home since I have been away, so I had to catch up on that too. My family said that many people have asked about me and many of you I look forward to seeing on Sunday. There are so many things that are so much more precious when you have been away and don't have the openness to be involved in things freely. I know that things will eventually become normal again like talking openly about certain topics or eating things you have missed. But I hope that the lessons I have learned will never leave me. I want those things that have impacted me in the last month to become part of who I am and see my thinking transformed through the Word and life experiences. It is so easy to forget. But there are things that the Spirit can make part of our lives in a way we never can. I must be willing to let Him do that work in me. So often, I get in the way of sanctification in my life. My selfishness and pride reigns so much more often then my dependence on Him. But He works inspite of me... and I don't deserve it.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

I'm back

I safely landed in Chicago on Wednesday morning at about 9:20am. I had to spend the night in the airport in NYC Tuesday night because our flight out of Beijing was late. We almost all missed our flights to our final destinations. I am still not home in SC yet, but I will be flying home on Thursday, August 10th. I'm spending a week with my two best friends in WI right now. I get to see my "niece and nephew" too. They are adorable. I will post pictures of them soon. I have so many cute ones. I got the cutest picture of Zoey and I in the kitchen with her on my shoulders this afternoon.

Anyway, I know you all want to hear about China. Well, it was amazing. It was totally different than last year. Last year I was in the city of Chengdu teaching at an established English program at Sichuan University. While we did have Northland students teaching there this summer, I was not one of them. We had 150 teachers come over with Team China this summer, and we came from 5 different colleges in America. We were divided up into about 8 different areas this summer. There was a group at an orphanage and then different teaching facilities. I was part of the 18 people that were picked to go to a town named Xide. It is a 10 hr train ride south west of Chengdu. We took the train ride over night both ways, so that made the trip not seem so long. It was quite the adventure though. I have never been on a train ride like that before, and our time in Xide was absolutely amazing. I will tell you more about it in future entries. But here is a brief summary of what happened on our trip.

When we got to Chengdu on July 6th, we had 3 days of in-service with all 5 colleges. On the third day, we divided up into the groups that we would be with for the summer. My team was the only one who didn't leave for our teaching destination right away. We moved to a different hotel in the west side of Chengdu for 4 days of training and brainstorming. Xide is a town of about 30,000 people. A large majority of the people are of a Chinese minority group called the Yi. It is one of the largest minority groups in China. There are about 7.1 million Yi people in China. We have a connection in Xide with a former student from Team China teaching two years ago in Chengdu. He headed up having a team come and teach English in his town. He is an English teacher in Xide and wanted so much to open up an opportunity for the people in his town who don't have much opportunity to learn English to be able to be part of an English summer camp. We originally were expecting to have about 80 to 100 students. We ended our enrollment into the program with 250 students and some turned away because we couldn't take any more. There are so many more stories that I could tell. Some of them I will have to tell you over email or in person. I can't wait to tell you all the good news. If any of you have tried calling my cell phone since I arrived in the states last Wednesday, you probably were wondering why you couldn't get ahold of me. Well, I took my phone to China and somehow lost it at a hotel in Chengdu. I thought I had stuck it in my suitcase before I left for Xide, but I still haven't found it anywhere in my things. I am hoping to get a new phone on Friday when I get home and hopefully I can get the same number. I will try to let you know my new number soon. I would love to get an email from you and please do ask about China. There is so much to tell. We are hoping for many more opportunities to go back and teach in the future. I have missed you all and hope to talk to you soon.