2 more days of blessing!

Sunday and Monday were two more days filled with amazing grace.  On Sunday, we met with members of a house church who had been there since early morning and then stayed with us all afternoon after our teaching, asking more questions!  All this in a culture where they work 12 hours a day 6 days a week.  These dear sisters and brothers LOVE Jesus and each other and have such a thirst to learn!  And they are incredibly open and honest, wanting to hide nothing.  I felt like I was in the church in Acts 1!

When we left there, we went back to our hotel and changed into cooler clothes (it has been 75 to 80 every day so far), then headed out on an adventure to the local Walmart!  This place was massive, and I don't believe I've seen dried duck, complete with intact head, at our Wallies back home!  But the real adventure is being a pedestrian  in Beijing - LOW on the food chain!  It gives new meaning to "pray without ceasing!"

Every morning, I wake up at 5am, "bright eyed and bushy tailed" as my mom used to say!  What a DELIGHT to have 2 hours every morning to pray and read and listen to the Lord's direction for the day.  Dear Lord, help me to continue that back home!  Well, this morning I really felt that we would have a chance to share Christ directly with Stephanie, the Chinese woman who makes our "wordless book" bracelets.  Peggy had shared with her before but she did not seem to respond.  So off we went to the Silk Market to see Stephanie right after breakfast.  We did get to share with her, and it turns out that the concept of Jesus and what the beads represented  was so foreign to her that she did not really understand when told verbally.  When we offered her the tract that goes with the bracelet, written in Chinese, she was delighted!!!  We will go back next week to see her again.  Pray with us that she will receive His offer of new life!

We then had lunch with Lydia (her Euro-name), who we had met at the Tea House teaching on Friday.  She is a fairly new believer who is just beginning to lead a bible study at her place of work.  We had a wonderful time encouraging this sweet sister and answering her questions about women's roles in the church.

Then we met with Sabina and Josh - what an amazing couple!  Peggy mentored Sabina a year ago on leading a women's study, and already Sabina has helped to mentor two other women who have now gone out into other cities to begin their own groups!  What is happening in Beijing is that the church is growing so fast that they rapidly outgrow their apartment space to meet in and have to split and form other churches!  Most of these churches do not have pastors, so several of the men have been called by God to be "traveling pastors", teaching at many churches and often in many cities.  That would be Josh. Don't you LONG for this kind of growth and this kind of "problem" in the U.S.?  Pretty amazing. 

I'd best stop for now.  We have 2 more groups to share teaching with tomorrow, and no  doubt a thousand more questions.  PRAISE GOD!  Lord, may we be so thirsty!