A feeling of spring

Friends and Family,

This week I had a wonderful conversation over dinner with a friend of mine, named Hongmei, who is native to Qingdao, China. I met her through IFI; she is a respiratory doctor in China and is at OSU as a visiting scholar doing research. She is not a Christian, but is interested and impressed with Christianity which is why she has been attending the potlucks on Friday nights. We got together at the cafe in the RPAC and had dinner and talked about ourselves and about Qingdao. She is very nice and has said she would love to have me visit her family while I’m in Qingdao, and she wants to take me around and show me the sights!

I had my first Math midterm this week and, Continue reading “A feeling of spring”

Speaking in Tongues

Dear Friends and Family,

Sigh, every time I write to you I want to burst into the typing of exotic and foreign words that come so often from my mouth during the week. I just wish you all could understand them. You know, when God confused the languages at Babel, it was because the people were united against him in rebellion by one language. Now, in this present age, would God want all the world to speak one tongue? What would change if the whole world all spoke the same language? What would it be? Arabic? Chinese? English? (See I’ve planned it all out, either way I come out on the top since I’ll be able to speak all those languages :)>

But now, the language barrier is a barrier for the spreading of God’s word as well. Think of all the millions of hours and thousands of days spent by committed missionaries to translate God’s word into a different language so that those people can be saved. Communication is a funny thing, and that’s one reason I like it so much.

With communication in mind, I’d like to tell you a little bit about my last potluck at the IFI’s Friday night bible study. I met some new people (as always), and we had a wonderful bible study. After the bible study we broke up into our small discussion groups. My discussion group happens to be composed of Tom, the leader (American), me (American), and then four Chinese and one person from Singapore. We were discussing in Luke 9 where Christ asks Peter who Peter thought he was, and Peter says “The Christ of God.” And Jesus told him not to tell anyone. So we started discussing Continue reading “Speaking in Tongues”

The End of School

Dear family and friends,

I hope you all had a wonderful thanksgiving. I am thinking about whether or not to write during Christmas break, and I think I will at least twice, since break is all of December. I have one final left, Arabic, which is at 7:30 AM on Monday morning. This, contrary to some expectations, is not early for me, since I usually get up at 6:30 anyway. It is a problem, however, for many of my classmates, who are used to sleeping till 10 am, or getting up to go to a class and then going back to sleep again. After my final I’ll be done with school and homeward bound.

This being the last week of classes, a lot of parties and various celebrations went on. Thursday night I Continue reading “The End of School”

Fall has finally fallen

Dear friends and family,

Well, fall has truly come to OSU campus, and the war is in full swing. What?….you don’t know about the war? It is an epic battle of mighty proportions that I see raging back and forth across the campus. The sides are not equally matched, and I fear that those who fight for good on campus shall be overpowered and ground to shreds. Haha, I hope I’m confusing you >;)>. I’m speaking of the heated battle between the groundskeepers and the falling leaves. The beautiful, many colored fall leaves are swirling and falling all over campus, making everything beautiful, as if covered with a weird colored snow (hmmm, maybe not). Anyway, it is the hight of my fall experience to swish through fallen, crackly leaves on the way to class.

However, it seems that the powers that be on campus are not an open minded and nature loving bunch. They’ve sent their lackeys (groundskeepers) out on a quest to gather and destroy all rebellious leaves who refuse to stay up in their trees. I see the evil work being done every day, and I long to pause in my hurried rushing from class to class in order to lend a hand to the poor leaves.

Despite the fact that I know the leaves will eventually be overcome, they Continue reading “Fall has finally fallen”

Property Stripping

Sounds like another environmental horror, doesn’t it? Perhaps some big corporation yanking all the resources out of a small community and leaving it bare, or some natural disaster brought about by us, the rich, white, Protestant brats of the developed world (according to our friends and neighbors, the liberals). That’s what I would have thought, but … no. The truth Continue reading “Property Stripping”

They’re both photogenic, don’t you think?

Sarah & Dani

What a great picture… I wonder if that’s Port-au-Prince in the background? I had to cut this one down some; go to her blog for the real thing, plus a peek at our daughter’s “inner child”, who comes out when it rains suddenly at the end of a hot summer day and … 🙂

Haitian weather on the beach… wow!

Your daughter goes on a mission trip, and sends back this:

Water spouts

Oh boy. Notice the 2nd spout starting just below the clouds on the right… very rare. What happens when it starts heading toward the beach? Fortunately, Sarah and friends merely took pictures.

Now– see what you’re missing at Sarah’s blog? 🙂

The License Plate Game

O.K., you’ve all played it, right? On a long trip, you have your kids keep track of all the different state license plates you can find. I forgot to write about it related to our trip to VA, but Serena and I did this in June. On an 11- day trip, driving through only 4 states, we found 44 states — all but Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, Nevada, South Dakota, and Wyoming. Of course, we did drive slowly through the whole parking area at Monticello, and we did the same each day we left a symposium at the conference hotel in Williamsburg. There were people there from all over the U.S.! It brought back memories of many other trips. Hey, Sarah and Lydia, we even found a North Dakota license. See? North Dakota DOES exist! (Inside family joke).