Hello
This week has been a blessing full of surprises,
Firstly, I received awesome news for my parents that I have a new sister. They taken in a 14 year old girl, to parent care and love her, ..¡±Salina, Welcome to the family, may God bless you, shine brightly all over you and the prayers of many be answered for you.¡±
We (the blue team and our local friends from China) went on a taxi tour around the surrounding area.
Firstly we went to a pond called Camel Lake and then to a tour of a Mosque, I was impressed that there were no seats inside, only prayer mats. This reminded me of when Jesus said ¡°my Fathers house is a house of prayer¡± im now searching my heart to see what furniture ive got in it.
Next we went a distance over a beautiful mountain to a Tibetan village to see a Tibetan temple. Expecting to see some monks, Buda statues, flowers and trees etc I was surprised to see many other images of ¡®deities¡¯, vampire like skull paintings, the doors had paintings of people who have been gutted open from head to toe and chained upside down by their hands and feet and painting of decapitated heads. It was not the tambourines & flower stuff one would expect. The colors and talent that went into it was impressive. My heart is stirred to pray for them.
We then drove back to town to visit a Muslim hat factory that employs about 1000 people, most of whom are orphans (older than 18 years) they have many huge embroidery machines and hundreds of sowing machines. Chad and I each got given a hat as a gift, we wore them around town that day to the amusement of many and it created many a pleasant conversational opportunity with the local folks. The hats are rather comfortable to wear, with the cold China winter temperatures me thinks im going stick with my red warm wooly Billabong beanie from Jeffrey¡¯s Bay.
The next day we went to the high School, I was asked to teach an English lesson, talk about being ready in all seasons, the Lords grace is amazing, the lesson took a turn toward an art lesson on shapes which we used to make pictures and then could draw objects using the shapes and with Cathy¡¯s help she wrote the names of the shapes and objects on the board for the children to learn. There was mutch fun and laughter, and when the bell went the children did not want to go home so we had to extend the lesson.
We got blessed with a huge hot chicken dish that evening. It was a cockerel for sure, because all the body parts were present, including the head. It was funny for me to see how the Americans in my team reacted. He he . Well I guess it was the chicken who laughed his head off the most.
Ta ta for now
Love Lloyd
