Our teams split – six of us stayed in our “home” town, six of us went on to a “new” town, and the boys were relocated to two different towns. I was with the “home” group, where people in the area remind me of the Native Americans, walking through the streets with colorful clothes and cute rosy cheeks.
The six of us woke up in the morning to pray – asking God to send us ‘friends’ who are ready to hear about the hope and love of Christ. We split in to two groups of three to “Ask the Lord” what He wanted us to do for the day as we walked through the town…
Being freezing cold, we stepped foot outside to find toboggans, gloves, and a warm jacket. As one girl in my group was searching for a coat, a high school girl jumps out of the store and begins a conversation. “Hi! How are you?” We exchanged the three basic questions: “How are you?” “What is your name?” “How old are you?” She would think about each question, translating each word in her head. Through many hand motions and slow words, we decided to meet at 2:30pm the next day to eat. We prayed for communication to be clear and went home for the evening – giving thanks to God that He had answered our prayers.
We were at the “coat store” at 2:30pm the next day, and Josie comes running towards us. She has her English books from school, and we borrowed a Chinese-English dictionary from our host. We learned limited information about her and her family as we flipped through dictionaries to learn a bit of Chinese. Spending the afternoon with Josie, the three of us took a taxi to her home, where her father and nephew were waiting outside the house for us. What looked like a dirt-home built into the side of a mountain on the outside turned into a beautiful glass home on the inside.
Josie’s family showed us into a room with a bed and a warm wood stove. They served us tea, roasted pumpkin seeds, and an interesting “native” dish. At this point, I truly felt like a foreigner – much to what Josie felt at the restaurant, as she ate a yak-burger by the top bun ‡ meat ‡ bottom bun. Josie gave us a bowl with hot water and something (soon to find out it was yak butter). I started drinking it and was stopped by her parents saying no-no. Then Josie added something that looked like a brown powder between wheat flour and wheat germ. She showed us to stir it with our middle finger and then added a white powder in it (soon to find out it was sweet like sugar – my favorite). After stirring, a dough like mixture began to make, and we slowly ate it with our fingers, sipped our green tea with the leaves still in the cup, and our sweet hot cream. It was a great time!!
Our night was finished up in the family dining room with a mullet (sheep), peppers, and noodles…
During our time, we continued to meet in town with her and various friends. The day before we left, we were able to bring our host’s wife over to Josie’s home. Since she speaks both English and Chinese, we were able to learn more about our friend, who we named Josephine. We found she comes from a “peasant” family – no one in her family is working. Desiring to be educated, she works hard to keep her grades up and struggles with wondering her family will be able to provide the finances for year after year. This led to an opportunity to teach her about prayer and to pray with her about schooling. My prayer is that our host will continue to take the time to invest in Josie’s life – I know she will!!
