We are finding that every-day tasks of life take much longer here. A fifteen minute run to Wal-Mart in the States might take us several hours or even days (if we can’t locate a store that is selling what we are looking for). It makes for some long walks at times, but we are getting to know the city more and have more opportunities to try using our extremely limited Chinese. My Chinese is coming along awfully slow! In fact, the Chinese people would probably encourage me to forget the “coming along” and “slow” part . . . it’s just plain awful! I’d be forced to agree with them. It’s a rough language, but we are trying!

We had a one inch water pipe leading to our heat duct break about a week ago. They don’t turn on the heat here until November 1st, so we were all excited that it was on. They turned it on during our Sunday morning meeting, right as we were beginning the first verse of our first song. About an hour later Mary went back to our room and found that it was flooded with an inch of filthy water. Water and silt had gotten all over our bed, so we spent the majority of Sunday afternoon mopping and cleaning. The Father’s hand was truly in it, however, in that we were able to find a maintenance man quickly (to turn off the water), they turned the water on a day early (Sunday), so we were able to focus on cleaning up the mess without having to worry about going to classes, and it was a sunny day (very rare here), so we were able to hang things outside to dry a bit. Thankfully, we haven’t had any more significant problems like that! We did have a rat sighting in our house, however!

We are excited about the holidays drawing nearer. The Halloween activities (carving pumpkins, bobbing for apples and other carnival-type games) went well. The students really seemed to enjoy themselves. We have already begun preparing for the Thanksgiving performance. My uncle and aunt sent us a 14 inch fiber optic Christmas tree and some hot chocolate, so that really put us in the mood for the holidays. Of course, Mary didn’t need any encouragement! She has already strung up some Christmas lights and is playing Christmas music! It really makes it feel more like home, so I’m enjoying it, too. Mary has also figured out how to make “apple cider” using apple tang (apple juice isn’t available here).

Please “think” about the preparation of hearts for the holiday season. We have some exciting opportunities ahead of us. We have come to love each one of our students and each teacher we work with. It would be so much fun to see them understand the Truth and claim it for themselves! We are so glad that He is the Author of all languages and can enable any person, young or old, to understand the simply plan, even if they don’t understand every word used in telling the story. With Him, all things are possible! We anticipate watching Him do great things.

Happily His bond-slaves,

John & Mary (names changed for security)