Greetings from CHINA!!!!
Wow…it’s so crazy that I finally am here. I’m sorry it took a bit long to get my first blog up. We do not have internet in our apartment. So I can only use the internet on the weekends when I have spare time.
China is super amazing. I absolutely love it here.
Our team: Sarah, Kirsten, Clint, Vickie, Faith, Simon, Brandon, Jordan, Laura, Jane, Philip, Amanda, Jonathan, Lauren, and I left Kona, HI around 9pm Tuesday, December 28. We flew about 6 hours to San Francisco, landing there around 4:30ish am their time on Wednesday, December 29. We had an almost 8 hour layover there. We left around 2pm and flew 12 hours to Beijing, China. From there we flew about an hour to Dalian, China. It was around 9pm China time on December 30 when we finally arrived.
We were picked up from the airport from some staff members at the YWAM base in Dalian. They drove us to our apartment in a small rented bus. At first we had all 15 members of our team in one apartment, but now we have two separate apartments: one for the guys and another for the girls. The girl apartment has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, kitchen, and small dining table. And we live on the 21st floor. J This is where we first lived all together. The boys slept in the living room on mattresses. They now have their own apartment…and beds. J Sarah and Kirsten, our two staff members from Kona, share a room with a one king size bed. The other two rooms have a different setup: one queen size bed and a bunk bed. We have four girls in each room.
Every morning we make our own breakfast. It’s generally the same thing: rice, eggs, tea, some sort of fruit (bananas, pears, tangerines, and sometimes strawberries), and seaweed. We eat both lunch and dinner at the YWAM base. There is always rice at every meal. There usually also is a dish with meat and vegetables, and we have fruit at most every meal. I’m getting pretty good at using chopsticks. I’ve only seen two forks since being here.
About two-three times a week Brandon, Laura, and I go to the market to get food for breakfast. The market is just on the street near our apartment. It is only open until about 9am. They sell so much food there. The first time I went there, it was so crazy. They sell all sorts of fruits and vegetables. They have winter coats, boots, mittens, hats, and whatever else you want to ward off the cold. They also sell frozen fish and shrimp and stingrays. It is so super cool.
Fun Stories:
We went to this Chinese restaurant one of the first days we were here. One of the best ways to describe it would be to call it a Chinese Mongolian BBQ. You select a broth to boil your food in. We chose half a pot of chicken and half a pot of spicy beef. The waiter brings the broth to the table which has a built in stove top. The broth begins to bowl in front of you on your table. You choose different meats, veggies, tofu, and noodles. You toss the different food items into the broth to let them cook. You take the food out and eat it and then toss more food in. It was so much fun and delicious.
One day for dinner we were given 25 yuan (the Chinese currency) each for dinner. Laura, Brandon, Faith, Amanda, and I decided to go out for dinner together. Together we had 125 yuan to spend on dinner, but we didn’t know where to do. So…being good YWAM students, we decided to ask God what to do. At first we felt like God told us to walk three blocks, turn right, walk past two buildings, turn around, and cross the road. We walked there and crossed the street. Someone felt like we were to go to the restaurant with yellow lights. We walked there, and the woman working told us to go next door. The place looked really random, but we decided to try it. We had amazing chicken cury with rice and egg noodle soup. It was so good. We each got a bottle of either pop or juice with the meal. Our total came to 29 yuan…for five people. That’s just less than 6 yuan a person. The current exchange rate is about 1 US dollar= 6.52 Chinese yuan. We each ate a whole meal with a drink for about 75 cents each. So crazy.
Brandon, Laura, and I were walking down at the beach one day just looking at the rocks and sand. While Laura and Brandon were taking a picture, this guy came up to me with a pad of paper and started speaking Chinese. When he realized that I didn’t understand, he spoke to me in English. He told me that the next day was his girlfriend’s birthday. He wanted me to write a short note to her. He had been going up and down the beach asking different people to write notes. Brandon, Laura, and I each wrote a note while we talked to him. His English name was Dick, and we exchanged email addresses so we could hang out again. We got in contact with him and planned to hang out with him. We met him and his girlfriend at the beach later that week. He told us that he had just met this old man who invited him to eat lunch with him. So we jumped on the bus with Dick, his girlfriend Evita, and the old man. We rode the bus to the end of the stop, walked up a hill, and to the man’s house. We ate sunflower & pumpkin seeds, peanuts, oranges, tangerines, apples, and candy while the man cooked lunch. We flipped through the TV channels and ended up watching some crazy Chinese opera. While we waited for lunch we played a tongue-twister game with Dick and Evita. We gave them an English tongue-twister, and they gave us a Chinese tongue-twister. If you said the sentence wrong, you had to sing a little song. I got everyone wrong. It just wasn’t fair. J Then we ate lunch. We had duck, beef, pork, chicken, crab, shrimp, clam, jellyfish, fried vegetables, fish, shrimp chips, salted peanuts, and dumplings! It was all so delicious. The man had made all of the food. He was so adorable and precious. It was probably his first time having Americans in his home. He was so happy. He would never let us have an empty plate or glass. He would always give us more and more food. We ate so much. He told us we could come back any day. J
We met again with Dick and his girlfriend, Evita. We went to fly kites in Zhongshan Square, the largest park in Asia. It is only about a ten minute bus ride from our apartment. It’s always very windy in Dalian so the kites flew really well. After we finished flying kites, we rode the bus to a coffee shop nearby. When we were there we started talking about God and His son Jesus. They had heard a bit about Christians but wanted to learn more. We read Genesis 1 and 3 with them and explained how God was real and that He created the whole world, including us. We explained that because of sin, we were separated from God. But God loved us so much that He sent Jesus to become a man and to die for us so that we could have a relationship with God. We gave Dick a New Testament Bible in Chinese and English. We met with both Dick and Evita the next day. They had a couple more questions about God. They left on Friday to go home to Beijing for winter break. I am excited to see them when they come back in March. I know this seed that was planted will continue to grow.
China really is amazing. Dalian is so beautiful. The people here are so eager and open. God is working so much already in the hearts of the people living here. It started a bit slow getting to know people, but it has begun to pick up as we meet more people. Our biggest way of getting to meet people is through the English corners we will be doing. At English corner people come to practice their English. We prepare a small skit or presentation and then introduce the topic of the night. Then we break into small groups with the Chinese people and discuss the topic. From these groups, we get to know people, exchange phone numbers, and meet up later with them. As we develop these relationships, we begin to tell them about Jesus. Already many of the people on our team have begun to meet people and develop friendships. I was sick our first week and wasn’t able to go to English corner. I was able to go this past week. On Friday we met at McDonalds. I met a woman named Sandy. She did not know a lot of English so she tried to teach me some Chinese. I now know how to count to 10 and the colors of the rainbow. J On Saturday we met at a hotel in a meeting room. I met a couple university students and a local family from Dalian. The mother and son spoke very good English. She asked if I could come and teach English to her son. I am supposed to meet with them later this week.
Please always be keeping us in your prayers. God is at work here in Dalian. We want to get into what He is doing. Please pray that we remain focused on what He wants us to do here and to not waste our time. We only have three months to impact these people’s lives forever. We don’t want to waste a day. We want to always be available so we can meet people and share with them how much God loves them and desires a relationship with them. Pray that God will bring divine appointments to us and that we will meet people who want to know more about God. Our God is so big and so amazing. He loves these people so much.
Thanks for all your prayers and support.
To contact me, email me at:
juliannelanning@fastmail.fm
