This Great Work

The Champion brand is one of the more commonly pirated brands here in China.  Check out these few examples of 'wannabees'.   There are many others.   It all makes me think about the difficulty of language learning.   I don't fault any Chinese person for not being good at English, I know full well how difficult it is to learn the other language.  But it does cause me to understand more deeply how important it is to pay attention to details while learning languages.  'Chimptwo', 'Decameter' and 'Ckemqairm' (or whatever that one says), and the others simply do not say 'Champion'.   Thankfully over the years, I've had the blessed opportunity of learning the language of the Spirit.  It also is an upward curve.  Details need to be attended to.  It takes lots of experience and lots of practice. But it's a beautiful, rewarding journey.  I love the phrase President Eyring used about this process in his October 2023 conference talk.  He referre

 Hello all! I have had a few queries about the quiet blog.  We have had one computer down for much of the last few months which means the person not in online school gives hers up (me).  Thus my time on the computer has been severely limited.  But here is a little update: I have added another Chinese class (+homework)--which means I have 3 Chinese teachers, I have two English clubs this year and I often try to get people into our home for dinner.  With my limited capacity kitchen, it takes way more work feeding more mouths.  My Primary calling also keeps me busy. Tessa is in a Kung Fu class, guitar class, has weekly voice lessons, and was in dance class for a while.  She is also doing extra classes through BYU.  She is also into wax sealing and will crochet on occasion. Greta is doing well.  Her life highlight is talking to her friends once a week.  She currently has 100% in each of her classes.  She is so diligent and works very hard on her grades.  She also keeps a couple of art proj

Per our contract for living in China, our unmarried children get a free flight to come and visit us.  Chandler is the only one who qualifies for that, but for quite some time, getting a visa to visit wasn't even a possibility.  And when it did become a possibility, it was very expensive and required a 4 day stay in Washington DC or paying a whole lot of money for someone to go into the embassy to do that process for us.  It was not really in consideration.  But when Cache offered to do it for us while he was in DC for Thanksgiving, we decided to go to all of the effort to make it happen.  We decided to keep it a secret from the girls so it would be an amazing Christmas surprise. We did mostly well on the surprise.  Greta did hear me talking to Cache about the visa process one day back in November, but didn't think too much about it or ask further questions so we hoped that she hadn't really heard as I supposed.  I also had up the map of the Seattle airport on my computer so

As we approach our second Christmas here, even though our hearts yearn for home and family, we're thankful for this 'assignment' to serve here in China.  We have learned much, experienced much, gained greater perspectives and learned for ourselves the reality of walking with Jesus Christ.  At this season we're extraordinarily thankful for Him.  He is our Savior.  He is our strength. He is our Friend.  We can only hope to be a light to others here.  This year we've had some mountains to climb--both physically and symbolically.   Purple mountain in Nanjing Language acquisition is an ongoing challenge.  Even Tom, who speaks quite well feels stretched at times, which should give you an idea of the struggle of the rest of us.  I spend several hours a week learning and I'm still not speaking much and unable to understand responses when I am able to muster a few words.  But, Jesus Christ has been with us on this mountain.  Language acquisition is a process, not an even