This Great Work

 Is alive and well here in China! It doesn't matter if it is upside down or backwards, the name of Christ is in China all year round and I find that especially wonderful! And then just today, I found this: So that is cool.

Video conferencing with a cat always makes for a lively conversation. It's a good thing, Sierra, our cat sitter (with Daniel) has learned to speak cat; she kept the discussion going swimmingly.   The awesome Sierra, per my tongue-in-cheek request, also had Oreo dressed up for the occasion. Wisely, Sierra had Cheyenne come for back up to make sure Oreo was on her best behavior for the camera.  She performed quite well.  And even though Oreo didn't say too much in her debut of conference calls, the girls loved it oh so much.   This is a good place to put pictures of cats in China. So many people with stores have cats that wander.  Some with many.  It's kind of amazing.  Do you know any store in the US that have cats wandering around?   A toilet store: Then when the shop owner saw me, he brought the cat out closer.  He thought I was taking a picture of his cat.  I was taking a picture of a cat in a toilet store! This one turned out to be an "I Spy" picture.  It's

 When the Chinese go out to dinner, they rarely order a single dish for a single person.  Everything is meant to be shared among those joining in.  If it's a small group, the dishes are just set in the middle of the table and when you want a piece of an item, you reach in with your chopsticks and grab it.  If you go with a bigger group, you are set at a larger table with a turn table in the middle and food constantly goes around.   The pictures below are of the meal where we met Jacky and his wife Daisy and their daughter Cynthia (seated in between me and Tessa.)   We've learned at the nicer dinners to pace ourselves so that we have an appetite all the way to the end.  After an enormous amount of food (probably 20 different full sized dishes) they bring out the fruit, and after the fruit, we know there is still another soup and a couple of vegetable dishes still coming.  There is never any dessert served. In watching the Chinese eat at these functions, they really just nibble t

This is what it is like when it rains here.  One Sunday we decided to go see what it was like on the ground instead of the 24th floor.   After this, we ordered some better umbrellas! This is a picture of what it looks like on the 24th floor when it rains.  However, the camera played tricks on reality--in reality, we could only see this close building like you can see the ones in the distance in the picture.  Pretty serious storming! Today there was some serious wind.  From the 24th floor I thought I saw a bird make a dive (which I thought was odd).  As I watched some more I realized that it must have been a piece of trash because soon I saw t-shirts, wrappers, papers, leaves etc. all be raised nearly straight up in the air and then dropped or whisked out of view.  It was one thing to see items of clothing being jerked about, but for the wind to bring a leaf up to the 24th floor and then suddenly pull it back down as quickly as it came up was unreal.  Leaves usually flutter, but today t

The YW advisor in our branch and one of the six YW live in Suzhou (one hour away by car).  And one lovely day, they came to visit! (with their families)  We had a delightful day.  It turned out to be more of an adult-talk-kids-listen kind of thing, but I don't think they minded that too much.  I've got things cooking in my little mind of another kind of gathering more focused on the girls, but that will have to wait for a bit. An added bonus to the visit was a visit from one of my Primary kids.  That was super fun to me to meet this delightful kid in person.  I can't even tell you how happy that made my heart!

 Tom was searching on BaiDu and stumbled on a hamburger joint that looked pretty good.  He was missing his hamburgers and wanted to go, so we took the subway up 6 stops and after getting off the subway, he navigated us a few blocks to "Hana." It was a nice part of town, the weather was actually quite comfortable and it wasn't too far of a walk so that was all welcome. When we arrived, we had to order off a chalkboard menu written in characters.  I used Google Lens to translate it.  All of the 'burgers' were mostly chicken burger and had things on them we didn't really prefer: eggs and legs and such.... So 3 of us picked a burger with a pineapple slice, and asked that the cheese be held.  Greta wanted the onion rings and fries so Tom pointed to the picture on his phone and said 'yi ge' (one of these), the guy nodded and we sat down.   While we waited we were entertained by this cutie. She gave each of us a plum. She wasn't nearly as chatty as her gr

FamilySearch has been my lifesaver. Literally.   💟One night one of the girls was really struggling and I had the thought to open up FamilySearch.  We started looking at trees and pictures--nothing really in depth--and it was as if the difficulty melted away.  I have also found FamilySearch to be a sure fire way for me to respond to the difficulties of living here.  I've been making it part of my daily practice to spend at least a few minutes reading histories or looking at pictures of my ancestors. I'm astounded at the difference such a little thing makes. There is true power in that resource.   It's like I'm surrounding myself with people invested in me and who have walked through difficult things in their lives so they know how to help.  It reminds me of being in the temple. 💟Before I left, I printed out this fan chart.  On it are 126 of my ancestor's names.  I've been SO thankful I followed that idea to bring this print out. I often use it when I pray and w