Tuesday, June 14, 2005

A day in Gilead Today was a pretty ordinary day! I walked Ethan to Kindegarten, then came home, gathered up my things and sprinted out the door for a meeting. A number of our pastors and leaders got together today to discuss how we're going to manage the short-term mission team which is coming from New York City. The team is scheduled to help 3-4 churches. Some of the churches have made excellent preparation, while others have a way to go. Hopefully this morning's meeting got them moving in the right direction. I spent the afternoon reviewing Mandarin. I started the 2nd term of my Mandarin class tonight. We are learned the Pinyin and now the teacher is making us read aloud. I need to do a lot of vocabulary building before I'll be able to carry on a decent conversation. I missed the month of May (I was in the US), so it was a relief to find out that I was about par for the class. I'm reading a book entitled Gilead. Jennifer bought the book and suggested I read it. It is a beautifully written book. The main character is an aged dying preacher. The book is written in the 1st person to his son, who is still very young. He knows he won't be around to help him grow up, so he writes so that his son will have, in these writings, the father that he will miss in life. It is a very touching book. I'm looking forward to discussing it with Jennifer after I finish. Yesterday I spent part of my day off with some businessmen discussing ways we could use business to expand the kingdom of God. The ideas we discussed are quite feasible, but the three of us each went away with a "pile of homework" we need to do if this dream is going to grow legs and walk. Our small group started reading Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life this week. We watched the 1st video last Friday and the group was thrilled. I was surprised by their reaction, because he speaks fast, but the Chinese characters on the bottom of the screen were enough. We replayed the invitation and prayer at the end, because everyone bowed their heads when Pastor Warren said "Bow your head". As a result they missed being able to read the prayer (in Chinese) on the screen as he prayed it. We had 3 new people attend group and I hope their will be more this week. Everyone seemed very upbeat about the meeting and videos. 11:30:42 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 Allan Smith. Last update: 9/21/2005; 7:23:32 AM.