A Tale of Two Cities

Hello Everyone,

The past two weeks have been a myriad of twists and turns. Trains, planes and insane taxi drivers; full of grilled duck neck, red bean ice cream and a grilled tarantula that caused Katy to say "I wish you had another guy here so you would eat it!"

For those of you who have seen our last couple of photo gallaries you may have noticed a pleathora of crying children at the end of one. Well that one was definatly a paradigm shifter for me. I have never really been a fan of short term trips. I often associate them with wasted resources, security disasters and overall migrane producing infantile adventure. Well, we went to this little river town called Badong in the Three Gorges with a group that is helping with AIDS education and they had brought a group of people from Canada who loves China to help with an English camp. After my pumpkin expierience a few days earlier I was keenly aware that these kids had never seen a foriegner before...and neither had most of their teachers. The group that came taught well, trained the teachers and loved on them all. There wasn't a dry eye under 35 years old from that town when we left and we still recieve forlorn emails saying "Won't you ever come back...please" It was amazing and the effects were so great I can't wait to tell you about them in person!

So we came here to Xian a few days ago to look into a teaching position athe teachers college. Our first meeting was pretty dissapointing because the vice-principal lady that was supposed to meet us.....forgot. It was a downer for a while. But Katy and I went p>r> walking around campus last night and it was a redeeming time for both of us. The Terra Cotta Warriors are well worth seeing if you are ever in these neck of the woods, definatly one of my top ten ever. Perhaps what was most eye opening was the terrible fear of death that the man who made them had along with the futility of the whole project itself.

Emporer Qin (pronounced like the English "chin") was the first to unite China, its language and even it's Great Wall. He was terrified of death though and sent thousands of young men and women into the world searching for the "Islands of the Immortals" where the fountain of youth was...they didn't find it...and he died. In the last thirty years of his life he had several hundred thousand people build his tomb along with the Terra Cotta warriors. Aparantly, like the Taj Majal, he had all the workers executed (They say 700,000!) so they wouldn't tell the world where the tomb was. Anyway, 4 years....just 4 years!!! after the project was finished, a peasent uprising led by one of his generals tore the whole project down and destroyed everyone of the warriors. What a waste. The ultimate example of "You can't take it with you."

On another note, Katy and I are still thinking about whether to come here in January for 2:1/2 years or to go straight to Wheaton to finish Grad school. Please continue to lift us up as we have had difficult and emotional week (though very healthy spiriutally) as we have had to admit our wants and desires and let them go. There is so much wisdom in both of the decisions as well as infinate variables on both sides that it is no longer worth trying to "figure them all out" we want to be able to just listen, hear and obey. For me, I have felt more than once this week daddy saying: "Hey, who is dad here?" :-)

We are both glad that He is...

Looking forward to telling you more when we have time face to face,

Jonathan and Katy

Twists and Turns of Inter-Continental Communication

Hello All,

I have tried to update our webpage for the past week or so but I haven't been able to access my site. But..... I just found about a work-around so that I can update this one! We are heading out into town now but I will post tonight. I don't know how to change the link on our website at the moment however. Hope all is well!

Jonathan