Happy Easter!

He is Risen! :)

We definitely serve a faithful Father. I just got back from a 3-hour Easter service that wasn't anything like any service I've ever been to back home. As some of you know, I found a ch-rch family here about a week and a half after I came to Wuhan. It was a real blessing! I had asked some of my friends/relatives to pr-y that I would find at least ONE Believing friend here... and G-d went above and beyond my expectations by sending me a whole CH-RCH! (I've told this story a few times already, so if you've heard this already, you can go ahead and skip to the next paragraph. ;) ) Anyway, the church was started a few years ago by a group of about six men from Fiji. They got together every Sunday to study the Bi-le and to pr-y together. Other people started hearing about this and joining in, and soon the bedroom in the dorm that they were meeting in was too small for everyone to fit. So they asked the university for permission to use a bigger room. Normally, that wouldn't happen in China, but eventually, the university provided a room for them to meet in. After a while, they outgrew that room too, and had to move to a bigger room. They (we) currently meet in a room in the basement of our international students' dorm, and even that room is starting to get a little small! The members are students from all over the world: Fiji, Lesotho, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Korea, Poland, Russia, Ecuador... and some random Islands in the South Pacific that I can't really remember. And we have a few locals as well, but it's a little risky for them to join us. There's a HUGE variety of denominations, ages (we even have a family with 2 kids!), and backgrounds, but (as cheesy as this sounds) we all have Je-us in common.

Our Easter service today was nothing like any service I've ever been to back home. For one thing, it lasted THREE HOURS. (But strangely, I never got bored!) For another thing, we had a group of Chri-tians from Beijing (well, most of them are originally from Tonga, they live in Beijing) here this weekend, so they helped lead the service and they added their own "touch".

(Communion)

A lot of the Tongans (men included) were wearing these really interesting straw skirt-thingies around their waists. And the visiting "Reverend Benjamin" used liturgy from the Tongan hymnal to lead Communion.

After church, we had lunch together. Usually, some of the women cook some rice, a sauce with chicken and vegetables, and potato salad for lunch, but this Sunday, the church from Beijing provided lunch: KFC. I felt right at home! (Until some people started using chopsticks for their fried chicken!)
And for dessert, we had German Schwarzwälder Kirsch Torte! (It wasn't completely authentic-- the Chinese tend to overuse whipped cream, and the cake part is usually really spongy, but as far as Chinese cakes go, it was pretty good!)


Last night, we went to a school for blind children. It was definitely one of my favorite experiences since coming to China. But this post is getting really long, so I'll save that for another post.