China Trip Day 9 - From Yanji to Beijing and the Forgotten City

No time to type a summary now, but you might like to look at pictures from our Friday:

Here is some video of the trip, which included a long bus ride to the airport.:

Here is Yanji to Beijing:


Here are pictures of the Forbidden City:


I may have time to write more later, but I may not. I'll repost it at the top if I do.

China Trip Day 10 - Great Wall

I didn't have time to write up what we did on Day 9, but I did a video blog of Day 10, which you can watch here (it's about 12 minutes long).


Here are the pictures and comments from the day:


This movie is of us traveling to, up, on, and down the Great Wall:


Finally, if you're interested, take a look at a half American / half Chinese breakfast buffet.


Tomorrow we're up early to go to an official Chinese church, then we should have some worship time of our own.

China Trip Day 8 - When in China, do as the Koreans do . . .

Note: Now that we are in Beijing, our hotel Internet isn't as consistent. It isn't easy at this particular point to put the pictures of the day right into this blog. If you would like to look at them, they should be visible here:

China Trip Day 8

All the vehicles and bicycles in the photo album are from the walking we did from the hotel to the school. I saw all of those vehicles in the 10 minute walk between those two locations.

One interesting thing about the city of Hunchun is the diversity within it. It is a combination of Chinese, Koreans, Russians, and Chinese-Koreans. The latter group comes from the fact that before World War II, the North Koreans were allowed to come and go freely into this area of China. After the war, North Korea cut off the ability for people to move freely between the two countries. The Chinese allowed the Koreans to stay and they have settled there for a long time since. Russians can move freely from this area of the country as well.

This is the reason why the Hope Foreign Language School conducts language courses in English, Russian, and Korean. They will also add Japanese in the future, because there are so many people doing business with Japan now and in the future.

So we went to Mrs. Hong's Korean class, where we were to experience what it was like to be in a language course that we couldn't understand. Mrs. Hong had help from Grace, Lilly, and Sarah. It was very overwhelming to see the Korean alphabet, which looks similar to Chinese, but is actually quite different when you learn how it works. It has consonants and vowels (instead of characters) and 24 letters total.

It was pretty difficult to differentiate what Mrs. Hong and Sarah were saying as they taught. Fortunately, Grace was backing them up on the white board by spelling out all the sounds phonetically. By the time we were done, we had practiced saying about 20 Korean phrases and words, including What is your name, thank you, that was delicious, and other things. I don't really want to go into a lot of detail, but there are a couple of observations. First, when we talked about saying, "I am an American," we found out their word for American literally means "beautiful country."

They also have a separate way of saying goodbye whether you are the person leaving or the one staying. You literally say "Have a nice going" or "Have a nice staying."

Here is a picture of our class:

From China Trip Day 8

When we were learning "That was delicious," I was talking to Lilly, and she said that dog meat is delicious. Dr. Kim had told us earlier that we needed to try "Chinese Beef," which is his term for dog, which they call Mong Mong. She told us she would like to take us out for supper, which sounded like too good of an offer to turn down. (You can read about that in another post.)

After lunch with Emma and Jamison Howe, Matt decided he wanted to get his haircut at the special school. I went along to document the experience on video. Plus, I wanted to see the special school one more time. Matt was going to let the students cut his hair, but I think they were nervous. They hadn't cut an American's hair before, so they were a bit overwhelmed. At the end, the teacher did most of the cutting, but he helped the students figure out how to do it.

Matt before:

From China Trip Day 8

By the time we were done, Matt no longer looked like Jesus. All the female adults in our group and at the language school were telling him how handsome he looked with his hair cut and his beard shaved (it had been over a year since his last haircut). It was like our team got a brand new leader!

Matt after:

From China Trip Day 8

It wasn't really our day to be at the special school, but no one told the kids. They came up to me and Matt and wanted attention. The boy I had walked around with a couple of days earlier came back to me and stuck out his hand like he wanted to walk again, so I did. It was meaningful to know that he had remembered what I with him two days earlier. It didn't fix any of his problems, but it did show him that I care and that must have made an impression.

I headed back to the hotel to do some last minute souvenir shopping for my family. A lot of what I got was treats, because I know that they like them and they don't have to take up space and collect dust for years. For myself, I found coffee flavored gum. That is something I'm looking forward to enjoying when I get back.

After the supper with dog meat (see the previous post for more explanation), Sara drove us back to the language school for conversational English. All of us were supposed to get a student to practice their English with. But Sara said their network was having some problems and she wondered if I would help out with helping her computer print on the network and get on the Internet. Ben and I worked on it and I got her computer to print.

Then Ben and I spent some time talking about Revelation, which he has been studying for his Bible study that he is leading. It was nice to talk Scripture and also good to hear how Ben studies for himself and has learned so much of the truth. Ben and Sara are doing a great job in Hunchun. I don't know how they keep up with all the things that they are responsible for. I am very proud of them as Central alumni and am excited to see how they are making an impact on the lives of Christians, non-Christians, and their fellow workers. Having both of them in class, I knew what they were capable of, but it is very fulfilling to see how they are actually living it out. This is what the trip here was all about!

Knowing that we would be getting up at 4:00 am to leave for our flight back to Beijing, I didn't stay up too late. Our time in Hunchun was almost done. As the groups said goodbye to their translators and discussed their experiences with one another, I could tell that we were leaving pieces of our hearts in the city. Whether it is with the children of the special school, the workers we had witnessed in action, or the beauty of the land and the people, we will not soon forget the time, energy, and emotion we have expended here.

Meals in Hunchun

I'm on the plane right now from Yanji to Beijing, so the first phase of our trip is over. I understand that most of our meals in Beijing will actually be American, so this is probably a good time to reflect on eating as the Chinese do in Hunchun.

We had quite a variety of food on our trip, and this is my best attempt to summarize the highlights and lowlights of the meals. Mike tried to tell us that we would lose 10-15 pounds on this trip. I honestly don't see how that's possible with the way we have eaten, but I guess I'll take it if it happens.

On this trip, our meals are covered by the money that we raised. We also use that money to pay for meals for the missionaries and others whom we take out to eat. There have been assorted pictures through the days collections of the different food, but I'm going to try to describe the top 10 observations when eating at an authentic restaurant in Hunchun.

1. Eating out is cheaper and easier than eating at home. I know this seems backwards compared to America, but I talked to some of the missionaries about this and they agreed. By the time you go to different places to find the ingredients to cook the way you would like to, it would be easier to walk down the street to your favorite restaurant. We ate for 20 Yuan apiece most of the time, which is about $3.25 (including drink and with no tax or tip expected). We ate pretty much all we could for that money. I went to a fast food place and it would be pretty easy to eat for $2. The benefit of eating out is great for missionaries . . . spending time with the people, practicing the language, learning how the people eat and looking like you are becoming one with them. With restaurants everywhere, there's lots of competition. The workers aren't paid a lot, but at least they have a job and going out supports the economy well. And if you only have a bicycle or are walking, carrying the ingredients to cook at home isn't as practical as you might think.
2. Eat family style over individual. I tried it both ways and far preferred it when they brought the table a variety of platters and we put what we wanted on our plates. We talked about this and thought about how nice it would be at restaurants in America if you could go out to eat with 6-8 people, buy 4 or 5 entrees, and everyone take what they want on their own plate to eat. I think we're a bit too individualistic and germaphobic in order for that to catch on. But I remember as a kid eating just like that at KFC, buying a bucket of chicken and several sides and everyone would just put some on their plate. I think Boston Market does that as well. Other than that, I can't think of any chain restaurants where that happens. But it ends up being better, especially when you're eating in a place where you don't know what you're going to like. In my opinion, it's a real winner.
   
3. The plates are small, the platters are huge. They bring all these platters out and only give you a very small plate to put it on. Perhaps it's because they don't eat very much. I think it has more to do with the fact that you don't take much at a time so that everyone can have some from the food on the platter. Once you've cleaned your plate or find something else that you'd like to mix in, add it to the plate. Everything ends up flavoring the other stuff in your plate, which creates a unique eating experience with every added entree.
   
4. The round, spinning tables are incredibly handy. It would take forever to pass all of these plates if you didn't have the glass spinner in the middle of the table. As it is, you are able to pass food to yourself by simply pulling on the glass. What you want will finally come around to you. Just be careful not to do it while people are still serving themselves.
   
5. Watch out for bones in the food. I don't think the people intend to eat the bones, but the bones stay in the food for at least two reasons. For one thing, their cutting of the meat is rather haphazard, and they leave the bone right in there. I guess it's too much work for them to trim it off the bone. Or perhaps, too much gets wasted that way. Instead, they just chop it into chunks, bone and all, and let all the meat be eaten and the bones be extracted at the point of eating. The second thing is that I assume they want the bone to flavor the meal. Perhaps it does. But I will admit it's a lot more work to eat when you've got rather large bones in the middle of your food. Especially in the soup.
   
6. If you don't like the consistency of something, it's probably fat, guts, or cartilage. Spit out what you don't like. It turns out that they throw away very, very little. One of our teams got a chicken that was entirely whole with the head and the beak and the talons of the feet. It's safe to assume the insides were all there as well. If you take a bite of meat and find things you don't think are meat, feel free to spit it back out. You may think it's gross, but they really don't care. I say better to feel slightly embarrassed now than very uncomfortable later.
   
7. Most things that are red are spicy. From the kimchi, to the spices, to the sauces, there are several spicy things on the table. One way I saw Lilly get around the spicy kimchi was to dip it in water first to knock a lot of the spices off of it. The spices aren't quite the same as Mexican spicy or Italian spicy. But they will stick with you if you aren't careful with it.
   
8. Chopsticks are annoying. Use your soup spoon or ask for a fork. I started out trying to eat everything with chopsticks, but that's a lot of work. Especially when the food is good, you're almost frustrated that you don't get a bigger bite at a time. It's even more frustrating (and time consuming) to try and take food off the platters onto your plate using chopsticks. Once you've eaten off of the chopsticks, it seems a bit unsanitary. Here's the suggestion I picked up from Patricia Kim. Use your soup spoon to get food from the platter to the plate and ask for a fork to enjoy your food without the frustration. They really aren't offended to bring you one. They mostly want you to enjoy the food and if a fork helps that happen, even better.
   
9. The napkins are incredibly small. Don't just take one. They are about a fourth of the size and thickness of a normal American paper napkin. I can wipe my mouth once, and it's pretty well done. They put stacks of them on the table, so you just pull up another one and don't feel bad.
   
10. Picture menus are good, but have at least one person with you who knows what you are eating. Everything looks good in a picture, but it's better to know what you are eating before it gets in front of you. It's sort of an insult to them to not eat the food they bring you, so it's good to confirm that you know what you want. The only thing I ordered off of a picture menu was popcorn chicken at KFC and french fries and ice cream. I felt pretty safe with those.
    

So with those things in mind (and now that I just finished eating my breakfast on the plane), here are some of my specific eating experiences from Hunchun that I haven't written much about.

1. Chinese Barbecue - Our translator, Stone, took us to restaurants on several of our meals. He asked if we liked barbecue, and we agreed. So we went to a Chinese barbecue joint, where they put the charcoal in the table right in front of you. There's a little hole in the table and a guy comes with a small box filled with hot coals. Then you get meat on metal skewers, which you barbecue right in front of yourself.

Now as good as this sounds, there are a few problems. First, it's a lot of work. You have to turn the food to keep it from getting burned. And then while you are eating what you have cooked, the fire is going out right in front of you. The second problem is that you are supposed to season the meat yourself, which you may not know how to do in the way that tastes best for you. Don't get me wrong, it was very good. If you are a carnivore, this is the way to go.

I understand that the Chinese who go to this work about ten of those skewers at the same time, constantly twisting them, getting them on the waiting rack, talking and seasoning all at once. I'm guessing it takes some practice.

2. Korean Barbecue - The next night, we went to the Korean Barbecue place, where they also cook it on your table. This time, though, you go get the food from a buffet and a cooler, put it on your plate, and bring it to them. They had all kinds of food available, every kind of meat, including the guts, and all kinds of seafood as well. I stuck with beef, chicken, lamb, and pork. But there were plenty of other interesting choices I could have had. They also had fruit and cake on their buffet. The fruit was good, the cake was dry.

The owner of the establishment took care of us, because she likes to give the best service to the American guests. Her goal is to open one of those restaurants in America someday. This was the night where the Chinese police came in and asked Kyle if he was a Christian because they saw his cross tattoo.

3. Street vendors - On many corners you will find a variety of people who appear to be very poor, selling things that they have either grown, made, or purchased elsewhere. While walking along, I bought pistachios from a street vendor, fresh strawberries, and popcorn. But my favorite of all was pineapple on a stick. Basically, they take a whole pineapple, core it, cut the rind off of it, then cut it into a slice the size of a dill pickle and put it on a stick. That costs about 15 cents. I was hooked on those. One night before supper, I was hungry and a guy had them for sale on the corner. I bought one and brought it back to the hotel where my team was waiting to leave. Several of them commented on how good it looked, so I offered to buy them all one. The guy was very happy when I bought 10 sticks from him. The next night, he was back at the same time, as were we. I bought one from him, and then he got more out, hoping I would buy them. That night I only bought 5, but I think it still made him happy. I must figure out how to make these for myself.

4. Fast food joints - Hunchun doesn't have the kind of chains that you find in Beijing or elsewhere in China. The closest one to our hotel was called Do & Me, which had chicken sandwiches, fries, soft serve ice cream, and chicken nuggets. There were also several soft serve ice cream places which have come around there. The fast food is comparably priced. I bought a large fries, which was comparable to a medium at Mcdonalds, and the cost was about 85 cents. They were pretty good, nice and hot.

5. Breakfasts in the hotel - Our hotel stay included breakfast every morning, which had some American items (fried eggs, fried potatoes, pancakes) and some Chinese stuff also (one morning I had octupus, plus they had sweet and sour pork and several other things. The last day I had scrambled eggs with cucumbers and carrots. That was actually better than I thought it would be and I will try to make that at home sometime. Even though they have pancakes, unfortunately they don't have syrup there. Most days I put peanut butter and jelly on the pancakes. But I actually missed having cereal and oatmeal.

6. PB&J with the team - When we were working, there wasn't time to go out and eat. So we purchased food in the supermarket and made our lunches while we were out. We got bread from the bakery, Jiffy peanut butter, and several flavors of jelly. We had apples and moon pies, water and coke, and we were pretty well set. It was a nice balance to the other huge meals that we regularly had.

7. Dog Meat with the Koreans - And now I save the best for last. You can find the pictures for Day 8 here: http://picasaweb.google.com/drfincher/ChinaTripDay8?authkey=Gv1sRgCOKt9YPS1PfJWw#

After spending time with the Koreans at the language school, we were encouraged to try dog meat, which is a favorite of Koreans. In fact, our translator said Chinese don't like dog meat, only Koreans. The Koreans dispute that, but I'll leave it to them to argue about.

Now, before you get a little disgusted about the idea of several of us willingly eating dog meat (mong mong), you should know a few things. First, the restaurants don't serve pets or stray dogs. These are actually dogs that are bred for the meat market, just like cattle or hogs would be. The cost is a bit less than beef, and with that many people to feed in Asia, having more types of food available than just what Americans are comfortable with is a necessity. (Individual homes may cook stray or personal dogs, but not restaurants.)

Patricia Kim told us that when the Olympics were in Seoul, South Korea in 1988, there was such an outcry from Americans about the fact that South Koreans eat dogs that the city banned selling dog meat during the Olympics. People in this region were very offended that Americans would criticize them for eating a food that they like just because a dog is an American man's best friend. (By the way, at supper, we mentioned to the Koreans that we in Americans eat squirrels, and they were sort of disgusted to find that out. But they certainly didn't tell us it was wrong or that they were offended. But I digress.)
Anyway, Patricia says they don't talk about dog meat while they are in America, because they know it would offend a lot of Christians. Considering that America is a country that spends more money on pet food than it sends for world evangelism, I think they are probably wise in that. The point is, if an American Christian finds this out, he will probably be more offended that Koreans enjoy eating dog meat than that they don't know Christ. To me, this is a symptom of the bigger problem in the American church, our selfish tendency to care more about personal preferences than the global work of the kingdom.

So to honor our Korean teachers (Lilly and Sarah), we agreed to go to the best dog meat restaurant in Hunchun. And honestly, it tasted pretty good. It may have even been the best meal we had. Now, we had more than just dog meat, but I could have eaten just that and been very satisfied. They had some in soup, and some on a plate. It looked like a beef roast and tasted like the dark meat of a wild turkey. Since I love both of those things, it's no surprise that I enjoyed it.

Here's the video:


Five of us were brave enough to try it, and all of us liked it. We sent the leftovers home with one of the Koreans, which I think made her very happy!

8. The final meal before we get back to Beijing was breakfast on the plane. It included a couple of pieces of lunch meat, four cherry tomatoes, a dinner roll, a piece of cake, peanuts, and kimchi. I saved the peanuts and kimchi (because they were in a sealed bag). But the rest of it was good, as were the drinks. Something knew for me was coconut juice. It looks like milk, but is sweet and smooth going down.

Plane ride is going well. Next post: Day 8 in Hunchun.

Day 7 - Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

First of all, you can see the still pictures of today's experiences here:

China Trip - Day 7

Once you click it, hit slide show and you will see the pictures full screen with some captions. Some of it may be repetitive to here, but I find it easier to mark the pictures individually and then try to tell the story here.

Headed back to the ranch for the second day of work, we needed old clothes. I only brought one set of old clothes, so I actually had my dirty work clothes washed so I could go back out to the ranch again. Laundry is 8 Yuan for each shirt or pants washed (about $1.15). They deliver it back to your room all nicely folded and in a bag within 24 hours. It's pretty handy.

So I wore my freshly cleaned clothes to get quite dirty again. By the time we are picking up dirty rocks, working with concrete, and taking care of the animals, we are filthy all over the place.

On the bus ride out to the ranch, we had a couple of extra Chinese guys riding with us. I wondered what they were going to do and found out when we got there. These guys had been hired yesterday by CRAM to help with the building of the rock wall. Basically, none of us know how to build a rock wall, but we are good at mixing concrete and carrying rock. These guys knew how to put it together and turn it into something beautiful. I asked Jim about how the work went yesterday when the other groups were there. He said, "You can judge for yourself when you see it." What we saw was unbelievable. These guys had not only gotten way more done than we had, but it looked far better, also. Here are the workers during their lunch break:

From China Trip - Day 7

These guys seemed very nice and they really knew what they were doing with the rock. They knew just how to hammer the rock to make it break apart and they were strong as could be. Every once in awhile they took a break to smoke (a regular practice of many men in China), but they seemed like they had a great time working with us. The Chinese people from CRAM were talking with them regularly and making them feel special. The guy in the red sleeves offered me some of his food at lunch, even though we had our own. It was a dry tortilla like thing that almost looked like a paper towel. I took a piece and ate it. It was pretty bland, but apparently they like it because it's easy to carry, keeps for ever, and works well with whatever they want to eat it with. I preferred PB&J, which I had for the third consecutive lunch.

I found out that CRAM paid these guys 150 Yuan, which is about 3 times minimum wage for a day's work, making their effective wage about $160 for the day. As a point of comparison, we can stay at our hotel for $15 per person, including one meal, which is about 105 Yuan, so they made a pretty decent wage. They earned it and were well worth the money. In China, guys like this come to a place where it is known that you can rent a worker for the day. They bring whatever tool they think they need to do the jobs that they are good at. You drive to the place, tell them what job you need done, and they connect you with however many people you are willing to hire. It's cheaper to hire them by the month, but not bad to hire them by the day if you only need them for three or four days worth of work. Without them, we never would have got the retaining wall done, and we would have wasted our time doing things we weren't good at instead of the stuff we could do the best.

Speaking of what we could do the best, moving rock from different piles to the place where the work was being done was top on the list of what I did today. I also helped by wheelbarrowing cement that these guys used to put together the wall. But the highlight of my day was jump starting the tractor after it was dead and then figuring out how to use the hydraulic lift on the tractor. If you want to see me handle this frightening task of dumping a load of rock, watch this video. (By the way, the tractor and trailer was purchased by Central Christian Church of Wichita, Kansas. Many rooms, items, and buildings have been named after American people and churches who have generously donated to CRAM to make these resources available.)


The other highlight of my day at the ranch was talking to Zai Ben. We stopped working for a bit because he was sharing with me a bit of the story of his life.

From China Trip Day 5

As I can piece the story together, Zai Ben became a believer almost 4 years ago as a direct result of working for CRAM. He later took English classes and started reading his Bible more and more. After reading it, he discovered that he shouldn't be living with the lady that had been his girlfriend. So he broke up with her. She turned him into the police for being a Christian. They came to his house and ransacked it, finding his Bible. When he got there, they asked him if he was a Christian. He said that he was, and they left. But he knows he could get in trouble at any time. He still goes to the "meetings" at CRAM and is a devout follower.

Zai Ben is a lonely person, because he now lives alone. He is 48 years old. However, he gets great joy from the visitors from America. His English is getting better all the time and he is just a treasure to talk to. He said that he loves American Christians because they are relaxed and joyful. I told him not all were like that, maybe just the ones who are willing to come on a mission trip to China (I hate to burst his bubble, but if he ever comes to America, he will find out the truth.) He is just so amazed at all the workers who come from different churches and organizations and give a week, a month, or even 6 months to help them out. He loves all the interns who come and he misses them horribly when they leave.

One of the ways he tries to remember all the people who come is that he takes pictures with his digital camera and has a TV in his room he can hook it up to to see their faces. He also has us put our handprints on the wall of the horse corral.

From China Trip Day 5

It is full of such prints from dozens of people who have come to help him.

He prays for the American Christians and is thankful for all they have taught him about the Bible. He was such an encouragement to me today. He said, "You drive tractor very good." But even more than that, it was so encouraging to see that he recognizes the joy of the Lord and wants it in his own life. That is what led him to a deeper walk with Christ. I wish I had time just to sit down and answer his questions about the Bible. He is truly seeking to grow in his relationship with God. But I trust that the workers at CRAM are capable of helping him in this way as he continues to grow.

By the time we were done working on the rock wall, much progress had been made.
Here's what it looked like when we started on Monday:

From China Trip Day 5

Here's what it looks like after we quit on Wednesday:

From China Trip - Day 7

We expect that the other two groups will be able to finish it off tomorrow.

On the way home, we wanted to stop at the broken bridge. Ryan Eidson, who is coming this summer with his wife Lori, has made this fabulous map that helps you see where our travels are taking us.


View Hunchun in a larger map

The broken bridge takes us within a stone's throw of North Korea. Yesterday, the group was asked to leave by the Chinese authorities. We wondered how they knew so quickly we were on it and whether we would be asked to leave again. (The first day, they let us go with no problems.) Today, we found out the answer to both. It turns out that they have cameras on this bridge with wireless connection to some military station somewhere. I saw them as soon as we got on the bridge and knew there was a chance that they would come back. Sure enough, we hadn't made it to the end of the bridge when they came.

In the above picture, you see a Chinese version of a Humvee. Our tour bus is in the background. In the pole above the Humvee is a camera, pointing at us. Two unarmed soldiers came out of the vehicle (we later saw a third in the vehicle). They politely asked us to leave and told us we could come back another day. We certainly complied.

Now, some have asked why this has happened two consecutive days. We don't believe that the Chinese are as concerned about us being on the bridge as they might be concerned that the North Koreans don't want us on the bridge. Having Americans that close to North Korea is probably not a good idea right now. In fact, we found out that two years ago, a Central student was sitting on the edge of the bridge, looking at North Korea, writing in her journal. All of a sudden, a North Korean soldier came up to her with a gun on his side of the bridge (about 40 feet away) and yelled at her and pointed at her to leave. Now, do they have a right to do that? Technically, neither we nor she were trespassing on NK land. But it's close enough (a stone's throw away, literally) that it makes them uncomfortable, and that probably makes the Chinese very uncomfortable as well. The Chinese want Americans to be tourists, but more than that, they want the North Koreans not to bomb them. As we got off the bus, I jokingly said "Let's not create an international incident." Turns out the Chinese feel the same way and encouraged us to keep that from happening. Tomorrow's group isn't even going to stop.

After a quick cleanup at the hotel, the faculty on the trip were taken by bus to meet with the Kims. They wanted to show us an underground church, the site of their proposed orphanage, and treat us to a meal at the special school.

We drove out into the country, into a small village where CRAM has purchased 2.5 acres to be used for an orphanage and old folks home. Jim and Andra are here for the purpose of helping to start that orphanage. Right now, the ministry needs $200,000 to make that orphanage become a reality. In China, many orphans are never taken care of or loved. More and more children are abandoned, especially ones who are handicapped and whose parents divorce. Under the one child policy in China, parents are entitled to put one child in school, but if they don't go to school, they aren't officially registered with the state. China uses the school system as their enforcement mechanism for many things in their country. As a result, handicapped children may not be put in school or continued to be cared for so that families can attempt to have another child that will be acceptable to them. These are the children that CRAM has a heart to serve through Jim and Andra's leadership. So we went to this land to pray over it and ask God to bless their plans. I was asked to pray by Dr. Kim and had the honor of leading the group in prayer in the presence of this great man of faith and prayer. I almost felt my prayer life kicked up a notch just because I was with these people of faith.

Here we are on a land with beautiful potential to provide a peaceful, secure, and productive environment for the children under their care:

From China Trip - Day 7

On the way, we stopped at an underground church. We were told how the pastor lives in the church, so that it looks like a normal home. But there are a couple of large meeting rooms where they do worship together. Here we are in front of the building:


Traveling back to Hunchun, we went to the special school, where the Kims live when they are in town. They also live in North Korea, as they have dual residency. On the third floor of the special school is a kitchen and dining area, and they treated all the faculty to a meal of spaghetti with homemade sauce, garlic bread, salad, apple crisp, ice cream, deviled eggs, Coca-Cola, and coffee! It was nice to have a change from our normal oriental food. Everything was extremely delicious.

From China Trip - Day 7

As a special treat for our meal, they had asked Natasha, one of their Russian language teachers, to play the violin. Her playing must be heard to be believed (it is at the end of this video):


She had created her own tracks on CD, which she played along with on her violin. The story of her violin was amazing. As a little girl, she wanted to learn to play the violin, because she thought it was such a wonderful instrument. But her family had no money to get one. So she started praying that God would provide one for her. She imagined exactly what kind of violin she would want, the style, the shoulder rest, the kind of bow, and prayed that if God would provide a violin for her, she would practice it faithfully and use her talent for him. A little while later, a person from the Netherlands had this violin that they transported it to the place where she was living. The person asked Natasha if she would like to learn to play the violin, and she said yes, she had been praying that God would provide one for her, because her family did not have the money to afford one. So the person gave her the violin. It turns out it was exactly the kind she had pictured in her mind and had been praying for for a long time, although she had told no one the details. The instrument is beautiful and is so valuable, that it must have its own passport, one for the violin and a separate one for the bow. Apparently, when transporting a valuable instrument across international borders in Europe and Asia, this is a necessity. She even showed us the passport.

Here I am with Natasha and her beautiful, valuable violin:


About 6 times during the evening, Mrs. Kim specifically mentioned that Natasha needed a good Christian husband and asked if we had anyone at Central to suggest. A few names popped into my mind, but if you have someone you would like to suggest, please let me know. They just have to have a heart for missions, as she travels throughout Russia and China playing her violin for people and teaching them Russian and to follow Christ.

There's so much more I could be writing about. The experiences of my teammates aren't even being included here, so I urge you if you know someone on the trip to contact them and ask them for their own description. They will love to tell you all about it.

Tomorrow: I'm learning Korean and helping to teach English.

China Trip Day 6 - Bakery and Special School

After a great night of sleep (almost 10 hours), I was excited that we were headed to the bakery and special school here in town. I was still sore from the work at the ranch yesterday, so I was hoping for something a little easier today. Actually, it may have been harder work.

(You can see all of today's pictures here.)

For my devotions this morning, the book talked about the "butterfly effect" and how something small that we do can make a large difference (both good or bad). I was determined today to do something small that made a large difference in someone's life and I had several opportunities to do that.

I had 15 minutes to wait before we left for the school, so I decided to walk through the market right behind our hotel. I took a few pictures and some video of the food they had for sale there.

From China Trip Day 6

So we took several taxis and found ourselves in a completely different part of town. The compound has several buildings on it, and the first one we went to was the bakery.

Taking our shoes off as we went in, we all put on sandals and went to the kitchen. There we met Cook-Kim, who is a Korean. He runs this bakery and regularly sends bread made here into North Korea to feed poor Christians there. They train handicapped young adults from their special school and employ some of them. The Good News Bakery provides vocational training for 20-25 students three times a week. The bread is eaten by students, staff, and local authorities and 3500 sweet red bean rolls are taken to North Korea monthly for the needy.

I had hurt my finger yesterday working at the ranch, and with a bandage on it, I didn't think it was a good idea for me to be playing in the dough. So I took pictures while everyone else worked. After taking some time to roll the dough into balls and then into sticks, we took a break and sang some songs together and did some skits. Even though the workers didn't understand much English, they were filled with joy as they heard us sing old and new songs to Him. Then three of the ladies in the bakery worked together and sang a song for us.

You can watch some of the video from the bakery trip here:


We appreciated their hospitality and willingness to let us watch and help them work.

At lunch, we climbed to the upper room of the special school, which is also where Dr. Kim and Patricia stay. In the upper room, we ate lunch together, and then Patricia shared her testimony of how she and her husband ended up in China, why they chose that location, and what they hope to accomplish. I recorded her talk, but for security reasons, I will not be posting the link on this blog. If you would like to hear her powerful testimony, please email me at drfincher@gmail.com and I will be happy to send you a link to either the video or the audio.

After Patricia's testimony, Janet (one of the special school teachers) came to talk to us about what we would be doing with the students. She was assisted by Grace, who is a new teacher/translator at the language school.


She also had Matt, one of the new teachers, along to help as well. They also told us about the situation with the students there and Christianity. Children are not allowed to go to church and every week they are asked by the authorities if they have or not. No one who is a teacher of children can publicly profess to be a Christian. If they do, they will lose their job.

Janet says that they pray for their students privately, plant seeds, and find that those seeds grow. After 18 years of age, the students will come back and talk to them about how they knew those teachers were different. Janet says that she has baptized four students and desires to disciple them.

You can watch video footage of the special school here:


50 students at the school live in the dorm during the week. The rest of the students come in for the day. Several of the students go home for the weekends with their parents. Some don't have families, though. She had been praying that we would have joy and would bring the children joy. She said that God doesn't make mistakes so that whichever children we were matched up with was not a mistake, but was God's will.

Our first form of helping was in one of their elective classes. I chose computer lab, and we walked in to see 20 boys working on old computers running Windows XP. They were learning to type, mostly in English. Some were playing games. I taught one kid how to turn up the volume on his speakers. Another boy who was typing in English watched me type very fast. He started clapping for me. Well, I brought joy to at least one kid that way.

Next, we went out on the playground, where they were playing soccer. I wasn't feeling great, with a few injuries, but I played anyway for awhile. Then I decided to quit and talked to Janet some more. She and Lisa were blowing up balloons, tying them to popsicle sticks, and giving them to kids. They had to leave to help a child who was hurt, so I took over that job. Next thing I know, I was swarmed by kids and did that task for about the next hour. They thought it was funny how big I could blow them up and they would say POP real loud to try and scare me. Then I would say it to them and they would laugh about it. It was great fun to see them have so much fun with something so simple. Score one for bringing joy to me.


Some of the kids weren't so joyful. One picked up a box cutter and acted like he was going to stab me. Others would try to take multiple balloons and were using them as sort of a substitute currency in the yard. But I kept on blowing, tying, and stringing the balloons until they were all gone. Then it was free time with the children. Some kids played frisbee, jump rope, and soccer.

I noticed one little boy off to himself crying. So I asked Janet what was happening with him. She said he was very depressed, and maybe I could walk him around the property, bless him with prayer and sing to him to try and calm him down. So I did that and it actually worked. Then I sat down and let him ply my iPhone for a little while. He enjoyed a drawing game on it, as did several other children who came up to play. So I guess God found the right kid for me to spend that time with.

In a little while after that, we were planning a program for the kids. We ended up singing some good Christian camp songs (although they didn't know the meaning of the words). The kids got into some of the action songs and we enjoyed seeing them try.

Far more things happened today than I could share, but I got this out of it. Seeing how God could have already ordained for us to show up and do some of the little things necessary was amazing. It made me confident that I had done a little thing anyone else could have done, but God had appointed me to do.

I could write more, but I'm falling asleep right now. I still have to talk about eating with our translator and what it is teaching me about China. But it will have to wait.

(Don't forget that all of today's pictures are here.)


Tomorrow: Back to the ranch

Lunch in the upper room

Spending the day at the bakery and special school.

PB&J for lunch was good. Beautiful weather. More to post later.

Day 5 Pictures and Video

Today's pictures can be found here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/drfincher/ChinaTripDay5?feat=directlink

And here are a few videos:
Visiting the farm and ranch.


Driving the tractor and moving rocks:


Visiting the broken bridge:

China Trip - Day 5 at the Ranch

We left for the ranch at 6:30 after another breakfast in the hotel.  Sleep the night before was very short, between the noise from outside the room and our lack of ability to get comfortable.  I got to skype with Adam, Alex, and Sandy for a little bit.

We drove out into the country and stopped first at the farm.  There were lots of cattle, a few donkeys, and dogs.  All of them are raised there to be sold in the meat market (yes, even the dogs.)  Actually, I won't be surprised if we eat some dog in the next few days.  In fact, I sort of hope we will, but I don't want to know about it until afterward.

Dr. Kim had us pray for the farm there and the workers who live and work there.  He showed us a small house where believers meet weekly.  I thought we would be working there, but we were just there to visit.  After prayer, we loaded back up on the bus and went out to the ranch, where they had a lot of work for us to do.  The main work of this day was building a rock wall, as well as taking care of some of the horses, cleaning out a barn, and moving some dirt.

Before we worked, Dr. Kim walked us up the hill to a place where three crosses stood and he shared his vision that some day there could be a church camp on that ground that would serve this region and the North Koreans.  We all prayed for the future of the land there and sang How Great Thou Art together.

I volunteered to drive the tractor, which was very strange compared to the tractors I've driven before.  The brake was on the right, the gas in the middle, and the clutch on the left.  That was sort of hard to get used to.  I spent a lot of time starting and restarting, but I never wrecked it (although I did come close to hitting the bus once!)  Because of the hilly and rocky terrain, it was a challenge to drive it around.  Later I will post a video someone took of me driving the tractor.

We had lots of big rocks to move, and nothing but our own strength and a couple of crow bars.  The ranch has a lot of development remaining, and we are just getting in on the beginning of it.  There used to be a church that met in the upper room of the horse barn, but it was reported to the authorities and they shut it down.

In the middle of the morning, they brought us bread made by the handicapped workers at the bakery.  Lunch was peanut butter and jelly, although we also had moon pies for dessert.  We ate in the upper room, and enjoyed the fellowship, even though we were all dirty and ready to get cleaned up. 

Everyone had a great time building the wall and working together.  We got to meet our friend Zai Ben, who is a believer.  He wanted his picture taken with all of us.  He lives in the ranch in a small apartment for part of the year (which we also have some pictures of to post).  I found out he watches LOST, which I saw the Chinese version of there.  He told me I could have it if I wanted, but I hated to take it from him.  Plus, they won't play in American DVD players anyway.

The greatest fun of the day came at the end.  We were trying to get on the bus, and there was no driver to be found.  Some people thought he was asleep on the bus.  I wondered if he might have passed out, so we banged on the windows, trying to get in.   Finally, we looked for the smallest guy and tried to put him through the open window, but he was stuck halfway through.  Then we found an even smaller guy, and he slid right in.  Just then, the driver came walking up the hill and saw us.  He was not amused.  It's sort of my fault, because I was standing there helping those boosting up the guys.  And so today I learn another lesson of missions:  patience.  Whether it's moving rock, building a wall, cleaning up horse manure, or waiting until your driver shows up, things don't happen immediately.  Everything in time, but rushing it can actually set you back.  I just hope the driver isn't upset with us for the fact that we sent a guy in the bus.  We really were concerned about him, afraid that he might not be ok.  But there probably could have been a better way to handle the situation.

Broken Bridge - During World War II, it was shot up and there are a lot of holes.  The advice given to us was Don't get close to the edge, and there should be very few pictures taken.  We shouldn't wave either so that there isn't too much attention drawn to us.  Well, walking across the bridge didn't seem to phase me at all that we were within a stone's throw of North Korea.  The Tumen river is the border, and the bridge has a huge chunk gone in the bridge, making it impossible to get across.  We stood there for awhile looking at the North Koreans on the other side.  They gave us a little attention, but didn't seem to care that we were looking at them.

Back to the hotel to get cleaned up and ready to go out to eat with a translator.  We will be ordering our meals on our own with a translator tonight.  I wonder what we'll get to eat?

Day 4 - LOST

You may know that my favorite show right now is LOST.  There are a lot of different interpretations of what is going on in the show, but one that I am beginning to have more appreciation for is the idea that we are all LOST in today's world, trying to figure out where we are going and needing those around us in order to be found.  Whether or not that's what the writers intend, I learned that lesson myself yesterday, as I experienced what it meant to be lost.

We started with breakfast, very tasty and abundant.  There were some familiar things like pancakes and fried eggs.  There was also stuff that looked more like the chinese buffet for breakfast.  I found several things I liked, and others that I couldn't finish.  It was a treat to have some coffee in the morning and be able to sort of wake up.

The Internet access for the week has been pretty spotty in our room.  There was a WI-FI access point across the street that several of our group were able to use, but it wasn't real reliable in my room.  I brought our own router so that we could get online, but I had struggled to get it set up.  This is the day that I discovered the problem, but not before I had an adventure.  I had enough Internet to get on skype, but that's all I could do, and that just wasn't cutting it.  Since the schedule said that we had about an hour until we would go to the orphanage, I walked down the street in search of a computer store where I could get on the Internet.  Just around the corner, I found one.  It was very humorous to try and explain to them what I wanted:  to pay a little money to be on the Internet for 15 minutes.  They tried to sell me all kinds of computer parts, even though I had the computer in my hand and was showing them that it worked.  Since they had their own wireless access point, I finally was able to communicate to them that I needed the code to get on.  They said it was 1234567890.  (By the way, that was also the code at the business center at the airport in Beijing.  I also think it's the same one that we use at Timber Lake, but that's another story.  I guess we're more like the Chinese than we know!)

They told me I could stay 5 minutes, but I didn't even stay that long, because I figured out I could go outside and get some fresh air.  I found a bench across the street, opened up the laptop, and was in business.  I had a blast for 30 minutes, talking with Adam on video.  I was just showing him around the street using the camera on my laptop.  People were staring at me as they walked by.  It was actually interesting to see the taxis.  Since I was on the street corner standing and holding my laptop, I think they thought I wanted a ride.  They would stop and stare, until I signaled them to go on.  It was so good to see Adam and for him to see the sights and hear the sounds of the street.  There were people of all ages, out with bikes, motorcycles.  Even a 5 year old kid was scootering down a 6 lane highway, all by himself.  I called my parents and by the time I figured out that it was getting close to time to leave, I had a sinking feeling.  So I started running back for the hotel.  By the time I got there, all of our group was gone.  My roommate was gone with the room key.  I saw no one that I knew.  I felt like I was in "Left Behind."

So I decided to go to my room, where I found a map to the orphanage.  I felt pretty confident that I could find it, but first I called Sandy to tell her I didn't know where I was going and to have her say a little prayer for me.  I took off to the destination, which appeared to be 3 blocks away from looking at the map.  Unfortunately, the map wasn't real clear to me and even less clear to the Chinese people I showed it to.  I walked for about 15 minutes, came back to the hotel, and called again, just so she would know I was ok.  Once more time around the block the different direction to see if I could find the building.  But I realized that I had no one's phone number, no address of the place I was going, and I didn't even know the name of it.  The possibilities weren't very great that I would find it on my own.  So I came back to the hotel, settled in my room, and thought I could just wait.  But I thought that one more time I should try to find someone, so I walked downstairs and saw Drew Smith.  Fortunately, he had lived here for 5 months before, so he knew where everything was.  He walked me there in about 7 minutes.  Turns out I had walked past it twice but didn't know what the building looked like.  Up a couple of floors we walked and all of a sudden I was in a whole new kind of lost.

The children at the orphanage were filled with joy, but I wasn't able to do much communicating with them.  My team had set up a game that didn't require talking, only hand signals.  I didn't do very well at it, but it was good to see the children and laugh with them.  We had the older children, while the other team was working with the younger kids.  Unfortunately, all my time being lost robbed me of an hour with the children at the orphanage, but at least I got to go and see what it was like there.  It's actually run by Koreans and isn't officially part of CRAM.  But they do some things together, so they are part of our trip this week.

Back to the hotel, where Ben Wellsand and I tried to get their Internet working.  Turns out that they had some wrong numbers typed into their Internet router, and it wasn't letting guests of the hotel connect.  I got my computer working by using those numbers that they had, but no one there knew the password to get into their router.  So they called some technicians to come in the afternoon, and we decided to return then to help.

Meanwhile, we went to a restaurant for lunch with the team.  A whole new variety of food was presented, including donkey dumplings.  Since I got there late from working with the computers, I was hungry and just picked one up and ate it with my hands.  I think the students were surprised to see me do that.  The rest of lunch was really good, and there are some pictures of some of it elsewhere.  The donkey was probably the highlight, though.

Back to the hotel, and the technicians were there to work on the router.  When they finally figured out a password, there was a new surprise.  The router was entirely in Chinese.  We couldn't talk to one another, but it was cool that I went to Google translate and typed in English, translated into Chinese.  Then they would type it back in Chinese and translate it to me in English.  Google is an excellent tool for a lot of things, but it helped us get on the same page in that situation.

Unfortunately, when they went to type in the numbers, they didn't do something right and the whole thing quit working.  The whole Internet for the whole hotel.  Oops.  Now the guys really didn't know what they were doing and there was a rather pointed argument between the girl and the two guys.  Good thing I didn't know Chinese, but it looked like she was chewing them out for being incompetent.  They left in a huff and I went downstairs.  When Ben got back, I was in the lobby, with the manager and another hotel employee down there.  I asked him to check if they were upset with me.  Turns out, they were actually happy that I was trying to help, but not too pleased with the guys who didn't know how to fix it.  They even gave me a frozen ice cream bar, which tasted halfway like banana and halfway like butter.

We had to go to the church to prepare for the service, so I asked if I should stay and help them.  Ben said they had contacted another company to come and work on it and it should be working by the time we got back.  So I left not knowing what would happen, but glad that I had at least been able to show them what their problem was.

(By the way, everything is fixed and working great now.)

Gotta go.  We just made it to the ranch.

Videos from China

Travelling from Moberly to Beijing

Saturday Morning


Saturday Afternoon


Saturday Evening


Sunday Morning


Sunday afternoon worship


A message from Dr. Kim about short-term missions

China Trip - Day 3 Pictures

Here are some pictures posted from Day 3:

http://picasaweb.google.com/drfincher/ChinaTripDay3?feat=directlink

--
Dr. David B. Fincher
VP of Academics
Central Christian College of the Bible
Moberly, MO  65270
660-263-3900, ext. 137
dfincher@cccb.edu

China Trip - Day 2 Pictures

Here are the pictures from Day 2, finally uploaded:

http://picasaweb.google.com/drfincher/ChinaTripDay2?feat=directlink