Thank you so much for your prayers. I got some sweet text messages last night before we left that helped put me at ease. (I also realized some of my friends don’t get nearly enough sleep!!) It feels wierd knowing my children are on the other side of the world…this is a real test of my trust in God. Please pray for our next flight to Beijing. Pray our luggage gets there and we get through customs. Pray that we don’t collapse and wake up to have our carry-on luggage disappear.

So far God has answered all of our prayers the way we wanted!!! We arrived here in Beijing about 3:30 PM. I was really worreid about getting through customs with 4 bags filled with gifts but it wasn’t any more difficult than going through the drive-through at McDonald’s. Beijing is hot and smoggy. There is lots of construction going on all over the place. New juxtaposed with old. We took a 45 minute cab ride to our hotel and it cost less than $12. Our hotel, is a Chinese 4-star – the key word being “Chinese” 4-star, so sort of like a Holiday Inn by American standards. I’m not complaining at all it’s great.

Our host, is amazing. She is an Amercian who has lived in China for the last 9 years. She knows the language, customs, and history well. She also has a great love for the country and the people that is contagious.

After we checked into the hotel, we took some much need showers and then went downstairs to wait for her to go out to dinner. While standing outside, I heard some itty bitty meowing. Being the animal lover that I am I looked in the bushes to investigate. No kitties, but still meowing. I looked in the bushes some more and glanced into the surrounding cars. No kitties. More meowing. Then I saw them a lady was pushing a cart around with little cages on top filled with kittens. I suppose she was sellling them. A minute later a man walked by with a cart filled with baby bunnies.

Our host arrived and we went out to dinner. We had Peking duck, an eggplant dish, and some green bean dish. The food was fantastic and the atomosphere interesting. Behind out table was a glass wall and in it was a large fire place oven. Hanging around the oven upside down on hooks were whole skinned ducks. A man lifted the ducks off the rack and moved them into the oven to be roasted… our dinner.

Now we are back and the hotel and exhausted.

One more answered prayer is that our phone from home is working here in our room!!! We use a voip and so it’s just like having our home phone here. In fact, you can call our home number and it will ring in our room in Beijing… another reason we love the internet. The time difference makes calling the boys a little tricky, but I can’t wait to hear their voices.

Lastly, please if you can continue to pray for the filming. We will start meeting with children and their families. Pray that God’s hand directs us. Pray for wisdom and creativity. Pray it is God’s story that gets told and that we are simply his tools.

Thanks you so much for all your love and support.

Brent and Jenn

Here is a brief overview of what we have been doing. I would love to share the details but due to time I must keep is short. So far this trip is going beautifully and God is answering prayers the way we wanted them answered!!!

Tuesday- We visited the Summer Palace. It was very hot and humid but the palace and grounds were beautiful. That afternoon we took a pedicab through the hutons. The hutons are small narrow streets with very very old low buildings. It was what Beijing was like for hundreds of years before high rises were built about 20 years ago. That evening we went to a Tea House near Tiannamen Square to see we would call a chinese variety show. Very “interesting” .

Wednesday- We spent the morning wandering in a park looking for interested b-roll footage. The park was charming and there were lots of Chinese gathering together to sing, dance, exercise, play games or play instruments through out the park. That afternoon we had lunch in a private room with some s.s. teachers who couldn’t be filmed or taped because of their positions in the church. It was very inspiring to hear them talk about their dedication to God and to the children. We prayed together at the end of the meal which was an amazing experience and such and honor to be praying with women like these. That evening we met our first family/little girl for the film. We spent the evening at their home listening to stories. Their hospitality was overwhelming. At the end the wanted to pray and sing amazing grace together. Our host/guide has told us the Chinese like to sing whenever!!! Overall we felt extremely blessed and humbled by the hospitality and faith of this family.

Thursday- We spent the morning at The Great Wall. It was every bit as beautiful and amazing as one would imagine. That afternoon we had a delicious lunch at Chinese Muslim restaurant. And later that afternoon we filmed more b-roll of the little girl coming home from school, ect. That evening Brent and I wondered the street by our hotel. We stopped to eat at a “hot pot” restaurant where you cook your food in a boiling pot of water. But they started bringing out all these little dishes of sauce and we didn’t know how to eat it and didn’t want to ruin the experience so we decided to eat at, I am embarrassed to say, McDonalds!!! We want to go back to the hot pot place with one of our Chinese friends so we get the experience right.

Okay. I have to go we are being picked up to go to the airport in 25 minutes. Much love. Jenn and Brent. PS. Sorry for all the typos…Don’t have time to proofread.

This city, which I can’t remember the name, is different than Beijing. Of course this city has crazy drivers, (and I mean CRAZY by American standards), constant sound of honking horns, people everywhere, large boulevards, lots of shops but if Beijing were a 4-star city this is a 2-star city. Everything is a little dingier. The cabs are older. The streets are dirtier. The air smells a little more like urine. And it’s obvious that they haven’t seen very many foreigners (this has nothing to do with the 2-star rating).

Since we got on the bus at the airport people have been starring and whispering. Our guide/friend who is American but speaks Chinese says it’s really funny to hear what people are saying. They say thinks like, “Look at the foreigners,” or when we came out of the home we were visiting a little boys said, “Here they come. Here they come.” I have decided that it would stink to be a celebrity and have people watch every move you make.

We went to a restaurant for lunch yesterday and everyone in that restaurant was looking and when the waitress set up our chopsticks a large table of men next to us found that quite interesting. I teased Brent, “Look everyone we can even use chopsticks!” The meal was yummy. One of the dishes looked and had the texture of slugs. I was told it was eggplant and it was actually really tasty!! Another thought I have been having about being stared at constantly, is that I wondered if they think that I am like many of the American women portrayed in movies and it really sort of makes me mad. Not at the Chinese but at Hollywood for possibly ruining white women’s reputations around the world. This is something I have heard about or been warned about when traveling abroad in the past. And speaking of white women, that is what is used for over half of Chinese advertisements. And if it’s not a white woman it’s an Asian woman who has Caucasian characteristics. It’s really sort of sad because I have seen many many beautiful Chinese who don’t look Caucasian at all. Okay sorry about my rant-y tangent. I do want to say one more thing about the restaurant that I thought was pretty funny. On our way out I looked over at a table and an older man who must have gotten hot just pulled off his shirt while eating with his family. I guess the “No Shirts, No Shoes, No Service” rule doesn’t apply here in China because we walked past another restaurant last night and saw the same thing.

Here in this city we are staying at a sort of apartment sort of hotel kind of place. It is very bizarre. We had a hard time finding it. We walked into the building at the address our friend/guide was given and it was a small lobby like what you find in business buildings not hotels. We were told to go up to the 4^th floor where our contact/new friend would meet us. She met us and we were led to our rooms, which are very nice and strange at the same time. We have two large rooms in our “hotel” suite. In one room there are two modern love seats, a coffee table, a sanitary cabinet (don’t ask) filled with tea cups, a huge thermos filled with hot water and a ridiculously large executive desk which is totally bare. There is not phone or internet access, (aside for the wireless that Brent was able to log onto yesterday). There are not any little bars of soap or stationary with the name of a hotel on them anywhere. In our other room there are two full size beds pushed together, another sanitary cabinet filled with tea cups and tissue, one night stand, a large Renaissance type painting in a huge gold frame, and a two and a half foot tall, covered in plastic wrap, white southern belle doll in a bright pink dress. Very strange. Our bathroom is a huge room with a tiny shower and sink, one large towel and two hot (now cold) wet towels. These are not the only strange things about this place. We don’t get room keys. A girl waits in the hall and she unlocks our doors when we come back. We were told not to tell anyone where we were staying. I just laughed because I couldn’t tell anyone if I wanted to because I haven’t seen a sign or logo anywhere. And even if there were, I couldn’t read it. Everything here is so secretive (one of the reasons I don’t use names in our blog posts). There is a high alert right now for Christians being watched by the government so we have to be extra careful not for our sake but for others.

After lunch I decided to go walk a bit by myself down the street while Brent did some stuff on the computer. I found a shopping mall and wandered around for a bit. Not much to say about that except that I was stared at the entire time.

That evening we went to the family’s home. I am not going to be able to put this experience into words very well. It was a huge contrast to the home we visited in Beijing. Brent, our guide/friend, our contact, her daughter (who by the way is the sweetest most energetic little girl!) and me piled into a dingy little cab and took off down the large boulevard. After a bit we turned off onto a side street where the road was dirt and covered in potholes. There were people everywhere hanging outside shops and on apartment steps. Children running every which way. Everyone starred. We passed an enormous pile of garbage just pushed off to the side of the street. Our car stopped and we got out and went up the steps of the family’s apartment. There were two tiny dark rooms and a tiny bathroom. In one, a faucet with a bowl, a small counter with an ancient looking hot plate, a small child’s table, a hard twin sized bed used as a couch. In the other there was a bed, a shelf, and a small TV. The floor was concrete. There were two small dirty windows and one light bulb that hung from the middle of the room on a cord. The plumbing was exposed and the once white walls were cracked, chipping and gray with filth. Their few belongings hung in plastic bags nailed to the walls. I saw one pan, one knife, and two ladles hanging from nails above the counter. Three children live here with their parents. This is and is not poverty. On one hand we live like queens and kings having such luxuries of the rich like Lysol sanitizing wipes or iPods. On the other had, they did have running water, a bathroom, electricity, and even a TV, “luxuries” that much of the world does not have. Regardless, I am humbled and overwhelmed with thoughts and emotions right now. I have seen severe poverty in India, Mexico, Russia and many other places but I have always been pretty detached. Being in their home and interacting with them affected me differently. And the two boys were just a few years older than Nathanael and Noah. I think of all the things I want to do to help them. I want to pull out all the money in my pocket and give it to them. I want to go stock their rooms with food and clothing. I want to take them out to a nice dinner. I want to paint their apartment with fresh paint and give them new furniture. But then there is their pride and their dignity. I don’t want to be the rich American coming into town trying to save the world, trying to buy what can’t be bought and make myself feel good with my charity. And yet…

Despite their meager circumstances I sensed joy. The children read from their Bible with reverence and interest. They asked why people speak different languages and listened intently when our contact read to them the story of Babel. Their mother smiled with sincerity at us and while watching her children. I realized that we may be kings and queens of this life but they will be in the next life. Or as Brent put it their treasures are in heaven. But what about those who live in similar or worse circumstances and don’t know the Truth? Questions flood my mind…the sort of questions I don’t like to think about. The sort of questions that I don’t want to explore in a blog.

When we were done we took pictures with them and of their family. (We went to a Kodak express store and got copies to give to them.) We gave them the gifts of appreciation we brought. We also arranged a time to meet them in a park away from their neighborhood to get some more b-roll. Then we left and we had to walk down the dirt roads through the crowed and lively neighborhood back to the boulevard to catch a taxi. At first I was nervous because everyone was staring and I know that all the equipment Brent and I carried costs more than what some most of these people would make in many years. But our guide/friend said while this may look like a slum to us it is just Chinese families living life and we were totally safe.

That evening we went to a Chinese version of a super wal-mart to get a soccer ball and then to a Korean BBQ place. Yum.

Thank you so much for your prayers. I sense the Holy Spirit guiding us and comforting us as we are strangers in a strange land. Please continue to pray for direction and for the documentary. Tomorrow we are shooting in a S.S. class. This is an honor to get to do this. Our guide/friend says it’s not typical to be invited into the Chinese home churches. Please pray for this visit. Please pray for emotional and physical strength. I had a hard time not crying while visiting the family yesterday and it is very likely the circumstances of those we visit will get worse in India and Africa. Please pray for the families we have met and the ones we will meet. Please pray for our continued safety. Please pray for our health, so far everything has been great…no serious sickness. Yesterday at the family’s home they offered us watermelon and we tried to refuse but that is very difficult in a country where hospitality is so highly regarded so we each had a small piece. Remember there was one knife, one cutting surface and no sanitizer. I think that is enough prayer request for now. We can’t thank you enough.

Much love

Jenn and Brent

Rather than hire a random driver to get us there, our contact in the city got some of her friends from the church to drive. The vehicle was a “well worn” mini mini-van. There are no seatbelts and it smelled slightly like urine. No biggie, we are in a developing world and those sort of things are common. Once on the freeway we were driving along quite speedily, a bit nervous with the speed but not enough to keep us from enjoying the scenery. Then we ran into road construction and what had been a 6-lane highway divided by a median had been reduced to a 3 lane highway with no median. In those 3 lanes was a lot of traffic, 80% of that traffic being large semi-trucks along with a variety of small vehicles, bicycles, motorcycles, and carts. The middle lane being always up for grabs by either direction and the road itself was in dire need of repair. Brent and I estimate we were going 70 to 80 mph weaving in and out of the vehicles driving down the middle or even far left lane passing two buses as a time while watching semi-trucks coming from the other direction heading directly toward us. I mention to Brent that we better pray that it doesn’t rain on the way home. Five minutes later (I’m not kidding) it starts to rain. I know this might sound funny but it wasn’t at all. I was truly terrified. I tried not to watch out the windshield, but I became increasingly more afraid and began to panic. I even started to cry something I have never done before because of crazy driving. Even Brent was getting really nervous. He describes it as a crazy driving video games where they are constantly throwing obstacles in your path. I am not exaggerating. Later, talking over the day with our guide/friend, she said he was in her top 2 o3 dangerous drivers ever and she has lived in China for over 9 years and has been to many other foreign countries. At one point, she had asked him to slow down a bit and the driver guys thought is was funny that we were so nervous about the driving (though they did slow down to about 60 miles an hour).

Finally we arrive near the town and we pull off to the side of the road to meet some of their church friends to have lunch. Two men pull up in a black Passat and we go to a restaurant. The waitress sits down stained tableware and the men begin to order. They start to bring all of these drinks including beer to the table. Beer is offered to all of the men but not the women at the table. I am thinking you got to be kidding me and starting to get really irritated. We just got out of the car with the world’s worst driver and he is going to have a beer??? Our guide/friend asks him not to drink and he says okay but continues to do so until she asks again. Our food comes and we start to eat. I am hot, badly shaken, and slightly angry about the drive and then the slurping. If you know me really well, you know I have issues with chewing noises. Now I am surrounded by four men who are slurping and slapping noodles the way Jabba the Hut eats frogs in Return to the Jedi. And the language is starting to get to me. I am sick of not understanding anything. To distract myself from the eating noises and foreign language I drink a lot of tea because it was really tasty.

Finally we leave the restaurant and go to the city. The city itself is amazingly beautiful. And the weather was perfect. I’m trying hard to enjoy the beautiful city but I am so shaken by the ride that I am having a really hard time. I keep mentioning to Brent I want to get a taxi and take it back. I mention that to our guide/friend and she says that’s a possibility but it’s a touchy situation because the drivers are “brothers” and the other “brothers” bought us our food and tickets to the city. So we agree to ride back with them as long as they slow down and we leave at 5:30 so we don’t have to drive in the dark.

The day moves on and it’s getting close to 5:30. We remind our guide/friend that we want to leave before dark. Nobody but us three, seems to want to leave. I am sensing resistance. There is a lot of talk that we don’t understand between our guide/friend and the guy who drives the black Passat. Finally we get near our cars to go and now the guy in the black Passat tries to get Brent to ride with him. Why would he do that? We are ready to go back to the city where we are staying. Brent gets into the van then the black Passat guy grabs my arm and tries to get me to ride in their car. I’m thinking, “Are you crazy?” In fact, I look at him and say, “I want to be with my husband.” Things are just weird, we keep asking our guide/friend what is going on and she doesn’t even know herself. They keep saying something about picking up someone’s son. I am assuming it’s the son of the guy in the black Passat since he seems to be controlling everything we’re doing there. We drive into the modern part of the city outside the walls and park in front of a store. They try to get us out of the car, but Brent is putting his foot down and asking them to take us home. Frustrations on both ends are running high. Our contact keeps saying something about 15 minutes and a son. I don’t understand what the son of the man driving the black Passat has to do with our group in the mini mini-van. Brent starts saying we are happy to go get a taxi and he can spend all the time he wants with his son. That really upsets our contact, it would be a cultural offense or something since they drove us out there…never mind we paid market price to rent the car. Our guide/friend is trying to translate and help each side understand what is going on. I am sensing her frustration at the entire situation. We pull away from the store and drive out of town. We turn onto some barren road, insanely bumpy, dirt road and start to drive toward a group of mud brick houses. I turn to our guide/translator/friend and ask what is going on. She says she doesn’t know and that if at this point she asks them to turn around so we can go get a taxi, she thinks it will blow up. Then I am hit with deep sense of vulnerability. I look at the barren fields. I look at the mud brick houses. I look at the poor people wandering by. I think of how much our camera is. I think of all the money we have in our passport pouches. We don’t know the language and no one but our guide knows ours. We are in the middle of nowhere in China. My mind races and I think why are they bringing us all the way out here when we told them we want to go back to our hotel?? I pray and try to fight against the fear. We pull into the mud brick village and stop. A young boy, the son, gets into the mini mini-van. We turn around. Relief. My fears subside a bit. We get onto a modern freeway and head home. Odd that we did not take this modern toll road on the way there.

We get home safely in half the time it took us to get there and talk about they day with our guide/friend. As it turns out most of it was just a communication breakdown. There were two main problems. One, it was never made clear to us whose son we were picking up. We wanted to get on the road by a certain time and didn’t understand why we had to wait for who we thought, was the son of the guy it the black Passat. Had we been told it was the son of one of the driver’s it would have been different. Two, the Chinese just couldn’t understand our idea of time. They just couldn’t understand why we needed to get on the road before 5:30. As it turned out, everything was explained and was fine.

There is no need for any worrying but please do pray. Pray against spiritual attacks. I am missing home and my boys like crazy. I got sick this evening… probably from the food at the dirty restaurant. Please pray that we don’t have any more cancellations and that we get all the shots that we need. Tomorrow night we are getting on an overnight train back to Beijing. Please pray for safe travel.

Thank you for reading and thank you for your prayers.

Love and Blessings

Jenn & Brent

Yesterday was the highlight of our time here. We were invited to visit and film a house church sunday school, the same sunday school that the two boys who’s home we visited two days before attend. This was a real honor. Our guide, who has been working with Christians in China has not had the opportunity to visit such a group in the nine years she has been here.

The classroom was a small 15 x 15 foot room that is at a separate location from where the adults meet. There were large Biblical decorations on the walls, small folding children’s chairs and two small tables. Children of all ages began to file in until every seat was full. The teaching was animated and the children were completely engaged. I was amazed to see how effective the teaching was for such a wide age range. After the teaching, the children gathered around the two tables to color. This is a special activity for them as most of the children don’t have coloring pages & crayons at home and Chinese school is rigorous void of activities like coloring or playing. After coloring time they played a Bible memory game that had been adapted from the GL curriculum. When it was time to go out & play the children bursted out of the classroom an ran down the alleyway to a large cement pavilion where they began to play some games. We had purchased a soccer ball the day before to give to the church so we were excited to bring that out. The children were so excited to kick the ball around the pavilion, they really wore me out as I followed them around with the camera! After church we went to lunch with some of the leaders of the local house church community. They were very warm and gracious, wanting to hear about how the Lord was moving in our hearts. They were also very interested in having me bring a message to their church that afternoon, which I had to decline as there was still a bit of filming left to do there before our departure, not to mention I’ve never preached a sermon in my life… Then they asked if Jenn could do it (at least half of the church leadership here is women). They are very persistent with their hospitality. I’ve been told we may want to prepare something for our next two stops. That afternoon we went to a park in the center of town with a large pond and lots of fun play-things. As we walked around filming b-roll we became the center of attention. Foreigners such as us just are not very common in non-tourist areas in this part of China, so I guess we were sort of a spectacle.

That night we took the night-train back to Beijing, which was actually quite pleasant. Jenn woke up early and enjoyed catching a glimpse of the countryside through the train windows: small villages tucked away in the hills looking like a vision from a former era.

Today we enjoyed taking a tourist day which was a nice break after being so engaged in the work (and everything else) for the past couple days. We visited Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City and did a bit of shopping at the Silk Market.

We want to thank everyone for your prayers. Jenn and I have recovered from our stomach illnesses, our anxiety over the communication breakdown has subsided and we’re looking forward to the next leg of our journey. Please pray for our time with the children and those around them and for continued guidance and vision for the project.

Love

Brent & Jenn