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July 31, 2006: Well, today is the big day. Today is our last Cultural Presentation; an American wedding. We will be going through all the major parts of a wedding the ceremony and the reception afterwards. The nice thing is that we have all already learned how to dance several weeks ago. I will be in charge of the Wedding Ceremony and telling everyone where to go, singing the song during the candle lighting ceremony and preaching the homily.
The homily during our ceremony will be the only opportunity for us to share the message of Jesus Christ with these students. I, needless to
say, was nervous. I felt a lot of weight hanging around my neck but the reality was that I was the one who put it there. I had forgotten that the merits of the Gospel do not rest upon my abilities but
rather in the grace and love of God. Putting our foothold in murky ground like ourselves is always a dangerous business.
I wrote that someday after the wedding you two will be sitting together with your family and opening gifts.
You will open one gift and inside will be a chipped and cracked teapot. It won’t be something you will want so you will go to the store it came from and try to return it. One of the attendants will say, “I remember this teapot. Yeah, it was sitting over there on the clearance rack and your uncle picked it up and said, ‘This will be perfect.’” You see that is what the Lord has given you today. A broken cracked and chipped individual, someone who isn’t perfect just as you are far from perfect.
Here today you are taking a vow before God and these witnesses that even though things may get tough, even though love may change, we have taken a vow to love
one another.
Marriage is difficult and takes hard work and in the face of this hard work you might want to run and hide but don’t despair. You have a champion in Jesus. Jesus has come and died and lived a perfect life so that you didn’t have to and now when things are difficult you can rely upon the Holy Spirit within you given in your baptism. You were baptized into Christ and in that death and resurrection is the strength to forgive one another. Not a forgiveness that remembers but rather a forgiveness that forgets what came before and starts anew every day. As Christ as your example you will be able to forgive one another because any marriage is held together with the words, “I am sorry” and “You are forgiven.” Just as we were forgiven for our lack of perfection by Christ, so will we forgive each other.
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August 1, 2006: Well today was a typical morning and class was typical too. We have started our discussion of flood myth across many cultures. The amazing thing that I learned from this section was that there is a Chinese Myth about a man named Nuwa who was saved from a worldwide flood by staying inside a hollow log. There are many connections between the Chinese people and the ancient Jewish people of the Old Testament. In fact in early Chinese history there was a practice of sacrificing animals for the forgiveness of sins. We spent a long time then discussing the similarities between cultures and their myths.
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That night I had the Children over to my place for one last visit. We played UNO all night and when the parents came at 8:30 to take their
kids home some of them refused and asked if they could stay longer. I wish we would have had more time just to goof off with the kids.
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August 2, 2006: Today we changed the format for our Tai Chi class. Instead of doing our normal routine, today we learned how to do all 24 moves to music. It isn’t a strict beat but rather you have a general idea of where you move and what not. It is a lot more fun to do it to music.
In class I read a detailed account today of the Noah flood story from the Old Testament.
We had all kinds of fun pictures to show and the kids really enjoyed it. Today we also had to work on our presentation for the final banquet. We as a class have decided to sin “Camptown Races” and I will be accompanying with Guitar. The kids are quick studies.
That night a few of our translators and a few of our students took us to a real Chinese restaurant. There we ate skewers of fish, beef, pork
and beef sinew…yep they like to eat the Achilles tendon of the cow. I thought it was a lot like chewing on rubber. We also had soup; beef, lamb, pork and lambs stomach soup.
The kids wanted me to try the lamb’s stomach. It was okay. They all laughed when I ate it but I guess they don’t realize that as a farm kid I ate tongue and liver on a somewhat regular basis and we still eat lutefisk. I guess all cultures eat weird stuff from time to time
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August 3, 2006: Today was our last day in class so I planned many games and lots of fun activities. Along with that I also gave each student a gift of “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe,” in Chinese. They each got a postcard of North Dakota and also some incidentals like candy and other stuff. I was kind of sad to see it all end. We practiced our song a lot. The kids memorized it and then we played a bunch of review games until class was over.
Afterwards a bunch of the kids and I went to a more traditional Chinese restaurant away from campus. We needed to ride our bikes to get there
but it was worth it.
We ate rice noodle soup with beef and it was spicy. It was delicious. Along with that we had these “Chinese hamburgers” or so they call them. They are pulled pork over a bun that is much thicker and is virtually unleavened. All of it was good and on the plus side I got to know my students much better.
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August 4, 2006: Today is our last day of classes.
We will have a closing ceremony with our teachers and the staff that we met with at the opening ceremonies. They thanked us for our hard work and hope that we can continue to come and develop our relationships as friends across the pacific.
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After that we had some free time to prepare before our closing banquet with our students. After the banquet, we had our closing program where all the classes
showcased their presentations.
Several of the classes did skits and several of the classes sang songs. Many of the parents were present and afterwards there was a long session of picture taking between us and these new friends we had created. Many of the students wanted my picture even though I did not really know them all that well. I guess we are still strange westerners to them.
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It was nice to be done and that night we played tennis with some of our students and goofed off the rest of the night.
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August 5, 2006: Today was rather melancholy. We began packing for an afternoon departure
for Beijing and the whole process had a real finality to it.
This room had been home for a long time and now I was moving again. As a college student, home is often only home for a short period of time. This, for me, has become quite tedious.
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Regardless we packed up and loaded the vans and we were whisked away to Beijing and the whole time I was left with the realization that I was
indeed very sad about leaving all these new friends I had made. They had quickly become dear parts of my life. In the end this is what I will probably miss the most; these wonderful warm people.
August 6, 2006: Today we went to the International Church in Beijing. It was very nice. They had a very good worship band and on top of that Max Lucado was giving the sermon. It was pretty interesting and I thought properly thought out as to not be too difficult for new Christians. After this we called it an early evening because many of us were tired and just wanted to relax that evening.
Pax,
Ryan A. Drevlow
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