A barrage of thoughts...

I'm sorry for the lack of blogging lately. Some errors with my email along with a busy time of the year has manifest itself in the lack of bloggings.  To catch you up on some of my life, I have a bunch of just random thoughts and ideas and celebrations.

Here's a picture of when my team leader, Dave, left China with cancer. In case you haven't heard, we serve a mighty King, Ruler, and Healer. A week after leaving Bangkok after stopping by China, he arrived in Columbus at one of the best cancer treatment hospitals in America. After a few hours of running tests, the doctor came to say, "whatever they found in Bangkok....isn't there anymore. All your levels are fine." They did more tests and a biopsy and he went back a few days later to get more of the same results - HEALED!

SURPRISE! FINALS TIME!

Finals shouldn't be a surprise...especially to the teacher, but sometimes they are. This year they were. It didn't seems like it was the end of the semester (for the rest of the school it isn't, our contract runs out a month earlier - so we can go home for some summer.) I wasn't done teaching. I was actually kind of getting into the groove and it felt weird to try to downshift towards the end of the semester. I wasn't ready for it to be over. "But you're coming back next year" people told me. True, but I'd still like closure on this year. I'll have different students, a different team, different office-mates, a lot of different things that I'd just like to end well and have closure on here. We've been giving finals for the last week and a half. We have half a week of finals left then one more week of teaching classes before we leave campus. I've been asking for closure and for Him to help me shift mental gears from China to America. I have tried to not let myself think about America too much, but now it's time to. I'm trying to process all the stories and all that's happened and all that I've learned and try to put it into words...and then try to simplify those words down into a smaller amount than 72 consecutive hours.

WORDS?

One of my new teammates (Danielle) taught in Harbin last year, then went home for a year (which turned out to be only a semester) and then joined our team this semester when Tom had to go home. She was explaining some common things that will happen when you go back to the States. One of them is that you forget how to make small talk. I laughed because I thought - that's all that we seem to do is make small talk with students and such...but then I learned it was true. Sunday, at our fellowship we met a college group of Canadians who are studying in Changchun for a few weeks and getting a vision of what things are like. They're all TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) majors. Later that day we hung out with them and I focused really hard on not speaking Chinglish and then trying to remember what it's like to communicate with foreigners who don't live in the same vicinity that you do. We made it through but it was much more of a struggle than I anticipated. I'll post up Danielle's full list of oddities soon. It's pretty interesting.

LEGIT 5-D MOVIE

This weekend Grammar wanted to go see Kung Fu Panda 2 in the 3-D IMAX movie that is in Changchun. But watching Kung Fu Panda in China with Chinese people makes it so much more authentic than at home. Especially when it was in an IMAX 3-D movie theater. It took it from IMAX 3-D to CHINA 5-D. I told one teammate afterwards that I now know I've been living in China long enough when while watching the movie I saw a really cool scene and I reached to get my camera to take a picture to show it to my family...before I remembered it was a movie. I was thinking "man, that's such a cool shot. I gotta get that!" then leaned forward to get my camera to see the sea of theater chairs in front of me which brought me back to reality of... oh yeah, it's a movie. I'm not sure what exactly I thought of the movie because we only saw the last 45min/hour of it. Grammar checked the show times (which were all day) but when we got there all of the English versions were sold out or had already been shown. (After trying to watch "Inception" in the movie theaters all in Chinese without subtitles - the idea of watching another western movie in Chinese didn't peak my interest.) We found one movie that had started "20 min ago" so we figured after the previews and such we would only have missed like maybe 5 min or so. Turns out "20 min" is not the same "20 min" we think of and we walked in just about the middle of the movie. Oh well, the second half was good.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I have so many more stories to tell you about conversations with students, other foreign teachers (Italty, England, Spain), the art and culture festival, really good text messages, interesting Chinglish happenings, and lessons I've been learning. But I will keep this one short. Please Please Please lift us up. We can tangibly feel the difference when you do. I feel as if sometimes after a celebration report, people stop lifting us up and things get rocky here. So please continue to lift us up for strength and energy. To finish our work easily and well. To not rush conversations but to be intentional still until the end. With wisdom and discernment about how to leave our final remarks and conversations. Ask especially for an increase of the Sprites work in our hearts and in theirs as we leave and part ways temporarily or for good. We also ask for protection from the darkness, lies, and comfortability that wants to jump in and fill the place where community, truth, and light have been. We reject and cast that out in His Mighty Name: the darkness of oppression, the darkness of depression, the darkness of lies, of selfishness, of "you'll never be good enough," of you're not loved, of you're not of any worth, of comfortability, the darkness of money will solve problems, the darkness of very misguided lives, the darkness that clouds actual paths of life and only shows a path that is making money, honoring family, marriage, then having kids to reproduce the cycle. We reject this darkness and all the other plans of how darkness tries to work! We proclaim that this campus is HIS! We proclaim these people are HIS! We proclaim that LIGHT comes into the darkness and darkness HAS NOT, CANNOT, and WILL NOT overcome it! We ask for the filling of this place with Light, Truth, Love, and especially with the One who brings it all and is it all. We ask for protection over this place and these people and for His Sprite to reign and rule even as we are physically not present (not that we were doing anything). That He would reign and fill this place through His people here and that Light would continue to permeate through souls. (It's cool if things change when we leave and people will say, "oh what's different?" but ultimately that is about us and I want to be more concerned with them and their safety rather than what people might think about me.) Let His protection and Love flow in greater measures and greater Truth be made evident for the fame of His Name!

Thank you so so so so much for your love and support and those Thoughts. I'm excited to get to see, share some, talk with, catch up with you more when I get home.

With Love, Peace, and some.... more Love and love, (and Light)
Abram