Week 6

Church

Last Sunday the group attended and sang a hymn at a Protestant church (one of two) in Chengdu. The two churches include a total of about 1,500 members, though this doesn't account for the many other Christians who gather at "house churches" or "meeting points" around the city. The total number of Christians in China today is around 20 million, in a land of 1.2 billion people. Following the service we ate dim sum-style with several dignitaries from church and the larger Christian community.

• Following the service, Liz and Steve played with a young girl on the steps outside the sanctuary.
• Landon, Kent, Ryan and Matt chat outside the church while waiting for lunch.
• Rachel met a high school girl who was interested in pursuing a friendship, so the two exchanged phone numbers with plans to get together again.
  

Our host at the worship service was Peter Yuan (Yuan Shi Guo), a recent graduate of Eastern Mennonite Seminary. Peter knew Ben from the three years he spent in Harrisonburg, where Ben's family and Peter's participated in the same house church. Following the service and dinner, Peter talked with the group about Christianity's history and present reality in China. He assured the group that 1) there are plenty of Bibles in China, with millions printed in the country each year; 2) Christians have complete freedom to gather for worship in China. This Sunday Peter and Grace, their son David and Grace's mother hosted Ben and the Graber Millers for an excellent meal prepared by Grace and her mother.

English classes

Most SSTers are teaching their students some English folk songs. Two weeks ago Sasha and Martha taught their classes "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," and here they are demonstrating the created-on-the-spot motions for "Oh, When the Saints." They teach every Tuesday and Wednesday evening at a different Sichuan Normal campus a half-hour across Chengdu.

Steve shows one of his English classes the Goshen College and China SST webpages while co-teacher Landon looks on. The class seemed pleased to see the sites. Later that afternoon Steve and Landon had their students (tourism majors) take them on tours of the campus so they could practice their English vocabularies and explanation skills.

Martha, Ruth, Liz, Kate, Sophie and Landon listen as their art tutor and Jenny, our assistant and sometimes-interpreter, help them understand the techniques of traditional Chinese painting. All students are being tutored in some area in addition to their regular group lectures and classes. In the lobby of the third floor of the foreign students' building, where the group lives (except for Landon, who lives on the fourth floor), Kate is working on a painting in preparation for her next tutoring session. The lobby space also is used for spontaneous Monopoly games and for occasional late-night group gatherings.

Jessica is shown enjoying dinner out with Sasha (taking the photo) and friend Yuan Qionglan, a medical doctor who specializes in Chinese traditional medicine. Sasha initially met Qionglan on the street outside of Sichuan Normal, and the two struck up a conversation. Qionglan took Jessica and Sasha on a tour of the university from which she graduated, and is informally tutoring the pair in traditional Chinese medicine. Next week we'll have a group lecture on the topic, and learn-by-experience the practice of therapeutic massage.

Our two resident Canadians celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving in style by preparing canard a l'orange (orange duck), baked potatoes, green beans, and dessert. China Education Exchange teachers Mary and Ray Kratz generously loaned their equipped kitchen to Ruth and Sasha so they could prepare the candlelit meal for their friends Tang Ting and Aaron.

Culture shock? Who's experiencing culture shock? Actually, Martha thinks she looks like a panda in this pose, and the group frequently -- and graciously -- humors her by agreeing.

Saturday's countryside visits and other weekend traveling completed another week of service (English teaching), learning (Mandarin classes, cultural lectures, tutoring), and relationship building at Sichuan Normal University. Daron and Jessica, Martha and Ben, Kate and Liz, and Sophie all went out in pairs or alone to the rural homes of their student hosts' families. Some Saturday trips included as much as five hours of traveling, including walking down muddy roads for several kilometers. The Graber Millers also spent the day at a country teahouse with friends Meng, a 1996 Goshen College exchange scholar, and her son Wang Shu, as well as other relatives. The trips have been so successful that two pairs have made arrangements to return to their hosts' homes in November to work on their farms for a weekend. In the photo, Kent relaxes with an 80-year-old blind man who was taken in by his host family.

Dormitory living

This week's new SST component -- in addition to the all-university basketball tournament, which begins Tuesday and includes a Goshen team -- is moving into the dorms with Chinese students. At 5 p.m. Monday, (4 a.m. Monday back in Goshen) students moved their belongings into their new spaces for a week of living with their Chinese peers.

The Students are placed, one per room, in two different dorms on campus, living alongside four to seven roommates in quarters about the size of a two-person room at Goshen College. We're hoping to begin new friendships and deepen existing ones, as well as learn something about the rhythms of life for Chinese University students. Sophie is shown with two of her four roommates. Most of the SST women are living with tourism majors, and some history majors. All of the men are living with law students in a dorm several hundred yards from the Women's dorm. Also: Nick with roommates.