Day 88 - My Twenty New Children!

Day 88

We woke up to a very rainy morning.  We talked with Seth and Carolyn for a little bit before we left for Church.  We were debating whether to take a taxi or walk to the bus, but it was really wet and a taxi came by just as we walked out the South gate of the campus, so we took that.  Much nicer!

We had four visitors from BYU Psychology Department that are here in Ji’nan for a conference, and it was great to visit with them.  One is a Dr. Peter Chan, who is Chinese, but now works at BYU.  He was very interested in the Skype Church experience.  They were amazed, as we have been, how strong you can feel the Spirit there.  The dinner afterward was a wonderful affair with the extra visitors and lots, and lots of good food again.  Kathy Gao’s husband, Simon came to eat dinner with us also.  It was all so much fun!

We took the bus home because the rain had let up some.  The walk from the bus stop to campus wasn’t bad.  We had been contacted by the leader of the group of students that we had met a few weeks ago at the Hanlin Hotel after Church yesterday and they wanted to come to our place and cook some Chinese food for us and then we could make something American for them. 

We opened the door at about 5 p.m. for them.  They started coming in and kept coming and coming and coming!  In our little place, we had over 20 young adults here!  It was wall to wall!  Then we tried to fit about 10 of us in my little kitchen!  Trying to cook when we were almost tripping over each other was fun!  They were all so polite and when they were done, all the dishes had been washed and the tables cleaned off!  They made about 15 dishes including the dumplings!  It was so fun being with them.  We showed them pictures of our home and family.  They love the family! (P.S. family, you now have 20 new siblings, we just adopted them all!)  They wanted to hear the story of David and me getting to know each other and getting engaged.  They all loved the story.  One boy made all the girls think about what they want in a husband, though.  He did ALL the dishes! 

Some of the gang in my tiny kitchen.  Their favorite thing is to hold up the "peace sign."

Preparing the fish for cooking.  These guys just took over, so I stepped out of the room after showing them where things were and they did a great job!

Starting to eat!  So much food and such a tiny table.  They are used to these things and we all made it work.  The guy standing in the back is "Robin", the teacher of this group.  

Everyone that we could fit in the living room.  There were still a few standing behind me and some in the kitchen.

The last three left in the kitchen to cook the dumplings.  

They love to cook the fish with the head on.  It was a good tasting fish.  The cucumbers in the yellow bowl had the spicy sechuan peppers in it, so David and I had to be careful not to eat more than a few bites.  There was no food left over!  Every last bite was gone!  

I made chocolate chip cookies for them (well, we can’t find chocolate chips here in China, but we substitute M&M’s for it and they turn out just great!).  They had to take pictures of it.  They wanted the recipe.  The only problem they had was trying to find an oven.  One of the girls remembered that there is an oven at their school that they can use, so I think they will be making chocolate chip cookies as soon as they find all the ingredients!  I received a hug from EVERY ONE of them before they left!  Such a fun evening!  We all plan to meet again.  This group gets together to practice their English and they are doing so well!  I don’t think I heard more than one or two words of Chinese all evening.  Not that Chinese is bad, but when you want to learn something, you have to practice!!

Unfortunately, we had to tell them that they had to leave by 8 p.m. because we had a Branch Counsel Meeting tonight.  I’m sure if we hadn’t had that, we would have had more songs on the guitar and all of the cookies would be gone!  As it was, most of them had to leave after just one cookie!