Day 118 - Christmas Eve in China

Day 118 – Christmas Eve in China

The day started off well with me doing finals for my classes.  There is just something about these students that brightens your day.  Several wished me, “Merry Christmas” and I was even given some gifts – Chocolate!  Several brought me cards to enjoy with a hand written note.  My second class is a small class of only thirty students and I can do their interviews in just three hours, so I decided to do some fun things with Christmas today.  We did Christmas Bingo and a Christmas Jeopardy game.  I had candy and prizes and it was all fun.

We left for Stan and Nancy Pace’s place at three so we could stop at RT Mart on the way there and pick up something to wrap our White Elephant gifts for the Foreign Teachers’ Christmas Dinner tomorrow.  Then we went on to Pace’s and had supper with them.  We met Eva on the old campus and she gave the Pace’s and us a ride to a bus stop near the Jingsi Lu Christian Church so we could sing there tonight with the BYU teachers.  Traffic was pretty bad, so it took quite a long time.  We were glad that we started as early as we did.

When we arrived at the church, they ushered us to seats in the front.  We were right behind the Government Officials who attend for the first song and then left, they had done their duty.  The rest of the program was nice, all in Chinese, but we had Eva there to help interpret for us when we asked.  When the performers just before us were about half way done, they wanted us to go next to the stage and get ready to go on.  We sang the version of “Away in a Manger” from the Children’s Song book and I think they thought it was nice, but started clapping after we finished the second verse.  Then we sang, “Joy to the World.”  We were pretty “spirited” as we sang it and soon we had the audience clapping along while we sang.  LOTS of pictures were being taken!  It was fun and we had some fun with some of the small children that were around us.  One little girl came back and sat with us for the last song. 

The first choir at the Jingsi Christian Church.

The Children's Choir.  They did a good job and looked like they had fun doing it.

This is us... the Mormon not-Tabernacle Choir.

The fan dance while a song about Christ played.  I didn't recognize the song, but Eva said that it was a song about Christ.  It was a rather pretty song but I don't think the fans had any significance.  At times, they looked like flowers blooming.

When it was over, we all caught buses for home.  The bus that the Pace’s and we were on almost died on the way home.  I just kept praying that it just had to hold together until we all got to our stop.  It did, thank goodness.  Now we will see what Christmas day has in store in China.