CHINA: Day 4

Sunday May 20, 2012

Today was a pretty chill day (relative to what we have been doing).  Church started at 8:30 and we had a pretty long subway ride to get there so we left the hostel really early.  Taking the subway through the crowded, dirty, and loud city of Beijing is definitely a different start to my Sunday than I am used to.  The Beijing branches meet on the fourth floor of a big office building.  That is also a different Sunday experience.  It was good though.  Like they always say, the church is the same anywhere you go….even in an office building in Beijing, China.  Most of the people in the branch are Americans who are in China for one reason or another.  Lots of them are only there for a couple years and then they move back to the states.  It was a pretty good sized branch, but there is definitely a lot of transition going on there all the time.

After church we met with Joe’s really good friend, Edison.  Joe met Edison when he and his family lived in China.  Edison had just joined the church and Joe was asked to take him under his wing.  It was really fun for us to get to talk to him because he has had such a huge role in the church’s growth in China.  He was the first man in China to be ordained to the priesthood, and has done everything he can to bring his friends and family to the gospel without breaking any of China’s rules against that.  I can’t remember the numbers, but it was amazing to hear how much the church has grown in China in the few years that he has been a member.  He told us that people ask him all the time how long he thinks it will be until the church is in China.  He responds with “It’s already here.”  The faith of the few Chinese members here just amazes me.  Being a member of this church in America is so easy.  Once again, I am pretty blessed.

After talking with Edison, we stopped at the Dairy Queen/Fast Food Chinese Restaurant on the first floor of the office building for lunch.  We had to order by pointing at the pictures on the wall without actually knowing what we were asking for because it was all in Chinese.  That was an adventure, and I’m sure the girl working at the cash register just hated us!  My lunch was pretty gross, but I got a milkshake from DQ and that was delicious.  After lunch we took the subway back to the hostel and hung around there for a couple of hours.

Later, we took a reeeaaaally long subway ride out to a more Americanized area on the outskirts of the city to have dinner at the Jones’ house.  Brit Jones and his wife (I can’t remember her name) are SVU alums who now live in Beijing where he works at the embassy.  They helped us plan out and coordinate a lot of our time in Beijing which has been super nice.  For dinner, Brit’s wife taught us how to make joutsa (I don’t know how to spell that).  They are like little dumplings/pot stickers.  That was pretty fun and pretty delicious.  Then a couple of us ended up sitting in the living room listening to Sharlet (Joe’s wife) tell us stories about when they lived in China and how crazy the Chinese government is.  That was super interesting to learn more about.  It reminds me a lot of 1984.  Scary. 

After the loooooong subway ride back, we crashed for the night.  After Kenzy blew our power.  That’s the second time we have done that.  Oops.

Besides all of the government stuff, here is another Chinese culture fact that I learned today: cars with blinking colored lights hanging from the rearview mirror are the ones with murderers/rapists/psychos driving them.  They like to pretend that they are taxis and then they take you out to the middle of nowhere and kill you.  Super scary, but super nice that they mark themselves as creepers so we can know what we are getting ourselves into.  I will be sure to stay away from those ones.