At the end of a week of vacation...

Sunday.  Day of rest.  Day of reflection, as in, what did we do this past week?

First off, I am SO grateful our internet has been fixed!!!  All week long it was off and on--interrupting

phone calls, causing the VPN to stop working so we were left open on a forbidden

site like Facebook or Blogger, or just making it impossible to even do email.  It was SO frustrating.

But on Saturday, it got fixed.  YEAH!

So, there was no school or work all week, because it was National Day holiday--technically, that's on October 1st, but somehow it transforms into a whole week of vacation.  But not really.

The Chinese had to go back to work on Saturday, (that's how our internet got fixed!) 

and many weren't at church today because they

had work or school in order to make up 2 of the days of "vacation".  

At first I thought it was a weird system, then I realized it allows people a group of days to do things

they otherwise wouldn't have enough time off for. 

 And our ayi came to work on Saturday so she finally got to meet Kevin and the girls.  

(We said she didn't have to come today).

It has been kind of odd for the girls--their beds got made and their clothes washed, folded, and set on their dressers without ever seeing the person who was doing it all.

I joked that we have a house-elf and they liked that concept.  And now they have met Dong Mei. 

    

I know we enjoyed our time off!

Our last big activity of the week was on Friday afternoon when the youth and young single 

adults from the branch came out to TEDA by train.

Since we have a nice green space by our apartments,

they played ultimate frisbee, then soccer,

and finished with flying a cool Chinese kite.

 (And that's the hotel we used to stay in--the curvy building.  7th floor).

Then food of course! 

We now know we live in expat ville--

Kevin called Papa John's to order pizza,

and they took the order in English!

(By the way, he has been working diligently on his Chinese and is

getting quite good at it.  He could have done the order in Chinese.)

 Three young people came who were unfamiliar to us, and we found out they are

from the Chinese branch.  (Was this illegal?  Holding a youth activity with them? 

They are all students at one of the universities here.)

The young man (below) to the left of Ellie is from way up north.  When we asked how he

found the Church, since he's from a remote area, he said his sister went to Singapore and was contacted

by missionaries on the street.  She ended up taking the discussions and getting

baptized.  When she went home to her family, one by one they were converted

and baptized.  Jason served a mission in New York City, Mandarin-speaking.  He was so excited to see the picture we have of Kevin and me in front of the Manhattan Temple.

So even in a far-flung part of China, there is a nucleus of Saints. I get chills going down

my back as I think of how the Lord is gathering His people.

 Another of the students is hoping to go to BYU-Hawaii and study opera. 

He got talked into singing a song, and his tenor voice is so clear and pleasing.

The pizza was great, but it's also a good thing I pretended I was Grandma Bailey 

(THE Grandma Bailey) and made some breadsticks.  

I had two panfuls--those are all the pans I had--and every one of those breadsticks disappeared.  

Of course, there was honey butter or jam to go with them.

I sometimes am surprised at how much food a group of young people can put away.

And as with like groups around the world, there was a lot of laughter and energy.

We were glad they were all able to come!