A Day Redeemed

On Saturday I woke up feeling inexplicably tired and annoyed. How can I wake up and feel annoyed? I don't know, but I sure did. Everything was annoying--my oatmeal even annoyed me while I was cooking it.

After breakfast I realized I couldn't continue the day this way. So before my day could progress any further, I made sure to spend some quality time with the Father. I just really didn't want to spend the weekend feeling this way.

I didn't feel better immediately, but a couple girls came over for our Word study at 10 a.m. I willed myself to be attentive and interested and caring. Then I think the Father did the rest, because my irritation and dark mood eventually melted away.

After our study we went out the back gate to eat noodles together. We had a great time slurping hot soup in the freezing restaurant while sitting on little peg stools.

Then in the afternoon I diligently worked on Christmas lesson plans for two hours. After that, three of Jodi's students (my old students), Sweet, John, and Johnson came over to our apartment from new campus. Together we rode bicycles a little ways away to a deaf kindergarten.

We played games and just held the most precious little Chinese children. My Chinese is actually improving, but it didn't really matter because they couldn't hear us. So we just hugged them and played with them. There was one little boy who attached himself to me. He held me and stroked my hands with his little wind-chapped hands, coughing on me the whole time.

I think the Father has a great sense of humor. He knows that my worst nightmare in China is getting sick. I'm honestly more sick than I am healthy. I'm finally recovering from a cold I've had the past two weeks, and he sends me this sweet, but very sick and contagious little boy to crawl all over me. :)

Then at night we had another open house with Jodi's students. Twenty girls came over to play games and eat snacks. Two disabled girls who were my students last year even made the long trek to our apartment for this special occasion. They wouldn't miss it for the world.

So this weekend has been very blessed. The day was redeemed even better than I could have hoped. I'm leaving you with a few pictures of us at the little kindergarten.