Busting out of the box

(Baking tiny loaves of apple bread with my student).


(With our former teammate, Shannon, who visited us from America. Apparently it was white sweater day).


(Shannon and her cool moves).


(With Shannon and some of her family).

Happy Palm Sunday!

It is a warm, balmy Sunday afternoon. This is the first moment I've been able to sit and breath for a long time. It has been a very blessed, but long week and weekend! Classes, meeting with students, activities, and visitors from afar have defined my week. I guess that's how it should be! But I'm not sure where the month of March has gone.

I have also been speaking more Chinese than usual, which is also good but tiring. For example, I talked to a student in Chinese on the bus yesterday for an entire 30 minutes. I have finally reached a point where I can have basic conversations. Although they aren't anything too fantastic, it's much better than before.

The week was punctuated with strange little events or conversations. On Friday morning I was walking through the front gate of new campus when I saw a small crowd of people watching something going on. As I got closer, I heard the most awful, heart-wrenching wailing.

I slowly walked past three women collapsed in grief. One woman in her 40s sat sprawled on the sidewalk, clutching a large funeral picture of a boy wrapped in black ribbon. He was probably her son and had been a student at our university. A much older woman, perhaps the grandmother, was lying on her side on the dirty pavement, with the same picture propped against her. Yet another woman, maybe an aunt, also held a picture of the boy and sat on a ledge.

All three were screaming, crying, and shouting things in Chinese. I've never witnessed such intense mourning. My heart just ached at their seemingly bottomless sorrow and hopelessness. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end because of the shrill, desperate cries.

With a heavy heart, I climbed the five flights of stairs to our office. When I got upstairs I looked out the window to see them, and they had vanished! Later I heard that they were the relatives of a boy who had committed suicide in the lake at school last year. They were angry at the college and decided to come to campus themselves. A student told me that "of course, the police quickly took them away." Scenes like that are rare and potentially explosive in China. In addition to the school "losing face," such anger and unbridled emotion is apparently harmful to social harmony and stability.

Despite that scene weighing on me, I enjoyed great conversations with students and friends, such as one of my Chinese sisters. She is really blossoming into a courageous and spiritually strong person. In their required politics/propaganda class, the students must review the basic tenets of Marxism and the party line, etc. They are a bit weary of it, since they've been absorbing it since primary school, but some students, such as my friend, are ready to have their own perspectives and opinions.

Last week in class the teacher told the class how the people from a certain province and minority are killers and thieves and can't be trusted. The teacher will say points like that, but won't let them discuss it or share their opinion. However, my friend was upset about this, and stood up to respectfully refute the teacher's statement.

It isn't very common for Chinese students to question or contradict the teacher. The class of over 100 students went dead quiet as my friend said she disagreed and why. The teacher was a bit taken aback. Now my friend is worried about her grade in that class, because of what happened. But she said that she would feel worse if she hadn't seen anything. Now some students think she is crazy. Others think she is so brave, and some students have told me that.

As for me, I'm just in awe when people try to push the envelope just a bit, and are trying to climb out of the "box" one step at a time. It brings me hope that change is coming in China, and that He is changing hearts and minds through brothers and sisters who are pursuing truth, and not mediocrity.