So long, summer

Hope you all had a wonderfully restful Labor Day weekend! My weekend was very restful, but probably too much so. I did get to hang out with lots of different friends. One dear friend said, "Laura, I'm personally glad you're single again so I can see you much more often!"

So I'm getting to hang out with lots of neat folks. Friday after working most of the day I went with my Chinese friend to "Chinese church" at the church I attend. It was a fairly small group of Chinese believers, but the largest gathering of them I have ever seen--in China that many believers meeting together would cause a stir and probably trouble.

Anyway, I immediately felt at home and could even follow some of the worship and the super brief message, which were all in Chinese. At one point the new people were to introduce themselves to the congregation. Usually I get all flustered if I try and speak in Chinese to anyone. But somehow I had the courage in Chinese to introduce myself, that I was a student, that my Chinese is so poor, and that I was glad to meet everyone. And I was intelligible! It kind of all just poured out of me and I automatically made 50 new friends.

After the service we split into Bible study groups. My friend and I joined the English one, which had about 10 Chinese people in it. It was amazing to be sitting in America studying the Bible again with Chinese folks. The strange thing was that we freely met in a building and there were enough Bibles for everyone! There were even some extra Bibles. Unheard of... All in all the evening lasted about 3 hours. Nobody wanted to leave! So I think I will try to attend every Friday.

In other news, it's getting much chillier here. Fall is just around the corner, and that always makes me sad. I love the warm/hot weather and plentiful sunshine. I thrive on sunshine, and I deteriorate in gray, cold weather. I don't think I have enough meat on my bones or good enough blood circulation for the cold. And summer clothes are much cuter than winter ones by a long shot. When I'm old I'll definitely have to move to a tropical climate...

There's not really any rhyme or reason to this post, but even in this new fall season, God remains the same, and there are still many things to look forward to!