Dearest Children, Grandchildren and Family,
It has been a wonderful Sabbath in Jinan. Right now I am listening to the “Hallelujah
Chorus” from “The Messiah” and missing playing with the SW Symphony and Chorus
and the Hurricane Community Messiah performances. These were always my favorite concerts of the
year. I often held back tears from
rolling down my violin. Truly, Handel
was given this music as a gift to the world testifies that Jesus Christ
lives. At this season of the year, I
give thanks for all of you and for Him.
I know that my Redeemer liveth and that He shall stand at the latter
days upon the earth, King of Kings and Lord of Lords!
I am glad that I’m not too old to learn something new. One of our BYU Idaho boys told me about a
program called freemake.com that allows me to easily download clips from
YouTube and the internet to use in my classes.
It was fun showing the kids about things that I had only been able to
talk to them about in the past, such as a what our robot vacuum, Robbie looks
like and why he is “part of the family.” J Is he Human?
J We also watched a clip about the “Jibo”
robot…definitely worth checking out on YouTube.
Yesterday, Saturday, we enjoyed a one day trip to
Beijing. Thanks to our friend from St.
George, Liz Bowler who invited us, and thanks to Richard for making sure we had
train tickets, we spent a wonderful day with her, the Shaws from Tianjin, and a
teacher from Liz’s school, Carola and her 4 children. It was great being “Grandma and Grandpa” for
a few hours. The children were Emma, age
10, Bryan, age 8, Ian, age 7 and Colin, age 4.
I even told them a Skylighter story.
Our day began with a 1 hour 50 minute ride on a bullet train
from Jinan to Beijing (Richard and Joan used to have to take the overnight
sleeper train to get there). The train
is electric, so it hardly makes any noise and averages about 180 mph. The skies in Beijing, unlike Jinan, were blue
and beautiful. Although it was a little
chilly, we enjoyed the “Dirt Market” with its hundreds of outdoor vendors. We bought several things, including 2
beautiful vases that we will enjoy and hopefully will arrive with safely in Las
Vegas next summer. We then went to a
Christian wood carver’s shop and admired the beautiful carved nativity sets and
Noah’s Arks. There was also a carving of
Lehi’s “The Tree of Life”. There are so
many great artisans in China. It was my
first, but not last trip to Beijing. I
still haven’t seen any of the “big” attractions such as the Great Wall and Tienaman
Square.
We have pretty much finalized our travel schedule for
January and February. It is as follows:
Jan 1-3: Harbin (Ice Castles)
Jan 20-21: Nanjin
Jan 22-25: Suzhou and
Shanghai
Jan 25 -26: Sanya and
Tianya Hao and beach time
Jan 27: Monkey Island
Jan 28: Shenzen
Jan 29: Fly to Hong
Kong
Jan 30, 31, Feb 1: BYU China Teachers Hong Kong Conference
and Temple Session
Feb 1: Fly to Guilin
Feb 2: Boat from Guilin to Yangshao do the Li River
February 3: Fly to Kunming and Lijiang
Feb 5: Fly to Dali
Feb 7: Fly back to Kunming,
Feb 8-15: Vietnam and Cambodia
Feb 16- 25 Las Vegas (USA J)
Feb 25 Back to Jinan
We are excited to come to see Rachel and Rob married and
sealed in the Las Vegas Temple, hopefully on February 21st. We hope to see most of you while we are
there.
We will be teaching Thanksgiving Day, but are planning to
attend a Thanksgiving dinner this Saturday at the main campus Hotel (private
dining room) with about 30 other “foreign” teachers and a few foreign students.
The hotel restaurant is baking our
turkeys and we are all bringing the trimmings.
I haven’t been able to find pies, but we are going to have a feast,
nevertheless and of course, overeat. J What are your plans? We would love to know.
As we count my many blessings this Thanksgiving, we know
where to begin. YOU are at the top….our
families that we love so much. We pray
for you and hope that your life is happy.
I want to have a more grateful heart, especially this time of year. Richard and I were looking at our ancestry
and I am a direct descendant of William Brewster and several of the Pilgrim
colonists. Richard’s ggg+ uncle who
wrote a book that charted New England and his ggg+ grandfather was a resident in
Plymouth Colony. It is certain that
William Brewster knew Richard’s uncle. I
don’t know about Mike and Joan’s connections, but they might have been
acquainted.
We love you sooo much!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Love,
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