Introduction to what we have been doing

It’s hard to believe that our first two weeks in China are ending. It has been a time of constant learning, many cultural experiences, new foods, and relationships that we hope to build through our time here. Sense we have arrived we have been meeting the 50+ teachers and their students who are going through english training. Each day we have the opportunity to tutor 6 teachers who hear the gospel though our english lessons. God allows these conversations to go beyond what we could ever do on our own through giving us a place to share our testimonies and life story with our new friends.

Coming here we expected the teachers to be more distant than they are, I expected a language, cultural, and spiritual barrier, to exist when in reality they have already invited us into the UMLC family. Because we are from a culturally different background we are looked at differently by most of the people around us (and we get stared at a lot because of it). This difference gives us a platform to ask questions that no one would normally ask. For example, one of our biggest outreaches is to present them with the prodigal son story in language training and allow the teachers to spend time learning the words and meaning of the sentences. From this point we are able to ask about what meaning they find in the story. Many of the teachers relate it to their father and times when they disobeyed instructions. We are able to take this opportunity and tell about the way that this story impacts us personally and what it was like to give over control of our lives to the loving father, just like the son in the story. This has created many conversations and opportunities to haver deeper discussions and allow the teacher to think beyond what their culture presents.

– Andrea and Ashley