Playing Catch up!

Nothing too crazy or exciting to share, but here's the latest anyway :)

Sorry we have been out of touch for the past week. We have finished moving into our new apartment which is AWESOME... pictures soon to come! No internet in the apartment yet, but hopefully in the next week we will be back in business. I am using free internet at the starbucks I frequent to update you all, and to visit my sweet Chinese friends that work here.

Anyway, our is much bigger and in the same community that our school is in. The community is called Ding Tai, which is a HUGE community with a couple thousand people. Almost all of our students, and Grace's classmates live in this community. We are so exciting about this awesome opportunity to connect with these families and invite them into our home and share life with them. Many of our students parents have asked us to come for dinner, and to get together for play dates, so now we will be neighbors to many of these amazing families!

Last friday afternoon the three of us were walking through the courtyard of our new community just as all the kids were walking home from school with their parents. All of a sudden we were swarmed with our students running to us screaming at the top of their lungs "Mr. Jon and Mrs. Jessica"...but coming from cute little Chinese kids it sounds more like "Meeeeesta Jon, and Meeees Jessseeeka." Their parents were coming up to us so excited that we were moving into their neighborhood. Such an awesome welcome to their world. I don't think I've ever felt welcome ANYWHERE like I did that day. You would have though the President just walked through their neighborhood by the way they reacted to Jon. They were climbing on him, hugging him and just ECSTATIC to see him. To say we LOVE these kids doesn't seem to do it justice.

This Sunday I am having dinner with 12 moms of my students. They have all asked me to set up a private English tutoring session for their children one evening a week, and now they want to take me to dinner to talk about it! I am excited to see how this turns out, I already love their kids and can't wait to get to know these moms.

This week as Easter is approaching our school has asked us to include the Easter Story into our curriculum... This is HUGE as this is NOT aloud in here, but these kids are getting to have the seed of Christ planted in them week by week because the owners and directors of our school are all Christians. Today Jon and I tought each of our classes a song about the resurrection of Christ and hope to video tape it on friday once they have down pat! I could have no greater joy than to hear that my children live in the truth. 3 John 4

We are now apart of a "fellowship" here that is all Chinese believers, except for 5 Americans that include us three, my cousin Matt (from Destin), and one of our new American friends named Luke.
Our fellowship will not be holding an Easter service so we plan to spend Easter morning in the homeless park serving bag lunches and drinks and just hanging out with the people.

Okay I guess that about sums it up...

God Bless,

Jessica :)