Saturday, September 4, 2010

Our Chinese Students

About a month ago there was an announcement in our church bulletin that host families were needed for junior high students from China. We have previously had Japanese students but never Chinese students. Steve warned the representative that I would be by and please not to let me have more than two. I met her and I left with the information for three, two boys and a girl.

The whole time leading up to them actually being here was really rather confusing. One day I was told I had five, another day I was told I had three, but not the two boys and girl that I thought I had agreed to, but three boys. It was explained to me that three was really against their policy, but........Oh, and by the way...can you take three girls for four days until their host family gets home from vacation? Ummmm....wait a minute!!! I'm only supposed to have two according to your rules, and I'm not supposed to have both genders in the same house, but I can have six? What? Three boys and three girls? Oh my.

I, of course, agreed to host these kids who had no say in where they were being housed. I didn't provide anything fancy, but they did have a bed to lay on. All day that Monday I was like a mad woman cleaning my house, making it acceptable enough to house six people who lived completely on the other side of the world. Whatever. I started in Sage's room, Sage is my daughter-in-law who was living us while her husband, my son, was a boot camp. She had a double/queen in there plus a twin mattress from when my niece was here. I robbed Joe of his mattress (thanks Joe!) and I put two futon mattresses together, bought two pillows for each kid, which they didn't use. Who knew? So that room had four girls in there, my daughter-in-law plus the three Chinese girls.

After completely cleaning that room, because you see poor Sage was in the middle of a move. All her things were in complete disarray because she'd been packing. So not only was I cleaning but now I had to figure out how to move and where to move all her boxes that she was sending, which by the way turned out to be thirty-four. Ask me how I know? I helped her cart them to the UPS store. What are moms for anyway, if not to pack their 15 passenger van completely full of boxes at the last minute and unload them?

We got the girls' room figured out, organized, and cleaned. Now it was the boys turn. I kicked Joel and John out of their room and put the three Chinese boys in their room. There were two twin beds plus our friends loaned us a camp cot that somehow fit into the room. (by the way, the boy who got the cot, he won the prize to sleep in the big bed when they switched rooms later that week) Now I had the boys room figured out. I had to do so much laundry to make sure that six beds were clean and acceptable for someone other than our family. Then four days later turned around and did it again when the girls went to their host family home and our boys moved back into their room.

We had a great time with these kids. Two of the six spoke English very well. We took them to youth group several times a week, they came to church with us, to the bay, and anything that we did as a family they did it too. The boys made us dinner one night. Do you know that they laughed when they found out that we put salt and pepper on our tomatoes? They marinate theirs in sugar and honey. Either way the tomatoes were still yummy.

One of our students was especially fond of history and politics. He talked to anyone who would talk with him. He was a sponge soaking up any information he could find. He was amazed at our book collection. I told him he could look through my books and if he found some he liked he could take them out and put them aside. I would look at them later and see if it was okay for him to keep them. One day he brought me a pile of books and asked me if I would go through them so I did. When I told him he could keep all of them he literally jumped up and down. He was so happy!!! He even left clothes, shoes, and personal belongings behind so that he could take his books home instead. Amazing.

Someone presented the idea to us of giving them Bibles. On the day before they were leaving I managed to go to a Bible bookstore and they had two Chinese-English Bibles. Perfect!!! Two of them needed that help, but Nick was content with an English only Bible. After receiving his Bob just sat and read. They've heard Bible stories, but have never had a Bible.

One thing I thought of and acted upon was that I bought them the book The Little Woman by Gladys Alward. She was a missionary to China in the 1930's or 40's. Gladys converted the mandarin of her province, stopped a riot in a men's prison, guided a hundred or so children through the Chinese mountains and numerous other feats. I thought maybe just maybe this story about this woman who gave her life to the people of China because of her Lord would mean something to them. I can only hope that they would appreciate what Gladys did for their people.

I do have a fifteen passenger van as I mentioned before. Whenever we go anywhere and I am the driver I take roll call. While they were here I would say, "Three Chinese girls, three Chinese boys, four Ethiopian girls, four American boys, one mom. Okay! We're good to go!!! and off we went.

I would encourage you to open your home. Open your life. You might just meet some wonderful people along the way that you otherwise never would have met. We gave them a glimpse into American life and they gave us a glimpse into Chinese life. And you know what? We're not really that different.

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