Walkers - Update March 2009 - Asia

Note: photos are being used with permission. Locations have been edited for privacy and safety. ~ Gina

Come Together thru Conflict went very well last week in Asia. The group were the leaders here and gave us some good ideas to improve CTC.

Now we are...where the big earthquake was last May. There are cracks in the walls as reminders of Father's grace. Very little loss in this city of 10 million. It was areas near here with tens of thousands died.

After CTC ended on Friday, we went to a cool restaurant to celebrate. The young ladies with Jean in the previous foto welcomed us.

Then we enjoyed 'hot pot' with friends. They have a pot boiling in the middle of the table into which they put meat and veg. One side of the pot is spicy...and the other is more tame. Wish you could have enjoyed this with us.

The parks here have cool exercise equipment and are full of people each morning. A taichi group was next to an aerobics dance group, each with their recorded music playing. How they could keep the two separate in their minds in amazing. I guess this country has so many people (1.2 billion) that they have to have the ability to tune each other out.

We are doing lots of walking between great restaurants to keep in shape and be ready for the next meal. Food is great (not like you get in...restaurants in the US), food is an important part of social life here, and the price is quite low.

Hot fries for sale on the streets.... And I mean hot as in spicy. I could only eat a portion of them before I burned out.

We are staying in a huge apt complex (11-17 story buildings).... I'm thankful we look down on a nice park in the center of it all. Restful, but cold here. No central heating in the apartment, but a couple of good space heaters.

I'm thankful they cancelled CTC for this week. Not too many people could come all week. So this gives our team (3 friends here learning to teach CTC after we leave) time to prepare for the following week. We'll be making some improvements to CTC, too, to better fit the [cultural] context.

Thx for remembering us to Father.

We flew an hour...and are out of the big city and into a beautiful small town surrounded by mountains. The sun was out today, which we haven't really seen during our week in...a city of 10 million also surrounded by mountains. But I never saw them cuz the clouds cover them most of the time.

Please remember our team as we teach Come Together through Conflict Mon-Wed. Working with our team of three teachers-in-training is a challenge, with different personalities, strong opinions, [different] cultures....

We define conflict as Differences that Frustrate. I hope that we can learn to accept, even celebrate the differences, but that is not easy.

It has been a long day, now 6.45; we are letting the 3 newbies set up the room, which has taken hours.... Hope to get some rest soon after 12 hr days last week. May Sunday be a day of rest and restoration.