Jan. 22, 2007

Back toward the end of December there was an earthquake in Taiwan or off the coast of Taiwan, I'm not exactly sure which.  Anyway, it damaged the fiber optic cable or cables (I'm not sure about this either) that carry all of the internet connections between north America an this part of Asia.  So, there was a long stretch of time when we couldn't access or send any e-mail at all.  The first week in January we began to be able to access things sometimes, but it was very, very spotty for the first two weeks in January.  I spent two full days and well into the night trying to coax messages that International Ministries needed from me to go out.  After hundreds and hundreds of tries, I finally got them to go out.  Our internet connections seem to have pretty much recovered now, but I am still playing mega catch-up.

At my school Xiao Zhuang College, I am teaching American Literature (both the history of and the content of) to juniors who are English teaching majors and oral English to one class of freshman English teaching majors and one class of Business English majors.  I have pretty heavy requirements for both.  In addition to their time in class, the Freshman must have an increasing number of English conversations outside of class and record a brief summary of each in a notebook, they must choose words they are unsure of and show me their attempts to use them in their journals so that I can offer help as needed, and they must record a 10 minute conversation with an assigned partner each week.  This forces them to start creating an English practice environment for themselves and is helping them improve their oral skills more rapidly.  Of course, it also creates quite a lot of work for me as well.  I generally spend 20 - 30 hours a week going over their journals and listening to their tapes.  The juniors have a pretty heavy reading schedule as we cover the authors and literary pieces in their textbook.  We have covered Anne Bradstreet, Benjamin Franklin, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorme, Herman Melville and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in the first term.  Faith topics have come up naturally, basically raised by the author's words, in all of the discussions except for those related to Poe.  Next term we will begin with Emerson and Thoreau, Whitman and Dickinson, followed by many others.  Just about every other week, I have them write responses to some of the forms and ideas they are finding in the literary pieces we have just talked about. I have just completed giving this semester's oral English final exams for the freshman and have calculated their grades for the term.  I am happy to say that they all did very well, so of course they passed.  My school has scheduled me to give the literature final exam this coming Wednesday.  Since, I have 80 literature students, it will take me most of a couple of days to correct them and to calculate their grades.  I hope they will do as well.  This year our college is preparing for an inspection that will take place next fall to allow them to become a full-fledged university.  I just found out that there are a lot more special requirements about the format of our final exams and about the reports that we need to turn in with them.  It looks like I will have to sign each exam I grade in six different places, making a total of 480 times to write my signature before I finish.  I'm not looking forward to that part of it, but I am looking forward to reading the students's answers. Our semester officially ends on January 27th and I will heed to turn my grades in that day, just as students are headed for home for their Spring Festival (i.e., Chinese New Year) Holiday. 

In November and December, I was involved in two of the official trips to visit Amity teachers and their schools.  The Amity teachers come from many different countries to teach English here in China, and Amity places most of them at teacher training schools.  I don't visit them alone; I go with a Chinese colleague from the Amity office here in Nanjing.  Robert Ji and I visited four of our teachers (one from Canada, two from Britain and one from Austria) at two schools in the western most part of Gansu Province.  Then for 11 days right before Christmas we visited nine of our teachers, one in Sichuan Province and eight in Guangxi Province.  Most of the relationships between teachers and schools were going well, but we found one school that had given our teachers an overload by putting several natural classes together in one classroom and calling the large group of 75-90 students one class, when in fact it was 2-3 classes "dumped together."  Of course, that is not the ideal situation for language learning, so we insisted that the school must change next semester, and they agreed that they would do so.  In addition to checking on potential issues like this, we are there to provide support for the teachers as they may sometimes be the only foreigners in town.  When we were in Baise, we were able to go to worship at the local church with the two Amity teachers who are in that town.  It was great to see how welcoming the local congregation was for those teachers, even across the language barriers.

In between the two official teacher visit trips, I had two other trips to visit projects we in ABC International Ministries are supporting.  The last week of November, I had a two day trip to Lian Yun Gang, in another part of Jiangsu Province, Jiangsu being the province that I live in.  There we are helping several orphans from the Lian Yun Gang Orphanage.  We are supporting five of them to be in foster families and a number of others with the school fees that allow them to attend a regular public school.  Then from December 4 through 10, I visited 34 of the 75 AIDS orphans that we are supporting in Henan Province.  (For their situation you can see my IMU article  when it comes out in February.)

All of the travel means that I was away from my Nanjing base for most of the last half of November and December. On most weeks, I was able to be back in Nanjing on one day--Monday--to teach my classes.  Of course, the lesson planning, materials preparation and grading of student notebooks and tapes had to take place on the road--on the plane and train and even in the bus and car.  However, I still ended up missing some classes and having to teach make-up classes in Christmas week in order to catch up before exams (not on Christmas Day, of course, as I was at the church that day, joyfully celebrating Christ's birth with our brothers and sisters in Christ here).

Almost as soon as the term ends, I will be headed to Chengdu for the long-term Amity teacher meeting, followed by the Amity teacher conference for all of the Amity teachers (all in all, February 1-9).  This is a great opportunity for those of us who are long-term Amity teachers to discuss how things are going in the whole program together with Amity staff and to give input into future directions.  It is also a great opportunity for all of the Amity teachers to be together and to support one another, to share teaching ideas, to share experiences in the local church and to share experiences of living and serving here in China.  I am responsible for pastoral care, for one workshop and for our morning devotions and our closing worship service.  I still have quite a bit to prepare for our times of worship together.

In addition to all of these things, I have been helping with a couple of things at local churches and the seminary in Nanjing.  The St. Paul's congregation started an English worship service about two and a half years ago and several of those of us who are both Christian and native English speakers are helping in a number of capacities.  From time to time I've been asked to share a piece of my testimony in the sermon time of the worship service.  Most weeks when I'm in town, they ask me to come early and help the scripture readers practice, enabling them to correct any mispronunciation or problems in intonation.  At the Mochou Rd church, I am a member of a 10-or-so person leadership team for a Wednesday evening Bible study, invited to do so by the church.  Half of the leadership team members are local church leaders and half are like myself.  Each week, we teach a song and have a mini-lecture about the passage for the evening, followed by small group discussion.  Last week, I was the speaker and the passage from the study book we were using was about the cleansing of Naaman, issues of disobedience and obedience and their relation to Naaman's eventual healing.  This coming week, I will teach a song and another speaker will focus on Paul's time in Athens.  Throughout the last half of October and November, the Mouchou Rd church English Bible study group worked toward having an English service of Lessons and Carols service for early Advent.  I was also part of the team involved in the planning of that and was there for that marvelous service on December 3, between my various trips.  Both churches have many young seekers attending and learning about faith.  I have seen some growing toward faith as well. At the Seminary, they hold an English corner for the students.  It is organized a little like an extra oral English class with various focused speaking activities.  I have been teaching one of the groups together with another Amity teacher every Friday evening.

I am super excited that we (International Ministries) will likely have three teams of volunteers for Amity's Summer English Program.  We already have a team of six from FBC Madison, WI, who have been accepted for the program and will be helping Chinese secondary teachers of English improve their oral English in Jinan, Shandong Province next July.  In addition, we have a partial team of three from several places across the country that have also been accepted and as soon as we find a fourth member for their team, they will become a full team and Amity will decide their placement for this July teaching program.  If you know anyone who is a college graduate, 70 years of age and under, and is interested in being a summer volunteer to teach in China, let them know about this opportunity and let Jonathan Hilsher in Valley Forge or myself know of their interest.  In addition, we also have a team forming in California.

I'm sure there are other things that I could share with you, but that's probably enough for now.

Keep all of the students, teachers, church leaders, the seekers who attend the church programs, the orphans in orphanages, the AIDS orphans living with very poor relatives, and others here in prayer.  Especially pray for the Amity teachers and staff who will be traveling to our conference very soon and for several Amity teachers who will not be able to attend the conference because of health issues that they have encountered that have to be taken care of during the semester break or serious health issues that their family members back home have encountered requiring them to return home for the semester break to help out.