Bright and early Thursday morning we were off to the airport, after two flights and an 8-hour bus ride in the dark over muddy, rocky roads we arrived in Lincang to stay at a hotel and enjoy our last shower for the week. As soon as I stepped off of the bus I was surrounded by fresh air, something that I have missed so dearly in Shanghai. It was another 3-hour bus ride the next day to the actual village. The scenery on the way up the mountains was beautiful, it looked like something from a Mulan movie or a National Geographic photo, the women working in their rice hats, the men driving their cattle and goats up mountain paths, the kids running along the side of the road and sticking their heads out of their homes to see us… this is a much more simplistic China then you would ever see near Shanghai. The village is very far away from any cities at an elevation higher than Denver, without running water, with very little electricity, but somehow you can still manage to find full five bars of cell reception, gotta love China :) The boys sleeping area was at the top of the hill in the local school, a really nice building with desks, tables, a chalkboard, and windows. This is also right next to the “kitchen tent,” a tent with a huge fire pit and several tables where they prepared the meals that they served us. The girls slept down the hill quite a ways at the village community center, a large building with no windows, rats, bugs, a random chalkboard, a T.V, and a sound system (so we see where priorities lie). We were lucky enough to have the public squatty right out back, a convenient place to get to in the middle of the night; however I learned early on in the week that if you have to go to the bathroom in the mornings either wake up before the sun and the roosters to go, or deal with waiting in line and going with the locals. The mornings began early, it was so nice to be waking up early by an hour or two to have some time reading the Father’s word and praying before the day started. The first couple of days were filled with intense work digging ditches for the pipes to go in that would later take the water to faucets in each of the villagers homes. Digging through thick forests or in fields with hoes, not my favorite thing in the world. Jesus must’ve known that we were getting tired out because midway through the week he sent some rain. When it rained the villagers insisted that we didn’t work because they were afraid of us getting sick, and there was little for us to do in the village…. that’s when the kiddos showed up. All day everyday, in and out of our sleeping area, they laughed and played with us. many of the kids did not know how to speak Chinese, they spoke their own dialect, which made communicating all the more fun!
While we were there the village elder’s daughter was celebrating her wedding. One night there was a pre-wedding party, this involved dancing in a circle for over three hours to the same music, gutting fish, preparing cow (which we heard killed), pig (which we saw killed), and chickens (which just smelled). The wedding was a huge to-do because in this poorer village eating meat is very rare, many families said that they often go three weeks without meat. Even after we were able to sneak away from the dancing at midnight to go to bed we could still feel the vibrations of the villagers chopping food in the room next door. The wedding itself was surprisingly quiet, I think that it just involved of the entire village eating together and then driving her to her new home. That day we laid pipes and covered them up for a majority of the day, then we put together the faucets for the homes. That night there was an after-wedding party, those people are so funny! Right outside of the community center there was a T.V. set up playing a Chinese movie, a karaoke machine, and lots of noisy drinking games. They were out there all night. Every night on the trip our leaders gave us a thought provoking question to journal about, it was really good to unload things in a journal everyday. Its amazing how God shows up in places that you’d never expect, like in a child’s joy at receiving play dough, or in a villagers face when you sit to help them with dishes, or just in the silence of creation. Interim was a good time for me to get to sit back from how hectic life in the city is and be reminded of where my priorities lie.
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