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Reflections on a Wandering Life.....

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Shandong 

Finally back in Beijing. Sunday the driver for the foster home picked me up in Linyi (in Shandong Province) and took me to my friends' home. They have a foster home for 35 handicapped children. Their home is in the countryside, so it is a very pleasant rural location. These kids are pretty lucky. The orphanages they come from are glad to let them go, because they are still registered as being cared for by the orphanage, so the orphanage gets the money from the government. But the orphanage is not actually putting out any money for their care.

Steve is from California. His father was an Assembly of God pastor. His wife is from Shandong Province. I first met them when they were involved in the Living Tree, a foster home on the east side of Beijing. Now they have moved to the countryside, which is a really nice environment for the kids.

The staff there are all Christians. Every morning at 6 am they meet for devotions and prayer. In the evening, they have a group Bible reading. Most of them are from the neighborhood. Hard to find a neighborhood in China that doesn't have a family church or two nearby.

Yesterday I caught a ride to Rizhao with a youth group that had stopped to visit the foster home. I wanted to go to Rizhao, because I figured since it is the originating station for the train that goes to Beijing, it might be easier to get a sleeper ticket. The guy who took me to the train station was horrified when I told him I didn't have a ticket yet. I explained to him that I had no way to get one, and if they didn't have sleeper tickets, I would just have to take what I could get, because I really needed to get back to Beijing. Fortunately, they had added an extra car to the train just before I walked into the station, so they had a few sleeper tickets available. Relief. I don't like the hard seats. It isn't that the seat is so uncomfortable. The problem is that they sell a whole bunch of standing tickets for the same car, so even if you do have a seat, it is absolutely impossible to move.

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