Interested in Chinese?

This past week a Rwandan sister, Denise, came from Canada to visit her family here. She has been learning Mandarin for about 3 years and is associated with a Chinese congregation in Ottawa. One day she accompanied me on a few Chinese return visits. Also, she brought me a large stack of literature, including the new jw.org tract. So now I have plenty of literature, just need people to help me work the territory...

Interestingly, Denise said that the last leg of her trip to Rwanda was a flight from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Kigali. Would you believe that half the people on the plane were Chinese! When the immigration forms were passed out, they couldn't fill them out due to a language problem, so Denise spent considerable time helping them. Yes, the Chinese keep on coming to Rwanda!

Around the same time Denise was visiting, I started a private class with a few in the congregation. A brother asked me to give him lessons, thinking that this might start the ball rolling somehow, and others would follow. So I met with him and another brother and we had our first lesson (and piano lessons are included also, by the way).

No sooner did this happen than there was an announcement made at the end of the meeting this week. As a preliminary survey, any interested in learning Chinese were invited to sign a list placed on the platform table. The whole congregation broke out in applause! (I almost got choked up.) Then, when it was all said and done, 38 people signed the list! This is nearly half the congregation! Not even including the results of any surveys to be made of the French and Kinyarwanda congregations!

So, what do you think? Will we need two, or maybe three Chinese classes? Decision will be made by the circuit overseer. I will keep you posted.

Latest experience: Last Tuesday, I woke up tired and was thinking strongly of staying in but decided to push myself to go out preaching (you know, it's still the campaign, gotta show my support). Well, it is always on such days that you have the best experiences. My partner was Ernest, one of my biggest Chinese supporters, and naturally he wanted to work Chinese territory. One of the places we went that morning was Tangren restaurant in the area of Gishushu, where I have a return visit on a guy who has shown interest, but is usually too busy to talk when I come, so I just leave magazines. He wasn't there, but there was a young guy I didn't recognize behind the counter. I asked him, Do I know you? (Sorry to say this, but often Chinese do look alike.) He said, no, my name is Li Long and I've only been here for two months, from the city of Xi'an (where, as we all know, the Terracotta Army is located). I had barely gotten out a sentence explaining the purpose of our visit, when he said, "Can you get me an English Bible?" He showed me his Chinese Bible, which contained the name Jehovah, and added that he wanted one in English to compare, because he "really wanted to understand the Bible." So I placed the red brochure and a couple of magazines, showed the 4-minute video, and gave him my cell number and e-mail address. I also showed him on jw.org the answer to the question on the back of the tract, "What is the meaning of life?" After we left, he didn't waste any time texting me to express appreciation for our visit.

Hey, I'm getting too many of these! Need help!