Anniversary dinner and 2nd Chinese course

In November of last year, we made one year as a Chinese congregation! There were tentative plans for a celebration, but because I was in the U.S. for such a long time, nothing was arranged. After I came back, however, we planned our big dinner. It was held last Saturday at a Chinese restaurant called Lao Tangren. (This is the same restaurant that I am the "manager" of, allowing me to get a visa.) We reserved a room in the back with a large round table and a Lazy Susan that could accommodate 20 persons. This occasion was not only to celebrate our first anniversary, but also to show appreciation for the pioneers' hard work. I and another elder hosted this dinner. For many of the brothers and sisters, this was their first experience eating Chinese food. With chopsticks, no less.

There is another recent development. Ever since we have become a congregation, many of the pioneers have been called to work at Bethel as full- or part-time commuters, LDC, or the Assembly Hall. Now most of the pioneers are in one of those categories. One elder and four out of the five ministerial servants are now Bethelites. The result is that though the weekend field service is very well supported, service during the week usually consists of me and the special pioneer couple, with a few joining in the afternoon. Our circuit overseer jokingly said to a brother in the Service Department that 'you created this congregation, and now by calling in most of the pioneers to work at Bethel, you are destroying it.'

In a way, this is a good problem to have. The proposed solution was to ask the branch for another language class, so that we can get some 'fresh blood,' as I like to put it, that is, more pioneers to support the ministry. After all, that is why we are a congregation in the first place, right? Anyway, that was our argument in a letter to the branch. We also mentioned that it would give the congregation greater stability if we had some married couples and 'older' persons (though that is a relative term, because the average age in the congregation is around 23 years), because you never know when some of these young ones will get married or move out of the congregation. In fact, we just had three sisters that graduated from SKE and were assigned out of Chinese. Benjamin and his wife Alice, who are the special pioneers (and he is the coordinator) also graduated from SKE and, thankfully, were assigned back to Chinese. Prior to this, I thought, I'm going to have a heart attack if they leave Chinese.

So the upshot is, the branch approved our request for a second language class. Hooray! It started at the beginning of this month with 32 students. One has since dropped, leaving 31.
Benjamin and I are the instructors. We are scheduled up to late May, after which I can finally get away for about a week or so on a trip to Tanzania.

So that's the latest. Next week is circuit assembly, then Memorial in April, and then....