Thoughts...

While walking back from a Study on Sunday night, I was happened to glance into the open windowed kitchen of one of the many apartments in our complex. Inside stood a woman cooking. My view kept wondering up the 6 floors of the building, many of them had lights on and people moving around inside. I turned in a circle, the apartment complex I was standing in was composed of around 10 buildings just like the one I was looking at, and there are apartment complexes everywhere. What does a person do to stand out in a country of over 1 billion people? 

My thoughts didn't stop there.  Here I am living in the most populous country on earth, and its mostly Atheistic.  The majority of people here are not on the "eternal path". The second most populous country, India, is mostly Hindu. Again, same problem. So here we are stuck with a world of over 6 billion people, and if we are really generous, we can probably figure that 1 billion of them are saved. That leaves 5 billion people... 

Kind of sobering. And so I found myself talking to my Father, asking what this means. I admit to entertaining a secret hope that our doctrine is incorrect, that somehow we will find more people on the other side of eternity then we expect. Yet, if not, 5 billion is a huge number of souls, hopes, dreams, and individual stories on the wrong path.

And so my thoughts continued on to the next great question. Above and beyond that, I'm a citizen of one of the most blessed nations on earth, yet over 4 billion people live on less then 3 dollars a day. Another thought, We spend so much time in the US debating abortion (A worthy debate, no doubt), but yet we ignore the roughly 25,000 children who die each day due to extreme poverty. Kind of depressing line of thinking, I admit. However, it begged the question in my line of conversation with the Father, OK, so what does this mean for me. What would you have me do?

The next day, I asked the same question of the team. Although really, its a question that everyone has to face at some point, and (if my own life is any testament) its a question we have to keep coming back to as we evaluate our current path. Some people, perhaps the majority, ignore it totally. Another group of dedicated M's and human rights workers pour their entire lives into that question. Yet what about those of us that are not called into any specific vocation in that direction, the average person. What does that mean for us? An interesting question, and one that the team has been struggling with as we ponder on what is next for us after China.

Requests:

- Chinese classes are now if full swing. Yeah, if you know anything about the Chinese language, you might be on your knees for us every night with tears and fervent petitions. Just Kidding. 

Kinda.

- This weekend we will be watching children for an M conference in our city. One of our major goals is to continue to be a blessing to the long term workers here.

- We have been meeting a lot of students, and have become rather close with a few of them. We hope to plant some seeds.

Thanks:

- We just reached the halfway point of our time here in China today. Wow. We're all healthy, we've become rather comfortable here, and we enjoy living together. Enough Said. Hallelujah.