Visitors

This weekend we had a special church conference, (branch conference) and one of the church leaders came to our city to spend the conference with our group.  As it turned out, the person who was sent, used to be my husband's mission president some 30 years ago!  It was really nice to have them come stay in our home for the conference.

I want to mention that this couple have a very special assignment to oversee humanitarian efforts for our church here in China.  Presently they are working on several different projects:  wheel chairs for those in need, running water for village schools, and building toilets for village schools.  The government of China has allowed our church permission to work on these types of projects, although we still do not have permission to proselyte.

We have had such visitors before because we are one of the bigger groups in China.  Most cities only have one or two people.  In the past, we have had as many as 20 active people in our group.  But this year our group is smaller, and we only had 11 in attendance on Sunday.  But we have enough people to warrant having a visitor come.

This man brought his wife, and we invited them to spend the night in our apartment.  We have an extra bedroom with twin beds in it.  In preparation for their coming, I asked my cleaning lady to wash the sheets and put extra padding on the beds.  Beds here in China are quite hard.  Their mattresses are more like what we in the West use for box springs under our mattress.  There isn't any real padding on them, so it's pretty  much like sleeping on the floor.  Back in America, I sleep on a pillow top Serta mattress.  It's heaven.  And added to that is a down mattress that I found at a garage sale for $15.  The people had bought it for their bed, but then found it was too big, and just never did return it, so sold it cheap at the garage sale.  They never used it.  I've sort of become the "princess and the pea".  So coming here to China was difficult when it came to sleeping.  Luckily, our mattress is a little more comfortable than most, and we put comforters on top of that.  With time, I have adjusted to sleeping on this ultra firm bed, although I still often wake up with hip pain.  So my cleaning lady really piled on the layers on their beds.  Some friends had given us some mattress pads when they moved away, so along with some comforters, we padded their beds well.  I think they slept comfortably.

The last time a church leader came, as a last minute joke I put a piece of chocolate on his pillow.  We laughed about it the next morning.  I told him we were trying to make our home like a hotel for him.  So when this couple came, I put a couple of mini "Snickers" candy bars on their pillows.  As they were getting ready for bed, she mentioned that they used to buy snickers to eat, but they decided they were getting too fat, so they stopped buying them.  I said, "That's too bad, because I put a Snickers on your pillow."  She said, "Oh good!  I'm looking forward to it."  :)  And then I said, "And that's too bad because I made cinnamon rolls for breakfast tomorrow, and cake for dessert for lunch."  She said she looked forward to eating them, and I noticed the next day that she had plenty.  lol

We had a potluck lunch after church on Sunday.  One woman is Korean and brought this delicious chicken stew.  It was flavored with the kind of chili sauce they use in kimchi.  Man was that good!  I love to eat other people's cooking.  Another person brought brownies, so we had PLENTY of dessert.  It was a nice day, and it was fun to have our visitors; old friends. Here is a picture of my husband with them.  I think their camera has the picture of me with them.  :)