Three Services

Since church is under construction, the service and classes were moved to the afternoon. Classes are at the usual places; but the service is at Hillcrest church. To make good use of our Sunday mornings, David and I decided to visit other churches during Sunday mornings. The first church we wanted to visit was a Chinese church. So today we visited the Chinese fellowship church off Independence and 15th street. And we were going to visit two services there: English and Chinese. That church has two Chinese services and one English service each Sunday morning.

We arrived at that church at 9:15am. Not many people were in the auditorium. So David and I sat in the front pew. We were greeted by one of the pastors (apparently they have several pastors: 4 for Chinese and 2 for English) and several people around us. By the time the second song finished, we looked back - the auditorium was almost full! Well, another example of Chinese people's time concept: only a few people were on time. David and I totally enjoyed the service and the message on faith. We all thought it was better than Prestoncrest's sermons. The preacher was so enthusiastic and practical. He was talented. After the English service, we came out for some refreshment. We met more people in the hall. One of the people we met happened to be David's co-worker. But David met him first at Nokia. He was an American. But he liked this church a lot. I also saw one of our Friendspeak readers - Maggie's brother-in-law. I wished I could see Maggie there. But I didn't. Several people invited us to the seminar by a guest speaker on "Right or Wrong". We told them that we were going to the second Chinese church. One of the guys was shocked. He told David:" Oh, I didn't know your Chinese is so good!"

We were a couple of minutes late for the Chinese service because of all the talking in the foyer. One deacan stopped us and asked us to fill out a visitor's card. We were surprised that they spotted us as visitors right away. Not long after the service started, they began to introduce each visitor. All the visitors names were on the screen. David and I were the only ones who had the English names. When we were introduced, the guy who did the introduction asked David in Chinese:" Brother, do you speak Chinese?" David didn't expect that but he quickly answered in Chinese "A little." After all the names on the screen were introduced, the guy on the podium asked whether there was any visitor who was not on the list. Only one guy raised his hand - he was visiting his brother from Chicago! David and I were amazed at how well they did for the visitor's program. Almost all the visitors were identified among the 400 people and everyone got a visitor's package! The pastor for the Chinese service just celebrated his 100 years old birthday yesterday. It was said that more than one hundred people attended that celebration and the temperature was exactly 100 degree! We couldn't believe that he was still preaching at such an age! He talked about being humble. The songs were absolutely beautiful and powerful! My eyes was in tears for many times. David could only understand pieces of information. He just mimiced what the preachor said to practice pronunciation. When the songs started, he closed his eyes as if he was in another world. I could tell he enjoyed the service too! On the way out, some people came up to say Hi to us. They invited us for lunch afterwards. But we told them we had to run for our Sunday school and church service. At the door, the 100-year-old preacher was shaking hands with everyone. We told him how much we enjoyed the service. Again we were impressed to see that the elders and the preacher standing at the door to shake hands when people got out of the door. No wonder they could identify the visitors! One thing that they did different was they took the communion all at the same time. David and I made a mistake the first time. But we quickly learned to wait for the second time.

We came out of the Chinese church at 12:15pm. We grabbed a sandwich on the way to Prestoncrest. John Barret taught the class since David didn't have any time to prepare for the lesson. After the class, we headed over to Hillcrest. It was a huge church. It was nice to see all the people in one service. George came over to pray for our baby girl and for Fred White. After the service, we visited with Amy and Kendall for a few minutes before we said goodbye. They were going to Kendall's parents' place afterwards. David and I went to Friendspeak. We shared our baby girl news with Pat, Bobbie, and others. Maggie didn't come. I read with a new girl Cathy. I enjoyed reading her very much. We ended up chatting for half an hour and reading for the rest of the time. She said she liked Friendspeak very much because she made some new friends and learned many things to apply to her life.

I was craving for vegetables. David and I had dinner at Black-eyed Pea since it has vegetable garden plate. We enjoyed our dinner very much. I called my parents and my sister after we got home. A long weekend was over again!!!