ACF Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving ACF

I asked several people to pray last week for our Thanksgiving celebration at the American Chinese Fellowship.  First of all, I want to thank you very much for your prayers, they literally made the celebration more than we could have ever dreamed of.  Let me explain. 

First, let me back up a second for those of you who do not know.  Sharon, Kaleb and I, most every Friday night go to a ministry called the American Chinese Fellowship.  A Doctor in the Med Center started it for the doctors and technicians who come from mainland China.   He invites them to the fellowship to help them with their English and learn about American culture.  While they are there, they use the Bible to help them learn English.  On a normal Friday night, they serve an authentic Chinese meal, then the children go with my family and we hold an Awana club.  The adults then have a song, a short sermonette, and then break up into classes where they study the Bible in English.

Last Friday we had our Thanksgiving celebration to show our American culture to the Chinese.  We normally have been running a little over a hundred this semester.  We were planning for about 250 people, so they purchased 275 servings of turkey, green beans, mashed potatoes, rolls, and a piece of pie.  Well, thanks to all of your prayers they had to purchase additional food…Twice.  The best count we have is that over 500 meals were served. 

Back in the kid’s area, Sharon and I led the kids in some very active songs like “Father Abraham” and “I Got a River of Life”.  We then led the grade school children in a gospel presentation.  This went okay, but most of the children did not speak very good English.  All the kids were thirsty, so we had a water break and while on break they said, “(hey) this is like the women at the well”.  Therefore, when we came back, we told the story of the women at the well, by this time we had an interpreter.  She helped us reach the ones who did not understand English that well.  At the end we always ask the children if there was any one that wanted to learn more about Jesus, we had three that needed Chinese speakers to talk with them. 

I did not hear about the adult side but I do know that we only had two set of parents come early to get their kids out of all the families present.  So most of the people stayed and listened to the program.

One more thing that really warmed my heart, I thought I was there to help lead people to Christ and be a leader, but a little girl showed me otherwise. If you have been following my blog for a while, you know I led two girls to Christ early in our ministry at the ACF.  One of these girls left the next day for China, the other little girl shows up every once in a while.  Well, she was there Friday night, she found me and came up to talk with me as we were going to the classroom.  While we were walking back there, she grabbed my hand and held it all the way back to class.  This just melted me.  I felt like Jesus was holding my hand on the way back to class encouraging me for the task ahead.