The absolute best weekend I've had in years!!!!

If the title doesn't give it away, I had the best weekend in years. It was almost perfect....

We have a fellowship on Friday nights which is basically a youth group except we're all in our 20s. There are Americans, Chinese, a Brazilian, Australian, etc. There are probably 60 of us that gather each Friday. I've only been twice, but I CRAVE Friday nights now. I've never looked forward to something so much, ever! We begin with singing then break into study groups and come back for singing and hanging out. We play games until 2 am and have deep conversations until 4am. It's exactly what I've been looking for. A hundredfold He promised and my gracious, He has surely given me a hundredfold just on Friday nights.

However, the weekend was just beginning after the Friday night bonding. On Saturday, I went over to hang out with one of the American guys I don't know very well, Aaron, and his new Brazilian roommate, Aurelio. We went to the park with another Chinese guy, Bill, and had a marvelous time. We climbed to the top of the hill and saw Dongguan on one side and mountains on another. It was beautiful. Then we played ping pong which of course I loved. (Aurelio has taken lessons! I didn't know people did such things.) So that was a lot of fun. Then we went to a Chinese dance in the park and I danced with a woman. There didn't seem to be a pattern to the dance, not that I can dance anyway, but it was still lots of fun. Then I tried to Samba and that went well...lol. Not at all really. But it was a lot of fun.

From there we went to "Flower Street" where you can get a gorgeous dozen of roses for about $4! I bought flowers for my class this week because we're learning about plants. Then we all stayed up talking on Saturday until 4am again. Sound familiar? It was just like college.

Then of course on Sunday we had our regular gathering. My coordinating teacher, Maple, is a believer and goes to the gathering so after the service she, Rachel, Sybil (Chinese) and I went to eat. One thing about most Chinese people is that they do most things slowly so it turned out to take a couple of hours, but it was so nice. Although Maple is a believer, she has a lot of questions and a few gaps. She and I had a great conversation and she said it helped. That was my first "real" conversation since I got here. It was so wonderful, especially since we work together all day, every day.

To top it off, we only have the children for two days this week, go to the zoo on Wednesday (I'm so pumped about that!), and then we have work days to finish up everything before this first term ends. I've been struggling a lot lately with missing everyone, but this weekend was such a relaxing and refreshing time. He blessed me with a couple of new instantaneous friendships that I think will be lasting.

I cannot wait to see what He does with our fellowship on Fridays. All of us girls are going and love it! Things have been rough within the group recently as well, but I think things are starting to get worked out and we're learning how to budget our time better and focus on Him instead of school.

I'm just in awe of His blessings. I could not have had a better weekend. Praise Him, praise Him, praise Him!!!!!