Living in Beijing?

When we were first planning this trip, we wanted to make it a volunteer-based trip. We didn't want to just travel as tourists; we wanted to help out. With that in mind, we'd planned to join a mission trip in Beijing. Unfortunately, that fell through and we were at loose ends for a bit—but God does provide!

We googled English churches when we first came to town and ended up at Beijing International Christian Fellowship (BICF). We were hesitant to attend at first—the website said you had to have a foreign passport and we wanted a church that was active in their community. However, we decided to go and see,and when we did, we were excited to find out about all the outreach activities they participated in. We were also excited to see the “volunteers needed” section of their church bulletin! After the service we went to the Welcome Corner, introduced ourselves, and offered our assistance.

It's funny. Before I left I didn't think my writing would be of use in the mission field. But then I arrived in China and was told that while there were no short-term mission trips in the field during the time we were there, what they could really use help with was writing some articles for their newsletter. This included learning and writing about an awesome mission trip the BICF Impact ministry arranged to a small village school in rural China, as well as interviewing a woman running an amazing ministry in another area of China that provides for AIDS orphans.

While I was writing or editing, Amanda was using her equally well-matched skills to create and organize some financial information for the ministry in Excel documents that amazed all the staff! :)

In addition to office work, we also had the chance to help teach English to former street kids, volunteer with orphans from the Sizhaun earthquakes, and learn about a ministry to migrant children. It was a busy month!

One of the other fun parts of staying in Beijing for almost a month was that we were starting to develop a sense of community. We had “our” restaurant in a non-tourist area of town, where the staff knew us and what we always ordered. We had “our” street fruit stand where the young sales girl recognized us and laughed with us at our frequent purchase of mandarin oranges. We also had our roadside bun stand close to “work” where we could buy these great green onion or red bean filled buns for only 1 RMB (20 cents or so)! It's always amazed me how quickly community can form, even in a country where you don't speak the language.

Ohh...right, I almost forgot to mention “our” coffee shop! Jungle Java—bottomless cups of real coffee and the most amazing desserts in the world!!! I think we ate our way through most of the cakes and things shown here. If anyone is in Beijing and craving North American desserts or sandwiches, this is most definitely the place to go! (We recommend the cinnamon buns—they are to die for.)

We were also beginning to get to know little bits of the city. We figured out the metro (okay, that's not too hard...) and started to figure out the buses too (more difficult as things aren't listed in English). In fact, we were quite proud of ourselves when we went out to an unfamiliar area of town for lunch after church on the last Sunday we were in Beijing and were able to get on a different bus than we arrived on and find our way home with no assistance at all.

By the time it was time to leave, (Hmm...that's an interesting phrase “time it was time”) we didn't want to go. We had such a great time in Beijing and met some really great people and there's really only one reason we left at all: it was really, really cold! :) Okay, so the fact that the Chinese refused to give us visas for more than a month might have had something to do with it too, but, seriously, it was cold! (Okay, not that cold really—it was maybe 7° C or so, but that feels cold when you're not dressed for it—and when you are thinking tropical thoughts... )