KennedysOnline

Friends and Family,

Happy New Year! 2008 will be a big one for China – hosting the Olympic games for the first time, trying to slow down the nearly boiling over economy, building the world’s largest ferris wheel, laying bullet speed tracks from one major city to another, working to clean up air & water pollution, managing inflation on everything from pork to gasoline, teaching citizens to queue, refrain from spitting and learn a few helpful phrases in English … its going to be a busy year!

For us, it will be another year of what I’ve begun to think of as “endless humility”. Not that endless humility is necessarily a bad thing – in fact, I am quite certain it is good for the soul – but as are so many things that are good for the soul – it is exhausting. The longer we live in China, the more we realize how very little we know. We survive by the grace of G-d and the compassionate local and ex patriot people He brings into our lives.

Our language skills have improved just enough to make a mess out of most conversations. The person we are conversing with momentarily mistakes our Chinese as reasonably good (because most conversations with strangers begin the same and we have those words down pat), and begins to speak to us like we are intelligent adult-like people. When we are reduced to the three word phrase we were using a year and a half ago (”ting bu dong” – I hear you, but I don’t understand) … well, its back to toddler land (ie endless humility).

It doesn’t matter that we have college degrees, held good jobs in the US, owned a beautiful home and can speak perfectly well in our own language … we are bumbling, frustrating, but hopefully endearing toddlers here.

Last week when I took Hannah to the clinic for her strep infection, the taxi driver plied me with questions – was I dressing her warmly enough (foreigners will NEVER meet local standards in this area)? Was I giving her plenty of hot water to drink? The questions continued – I simply couldn’t keep up language or culture-wise. THEN … Hannah pulled out of her pocket 6 chocolate bars and dumped them on my lap. I had NO IDEA where they came from, but there they were. The evidence the driver needed to nail me for making my child sick. With absolutely no way to respond, I sat with my sick child on my lap and listened to a benevolent (I am giving the benefit of the doubt) tirade about my parenting. Endless humility.

We want so much to make this painful part of life here hurry by – to know the language at perhaps a 3rd grade level (have I mentioned that Chinese is hard to learn?), to “get” the culture enough to limit the number of times we stumble over local mores, to move into a season of blessing others who don’t happen to speak English.

As we move through this new year, we will continue to live this life of endless humility … trusting that with such broken jars of clay, He can do something wonderful.