Trip to Eme - Day 3

Slept better last night. I was dead tired at 10pm after the Kungfu show, which was very impressive.

I woke up around 3:30 but was able to get back to sleep pretty much until 6:30am, got ready and went down to meet David and Valerie for another great breakfast. Then we went back up to the room for skype time with Jack. He's doing fine but as always, is a handful. Keep praying for Erin's folks. He's being good but he is a 2.5 year old boy heh. Jack sang and jabbered for us and I think he's glad to see us. He was asking "Where you being?". Oh so cute. He said he wanted to be here too. Little heartbreaker.

We met Forrest and hopped into the van for the Jade Market. I think the van driver does all his smoking in the van. I think I may have lost a year or two of my life from my time in that van. --cough--

Jade is beautiful. There are two kinds. Soft and hard. Soft is easy to carve and the hard is much more valuable. Class over. We bought some small things we thought were cool and got a jade name stamp of Eme's chinese name Mei (will be here middle name). It's beautiful.

Then we went to the great wall. Nothing I type does it justice. See the pics. Posted HERE. I didn't make it as far as Erin did but I got far enough up to get a great view. It's amazing.

Then we went to the Cloisonne factory / outlet. It was neat but the sales staff was a little pushy and copper pottery isn't all that to me... so meh. I spent the bulk of the time talking with Forrest talking about everything from pets to tvs. On the subject of Forrest, I had a dream as i was off and on snoozing that we'd be sharing about our beliefs with him today. And wouldn't ya know it... we did. He was talking about how there are so many beliefs and different Gods but he cannot choose. Erin and I (and the the other couple) got to share that the reason he wan't to know is that God has designed us to be in relation to him. We have a spiritual need. It is why people seek the spiritual. I got to give him the basics of my faith (created to be in relationship, fall, sin=self centeredness, sin=death, Christ taking our penalty because God still wanted us, loved us). There were a lot of other, more vague things, talked about but I am hoping and praying that something struck home. He asked why would you start your belief in God. I said that I've seen God work in my life and the real reason I found God is that I saw Him in other's lives. He got that. I was a little psyched. It's been a long time since I've gotten to explain those basics to someone with NO background. It's easy to pick up the foreign missions bug. Easy there, God. Seriously though, pray for Forrest. We told him that God is working on him whether he (Forrest) believes or not. Heh.

We ate lunch at the Cloisonne (copper enameled pot) place. It was good but not as good as the day before.

We then headed back to the hotel and are relaxing before meeting Dave and Valerie for suppah and deciding if we're gonna go out tonight. Everything would be a cab ride away and I'm not entirely sure I'm up for going out w/o a guide though I would love to hit a huge electronics store to see what freaky gizmos the Chinese have come up with.

We have to get re-packed for our flight in the morning. We are meeting Forrest in the morning at 7:30 am to head to the airport for us to go to Eme's province Henan (Huh nan)!! I'm excited but a little nervous about doing Chinese domestic flying.

Catch ya later y'all! Next time we talk we'll be in Eme's province!