leavin' on a jet plane...

On my way home already, if you can believe it!!!!!

Nathan and I will leave today and escort a team from Northwest to Beijing, then we will travel home as a group.  We'll get home on Tuesday evening around 10pm.  Please be asking for safe and easy travel.

See you on your side of the ocean!!  :)

Have a beautiful day.

I'm much better now, I promise.

I've gotten back to work, which has been good.  Keep yourself busy... that's the best way to not have to think about missing home and family.

It occured to me today... tomorrow is the Fourth of July.  And for me... more than likely... it will be just another work day.  Strange.  Did you know that the Fourth of July is my favorite holiday in America?  We do the same thing every year... and it is just fun time with family!  I think I finagled (sp?) a way to be able to at least make Indian Tacos tomorrow.  That's a Martin family Fourth of July tradition.  They won't be Dan's famous... but they will will be a great substitute.  And I think maybe we can find some fire crackers around here somewhere... I'm not sure where but I hear them going off all the time around town... they have many traditions that revolve around fireworks... so it shouldn't be too hard to find some.

Something else occured to me today... I'll be leaving to go back to the States two weeks from today.  Bizarre.  I'm so excited, except as my wonderful and wise friend Teresa said recently... the heart is a strange organ... it seems that it always longs for where it is not.  (this is not an exact quote... she said it much more eloquently...)  But it's so true isn't it?  I just have this feeling that if I was in America right now, I would desperately long for this place and these people, because it is where my Father has called me to be.  Strange how that works...

We are getting ready for our Summer School Program and all of our short term trips coming in and I AM SO EXCITED!!  I can't wait to meet our new students and even now... even if just for the one week I will be with them, begin to share the truth with them.  Please be asking Dad about our short term trips... for safe travel, easy adjustment, and hearts set on spreading truth.

Have a wonderful Fourth.  Eat a fatty Indian Taco for me and say to yourself, "Here you go, Mackenzie.  I am eating this for you."    Oh ya, that and a pina colada snow cone.

Today is a day that I wish I was home.

I've been very sick the last two days (food poisoning... welcome to China...) and you know how when you are sick, no matter how old you are or how far away from home you are, you just want your mommy??  Well, today is one of those days.  Except although the desire includes my mom, it's more than that.  It's just a desire for home.  For comfort.  For familiarity.  I got out of the shower today and I heard voices coming up the stairwell of my apartment complex (because all the walls here are paper thin and you can hear everything that goes on within a 10 mile radius of where you are at any given moment), and I just almost got mad because the language was one that I couldn't understand.  Is it strange that I've been here this long and I'm just now coming to the point where I wish for home?  I'll be fine, of this I'm sure.  I'll carry on with my day as always... and learn to get over myself and let Dad pour me out for His glory and not my comfort.

But anyway, there's my thoughts for today.  I'll post pictures of our students' graduation soon.

Have a beautiful day.  Enjoy America! 

Hello friends!

Things are still going well here.  My days are filled to the brim and I usually get to Friday of each week going, "where on earth has my time gone??"  My time is literally not my own.  But I am being used up for the glory of my Father, and there is no better place in the whole world to be.  My days usually go something like this:  wake up at around 5 or 5:30am, have breakfast/do my QT/get ready for the day, then class starts at 7:50.  I teach all morning, then have lunch from 12:00 to 1:50 (ya, I LOVE that part... I love it that everyone takes naps after lunch in foreign countries!!) and this is the time that I can usually eat with one or some of my students in order to share the truth, then class again from 1:50 to 5pm.  After that we have from 5-6pm for dinner (which is also another good truth sharing time), then each night I have some sort of B.S. with my students, either with seekers or brothers and sisters.  That ends at 7pm, then I go to Study Hall from 7:30 to 9:30.  Then I go home and go to sleep so that I can wake up and do it all again the next day!!  Can you believe it??  I told you my life wasn't my own.  But Dad is giving me so many opportunities to pour His truth into peoples' lives.

Some quick pictures of my first month here:

Me and Sabrina, one of the grade 1 students, teaching me to cook some of my favorite local dishes.

On a recent trip to Kong Tong (no, not King Kong, Kong Tong) Valley.  Mr. Mu and Mr. Greg, both teachers at our sister school, took Nathan and I there to see "a beautiful wiew!!" (It took me a long time to figure out what Mr. Greg was saying... they can't say their "v's" here, so he was trying to say "view."  It was so funny!

More Kong Tong Valley.  The pictures don't do it justice.  It was breathtaking.  AND I HIKED IF YOU CAN BELIEVE THAT!!!

This picture make me laugh for two reasons:  1) this was toward the end of our hike so we were both WAY sweaty and WAY nasty by this point... which doesn't make for a great picture any way you slice it... and 2) the lighting is really odd in this picture and it sort of looks like we are superimposed onto the background, doesn't it?  But you have my word, we were right there in the middle of all those trees.

Ok... that's enough.  Please be asking Dad on behalf of Grade 2 Ari and Grade 1 Dolly.  They are both students that I have taken a particular "liking" to and am asking that Dad would use me to draw them to Himself.

Ok, that's REALLY enough.  Have a beautiful day, all.