I am going to Nanchang! It's a city of four million people in the southeast of China and has the world's largest ferris wheel. It also receives over five feet of rain a year. (The residents of ND would resort to bad things for that much rain.) I expect it to be the biggest adventure of my life thus far. I, along with five other team members and one fearless leader, will teach conversational English to university students until June. Am I scared? Of teaching, yes. Of assimilating to another culture, a little. Of the adventure as a whole...no. Tonight, on the precipice of our flight to Beijing, looking off the cliff into the great unknown, I am filled with a certainty and peace that I haven't felt for a long time. The past handful of years has been tulmultuous, filled with jolting and often painful readjustments to my way of thinking about the Father, the world, and my place in relation to the two. I've come out the other side more hardened, but also more certain that I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him against that day. Here in room 513 of the Best Western in Rancho Cucamonga, California, I know that I am loved with a love that overturns worlds.


Fact of the day: China's wildlife includes tigers, leopards, snow leopards, monkeys, yaks, and giant pandas. The panda's food of choice, bamboo, can grow up to one meter per day! Yum.