Tea Culture

Drinking tea can be a real art form in China. Pu Er Tea is considered a treasure of Yunnan province, and its leaves can be bought from any normal price up to even a thousand dollars per kilogram! Tea bags are not normally used, like we have in the West. Loose leaves sit at the bottom of a glass and one learns to wait until they are all settled (none floating) before attempting to drink. Or, as in these pictures, a process of cleaning the leaves and filtering them in a small pot takes place...

Then it is poured into very small dishes (not really cups) and sipped on. To do it right, however, you must smell it first. Also, don't forget to appreciate its color!

We can literally spend hours tasting different tea, sitting around a special table like this. It is an excellent community experience, as different people can come and go and sit and chat.

A Fine Delay

On a recent trip to the farm project area that we are helping, we got lined up to the side of the road for 1 1/2 hours due to a truck wiping out and blocking the road, several miles ahead. Some vehicles that arrived earlier were stuck much longer!



It usually takes about 9 hours on the road to get to the project area. After the delay, we took off and got some food. Then a little farther along the way, we came to yet another accident and traffice jam! Stuck again for another hour and a half!



So our normal 9 hours on the road became 12 hours! When I later told my wife about all my reeling and buzzing from being in the Jeep so long, she reminded me that it had to be much better than the earlier years, when missionaries of old had to travel that far on ox carts or mules. No paved roads either, and it sometimes took weeks!

We can always find something to be thankful for! And the trip was worth it- had a great time with the workers.

Two Walls

The Great Wall...

...and the Great Firewall....

Can't get to Blogger, YouTube, or Facebook so easily these days. Enjoy them, you who can!

Mountain Adventures

A bathroom without porcelain,
And some other shots from a recent village trip...

Talking to my wife- I could get a phone signal if I stood in just the right place and did not turn my head while talking! Phone battery was running low, though, and there was no electricity in the village.


So how does one cook without electricity here?

Having stormed early in the morning, we left on wet mountain ledges- the scariest driving I had ever done. At one spot we had to stop to let a truck coming from the opposite direction pass. Thankfully, this stretch of road was not one of the steep inclines, and it was wide enough to pass. But just to be safe we stopped as close to the mountain as possible. This was a real slippery section. All turned out well.

Picking Tea

The areas that I travel to are known for their famous tea. Now I am helping some brothers make connections for selling some of this tea. It helps the farmers in the countryside and it gives the brothers opportunities to be involved with their lives. See the beautiful terraced fields that are farmed across so many mountains in the south...


These past two years have thrust me into business and agriculture, something I never would have dreamed of! After teaching for so long, it is quite a change. Still working in education, however. Relationships with the schools are still intact. Have placed some students and working on placing some teachers.

Perhaps the schools would be interested in buying some tea?

Celebrating the Resurrection

Jesus lives...

The living Christ makes a real difference in the lives of those who turn to Him. And that is only the beginning. We too shall be resurrected in the end.

"Why should it be thought incredible by you that God raises the dead?" Acts 26:8.

Justin Martyr, A.D.155, answering skeptics concerning a future resurrection:

Consider this hypothesis; if you were not such as you are, born of such parents, and someone were to show you the human seed and a picture of a man, and assure you that the one could grow into the other, would you believe it before you saw it happening? No one would dare to deny [that you wouldn't]. In the same way unbelief prevails about the resurrection of the dead because you have never seen an instance of it. But as you at first would not have believed that from a little drop such beings [as men] could develop, yet you see it happening, so consider that it is possible for human bodies, dissolved and scattered in the earth like seeds, to rise again in due time by God's decree and be clothed with incorruption.