When It Rains, It Pours!

Our province has been suffering from a three-year-long drought. The fresh water spring, one of the main attractions in our tourist city, has been bone-dry for six months. Many locals are concerned that the glacier on our snow-covered mountain will completely melt away. Luckily for us, we've personally experienced only occasional inconveniences with water shortages.

The dry basin of Black Dragon Pool.

Not so for the capital city of our province, Kunming. With its ever-growing population, people there have perhaps suffered the most. The city has been rationing water to its residents for more than a year, with running water occasionally being only available to certain communities one hour per day! University students there must swipe a pre-paid card to flush toilets and wash their hands in their dorms' restrooms. Though friends living in that city have told us that the rationing is necessary and teaching people to use water responsibly should be a global endeavor, everyone has been hoping for rain.

Summer is rainy season, and the weather this week seems to be trying to make up for lost time. A four day deluge has made many farmers in our valley happy, but wreaked havoc elsewhere. James and I were forced to canceled this weekend's trip to the village because rock and mud slides have damaged the road. And suddenly, Kunming has more water than they know what to do with.

Check out the article and more photos of the flooding on GoKunming.

As I write, runoff is thundering down on our porch awning and pooling several inches deep above the balcony drain. James and I are thankful to be inside, dry and safe. Please think of those who aren't fortunate enough to share our circumstances!

Laura the Farmer

Holding a newborn bunny.

Grafting fruit trees.

Carrying around a baby goat.

Manhandling a stubborn horse.

Street Dentists

Dental work can be expensive. Luckily, we live in a city that offers dental care for all social classes.

My first thought was, "Maybe she's got something stuck in her tooth and her friends are helping her get it out. Like when you get a splinter in your hand or something."

Upon further inspection, my initial thoughts were wrong. It's just a street-side dentist.

Notice his dental kit tucked away inside his motorcycle seat. Classy.

In other news, I saw this VW van in my side-view mirror the other day.

Not Waterproof

No one has ever told me I'm a natural. At anything. If I've achieved anything in my life it's come through a certain amount of hard work and doggedness. But even when I've given it all I've got, I've been an A-minus student, B-relay anchor, and barely-above-average human being. Somehow "A for effort" has never satisfied.

I remember a time I spent weeks hunting for the perfect dress for a wedding I was attending as a guest, only to overhear some girls disparaging my appearance in the bathroom during the event. Another time I was kayaking alone on a lake in Florida, and some fishermen who idled by me in a motor boat called out, "you look like you're working too hard!" Perhaps these are superficial examples, but that I remember them is a testament to how I still wish I could accomplish things with effortless grace. I've yet to catch on to the trick of making life look easy. I struggle to accept that my absolute best is far from perfect.

Of course, I recognize life is hard, we are all flawed, and that we desperately need a Savior. Recently though, I've had to come to terms with the fact that the Heavenly Father is going to keep on reminding me how hard, how flawed, and how desperately. The past few years I've found myself in countless situations that have really been pressing my perfectionism buttons. My hopeful visions of myself as a wife, international student, friend and leader are far from the reality of me in the here and now.

A few months ago I met with an American woman who was speaking at conference James and I attended. She told me she thinks I've confused love with admiration. "It sounds like you'd rather have others' admiration than love. Love doesn't require perfection. In fact, Christ's forgiveness requires us to admit we're incapable of it! Why would you prefer to be a porcelain doll on a shelf? Don't you know a baby that eats, cries, poops and pees is incomparably more valuable?"

She's right of course. But with the fragments of my porcelain head scattered about my feet, it's hard to shrug off the feelings of discouragement. I forget that I can't please God, and that any effort to is in vain.

Sometimes when I listen to Tracy Bonham's song "Whether You Fall" I can't help feeling she's singing to me. Her lyrics are beautiful and capture my feelings of failure:

Whether You Fall

by Tracy Bonham

whether it's the sunshine

whether it's the rain

doesn't make a difference

'til you complain

whether it's the water

comin' in from the roof

does it piss you off

that you're not waterproof?

whether you fall

means nothing at all

it's whether you get up

it's whether you get up

and you hate the silence

as it fills up the room

and there's not much to say

to your blushing groom

maybe all eyes are on you

as you finish the race

and the world sees you struggling

for last place

whether you fall

means nothing at all

it's whether you get up

it's whether you get up

If the groom is Christ, and the race is the Christian life, then yes, I'm pissed off that I'm not waterproof.

So every day I ask God to help me to die to myself and live more wholly in Him. I'm trying to rest in His arms and not see my failures and flaws as disabling, but to look to Christ and be awed and filled by His power, love, and grace. I desperately want to walk closely with God and demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit. In weak, broken, messy failure, I give up and give in. Let me be the dirty, smelly, whiny, imperfect baby who is loved by God.

"But He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong." 2 CORINTHIANS 11:28

"Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. PHILIPPIANS 3:12-14"

Cornhole

James and I have long joked that we are a cross-cultural couple. James is a city boy from Californian, and I'm a small-town girl from Ohio. Though we're from the same country, it doesn't always seem like we're from the same planet.

It has been fun to introduce one another to novelties of our separate worlds. Once upon a time, James introduced me to avocado on a sandwich, carne asada burritos, and fish tacos. I served him up some blue crab and Trail bologna. He took me to see the redwoods, the SD Padres, and Weezer. I showed him a drive-through liquor store, the Amish, and Euchre.

I think the first time I mentioned the game Cornhole to James I made him blush. He'd had no exposure to this well-loved, Midwestern lawn game of bean bag toss. The only reference he had to the word "cornhole" was not a polite one! Though I explained the logic of the game's name, "but the bean bags are filled with corn kernels and you thow them into a hole," James was unconvinced. "Can't you just call it bean bag toss or something?"

It wasn't long, however; before his competitive nature and attraction to anything akin to a sport won him over. He now loves the game despite its crass name, and I've loved beating him at something.

For a long time I've wanted to give James a set of his own. For his birthday this year I finally made it happen! With the help of some amazing friends, I'm proud to say that my roots have rubbed off on him, and James is now a proud owner of a Cornhole set!

The boards and bean bags were all handmade by our good friends Bobby & Vanessa. (Vanessa's mom and I helped a little too.) They did an incredible job! Strangely enough, as Texans they had never seen, heard or played Cornhole either!

And I have to say that I am just about beside myself at the thought of introducing Cornhole into our Chinese community. I feel like such an ambassador of...Midwesternness.