Official March Newsletter!

(Please Note again that these official newsletters are not as recent or up to date as my regular blogs due to Company regulations to turn them in two months in advance. This letter was written in Feb.)

I just got home from Beijing (in Feb) where I connected with and reconnected with Team mates. We also celebrated the Chinese New Year (Feb 3) together. It was exactly what the Doctor ordered. I have been in Kunming, Mile, Chengdu, and Beijing now. I have lived, played, studied, and worked in China for over a year now. I have seen many a tourist attraction, eaten countless bowls of noodles, brushed hundreds maybe thousands of shoulders on the bus and it wasn’t until this week in Beijing that I felt really renewed, re-juiced, and revitalized. This truth has caused me to question how to keep electrified in Kunming. And I think it comes down to this basic truth which I am sorry to relay to you all because most of you have already figured this all out but the Basic Truth is that while I have been in Beijing the focus has been on who I am in the Father's Son. Not how well is my Chinese, not whether or not I am contributing, not even what I plan to DO for my Father, but instead it has been about Worshiping Him who has called me and focusing on my rightness with Him.

How to achieve relevant transition into a new culture and a new language depends a lot on attitude. I admit that the past 3 months (Nov, Dec, Jan) I have had a bad attitude. I know that uncomfortable circumstances play a part in attitude but I also know in my head, as well as in my heart that if you have a good attitude it can change how you feel about difficult circumstances. My attitude since about Mid November till about the middle of Jan has been like this: the circumstances of the task set before me (language learning) is not good to the point of hindering my learning and therefore I cannot succeed. This attitude has fed and sustained a sense of depression or gloom over everything I did or didn’t do. I beheld myself in a constant state of guilt. Because I knew that I wasn’t doing everything I could to be an effective learner because I had determined that I had already failed from the start.

I told a friend of mine recently that I was afraid I wasn’t learning as much as I could because I didn’t believe that I could learn Chinese anymore..

All in all it comes down to FEAR. Fear that I will disappoint You (my dear readers), disappoint my Heavenly Father, disappoint my parents, and disappoint my team. And this disappointment steams from failing to achieve the goals or expectations all the above have for me (which is silly because I don’t really know what expectations you all have for me; all I know is the expectations I have for myself).

So in light of being rejuvenated to focus on my relationship with Father versus what I am doing for Him and reminding myself that a good attitude makes a better situation I feel ready to start the new year (the Chinese year of the Rabbit as well as the Western year or 2011) with new purpose and new attitude.

Please ask that I would soak up much in my new school and with my new teachers. I started at my new school Feb 14. Please ask that I be self controlled and diligent to be an active learner and not a passive one. Also ask that I focus more on who Father is rather than on who I am.