A Crutch, A Couch, and A Coach

A crutch, a couch and a coach all represent three different parts of our life right now. We are continuing to serve here in Lijiang, Yunnan, China. We are blessed beyond all measure to be here and to be with the team that God has provided to be with us! The school is surviving and we hope to be faithful stewards of the opportunity that has been allotted to us as I serve as Principal and Jewel serves as Principal’s wife. (I really couldn’t tell you which of those two jobs is harder!)

A Crutch

Well, I’ll start by explaining our most recent difficulty. I LOVE playing soccer. That is not the difficulty. When considering cause and effect you could definitely label my love for soccer as a cause. I was invited to play soccer with my friends Vince, Devin and Redrum. It was a night under the lights. Our team was down at the half (by like 8 points lol) so our coach (who happens to be the boss of my hosts) switched up positions and told me to play forward and not to worry about coming back to defense. So I decided to give it my all! We did pretty well and scored about five points for their 1 in the second half. But, with about 20 minutes left to play, I made a quick stop and a quick turn which worked together to provide a not-so-beautiful popping sound. I felt my knee get weak and started limping. “This has happened before”, I thought to myself. It reminded me a great deal of the time when I tore my ACL playing soccer during my senior year of high school. Well, we thank the Lord that one of our student’s mothers is a doctor at a local tumor hospital that recently got a brand new MRI machine. It took beautiful pictures and I walked out of the… ok I limped out of the hospital with a cane knowing that my ACL was still mostly intact. The small tear will have me using the cane for a month or so while it heals back up. We are very thankful that I do not have to go to Thailand in the middle of the school year for a surgery and that the testing, doctor visit and medication cost less than $100!

Soccer With the Guys

This is My Left Leg :)

A Couch

Alright, this part we are pretty excited about. We presently live fairly far away from the school. The school is in the north part of town and we live in the south. So, Jewel and I have been looking for a new place to move into. Our current apartment is ¥1,800.00 ($265) a month. It has two bedrooms and one bathroom with a living area that together totals 90(ish) square meters (970 square feet). It came with furniture which adds to the price a little bit. If we were going to move we were hoping for a couple of things. We wanted the price to stay in a similar range (2,500 a month max) while growing in size by quite a bit. We want the size to grow so that our family’s size can grow (No, that was not a subtle birth announcement. It is just a fact), and so that we can have people (like you) come to visit and stay with us. This sounds impossible I know. How can you grow in size but not grow in price? It gets more impossible when you know that apartments in the north part of town are generally more expensive anyway! But a verse comes to mind. Matthew 19:26 “… but with God all things are possible.” That’s right, we are currently looking at a two-story, 200(ish) square meter, 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom apartment! God is good. That’s where the couch comes in. Not only is the apartment an amazing size, but it comes almost completely undecorated! This is great because of a term called, “pretty, pretty”. The idea is that if you put two things that are individually pretty together than they will be pretty, pretty! Usually they are just pretty ugly… So we are excited to paint, build, and add items (like a chosen couch) to our new apartment. 

A Coach

This has to do with the school. As we are growing, our older students are well… getting older. So, we are trying to make a way for them to travel to America. Whether it be for high school or university, I am contacting institutions to find out what the requirements will be for our students and how they can stand out in the masses of Chinese students who desire to attend American schools. One way that we are going to get them ready is SAT/ACT prep. Right now our oldest student, Mary, is preparing to graduate in two years. I have started to work as her “coach” on Khan academy as she takes the SAT practice exams and prepares to study abroad. If you know of any schools that might be interested to receive students from our school, please let us know! 

We covet your prayers, and I love hearing from our friends in the states so please drop a line! 

Shalom! and 安从上帝我们的爸爸。
Christopher D. Pearson and Jewel N. Pearson