The End

We are writing this in Detroit, waiting on our next connecting flight. We’ll be in Chattanooga in 7 hours! Yesterday, we said ‘goodbye’ to China. We remember being sad when we left home in August. That is nothing compared to the feeling we have now. When we left America, we knew we’d be coming back and that we’d see our family and friends again. Leaving China, we don’t know if we’ll go back, or if we’ll see our ‘family’ and friends from there again. It was very hard to say goodbye to them all. Our last week in classes the students did ‘goodbye’ speeches to us and their classmates. They talked about what they enjoyed in the class, and something they want us to remember about them. A lot of them were very sweet, and almost brought us to tears in class. We had been planning to do something with all the students at the end of the semester. We thought we’d have a party for each class, but it was too busy to schedule because of their finals (they even take tests on Saturday and Sunday). So, we just decided to have a party for them all on one day. We made it like a ‘come and go’ party between 3 and 8pm. We ended up having over 150 students into our apartment throughout the day! We really didn’t expect that good of a turn out. We expected like 50 at the most. But they all wanted to come and give us gifts and tell us goodbye. We bought tons of snacks and made some homemade cookies for them. But, like I said we didn’t expect that many, so the cookies were gone by 4:30! But, they loved them while they lasted!! Also, during our last week, we were able to hang out with most of our closest Chinese friends. We managed to hold back tears, until our last night. It started when we went to one of our favorite restaurants, that we call the ‘Muslim Restaurant’ (because it’s owned by Muslims). The workers have become some of our really good friends....even though they don’t speak any English. We just communicate with our broken Chinese, gestures, and charades. Sometimes they just sit us while we’re eating and don’t say anything, they just like being around us. We went to tell them goodbye late Sunday night, and one of them started crying. So....of course that got us going!!! After saying our last minute goodbyes, we stayed up late doing last minute packing and cleaning. Since then, it’s pretty much been a blur since we haven’t really slept much. Now, we’re just experiencing sensory overload! All we see is white people...everywhere!! And we can understand everything they’re saying!! And we just finished eating some Chips & Queso at Chilli’s.....yum!!!! Now, we’re super excited about seeing some family and friends here in a few hours!
Overall, this year has been amazing! We have grown so much during our time away, both spiritually and as a couple. We’ll admit...we had our share of ’what in the world are we doing here?’ moments. J And some times we were tired of rice, crowds, buses, and pollution. But looking back, we’re very glad we went and feel like God worked through us. We now feel like we’re leaving our home, to go to this strange land, called America. A place where the only real crowd is present at the mall on the day after Thanksgiving (which really is nothing!), a place with normal toilets, tacos, hotdogs, and where babies wear diapers. We can’t believe that this journey is over for us, but we’re ready to start whatever God has in store for us. Thanks for keeping up with us and tagging along in our journey. Your thoughts, prayers, support, and encouraging words were really appreciated!
See you soon!