Our Typical Day

I remember the first thing I asked about the previous LST team was "What's your typical day look like?" So I feel like we should have a post on that.

Our typical schedule for a day looks something like this:

Devotional 8:00 – 8:30
Breakfast
1st Class 10:00
2nd Class 11:00
Lunch
3rd Class 1:00
4th Class 2:00
5th Class 3:00
6th Class 4:00
7th Class 5:00
Dinner
8th Class 7:00
9th Class 8:00
10th Class 9:00

In the morning we get together and have our morning devotional to start the day. This week we have talked about the importance of daily Bible reading, the power of God’s word, and the spiritual disciplines. After our devotional we have breakfast together. Sometimes we eat oatmeal in our room and other times we go across the street to a fast food restaurant. We found the Chinese equivalent of Granola bar and oatmeals. They taste pretty good.

After breakfast we take a 15 minute walk to the shopping mall where we have our reading sessions. The mall is very modern and similar to the malls in Dallas. The mall has a food court with Starbucks, McDonald’s, KFC, Dairy Queen, and of course lots of Chinese restaurants.

We have our morning reading sessions at 10:00 and 11:00. Most of the readers during this time are college students. In the evenings we study with working professionals.


After our morning reading sessions we meet for lunch. Andrew and Jaime try to join us for lunch every day. And then after lunch we run any errands that we need to run. Yesterday we went to the post office, China Post, and mailed some things to Wendy’s sister in Shenzhen and her parents in Shihezi. The day before we went to Walmart to buy some supplies for the LST party on Sunday afternoon.

The afternoon reading sessions start at 1:00 and continue until 5:00. When we have gaps in our reading sessions we stand outside the mall near the bus stop and hold English corner. When the interested people approach us we tell them that we are Christians from America and we are here to help them improve their English by reading out of the book of Luke in the Bible.

In the evening reading sessions we have the most readers. Sometimes we have to double up two readers per worker to accommodate them.

We have reading sessions on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. On Sunday we worship with the local church and fellowship with them. Tuesday is our day off each week. On our first day off we visited the Pearl Market and The Temple of Heaven.

The Temple of Heaven is an ancient Chinese site where emperors would make an annual animal sacrifice to ask God to bless their crops. The annual ritual included a day of fasting and abstinence before making the offering and asking for the blessing. The emperor would also write out his prayers and then burn them on the altar where the sacrifice was made.

Yesterday during my reading session I observed the vast difference between an open heart and a skeptical heart. One of my readers wants to know more and more and is attracted to the light of Jesus. Another reader is repelled by his teachings and wants to continue to living in darkness.

We are healthy and enjoying beautiful fall weather in Beijing. We give thanks to God for this! And more than that we are thankful to be serving our Lord no matter where we are in the world.