Dear Life Light friends:

We just returned from our summer short term mission and retreat trip. With blessings, it was a great one trip.

We left L.A. on June 8th evening and started our work in Beijing until June 15th. During that time, we stayed in Beijing Blind School for 5 days. As usual, we taught students English conversation and hymns. It was quite different from previous trips. There are two different divisions in this school. One provides regular education from elementary to high school for the blinds, the other is a Chinese medicine massage therapy vocational high school. We have to teach two different kinds of English, regular conversation and massage terms. It is a government run school so we had to be careful what we said and taught. We needed to make sure we were not violating the school regulations. It was quite a task especially when we explained what the hymns meant and gave some background.

We also had chance to visit some massage clinics which are mostly owned and run by students whom we supported in the past. It was very nice to see and talk with those old friends. Our visit gave them some encouragement because most of them are still struggling to survive on their own business ventures.

We then took the bullet train to visit the Blind Vocation High School in Zheng Zhou. We were at the school until June 22nd. We joined with some students and the school staffs who we knew from our visit last year. Those old friends were overwhelmingly happy to see us again. We taught them English massage terms and hymns. We also took them to out on a one day outing which was very joyful. Then it was the time to say good-bye to the students. When we came out of the school in the early morning, we saw students lined up in two rows in front of the school entrance and we had to go through the human gauntlet. All the short term mission members were shaking hands with students with tears.

After this, Ines and I went to a nearby city, Xin Xiang, the same day. We were hosting a Summer Retreat for Blind adults who came from different locations in China. There were around 60 blinds and 30 sighted people that attended this event. We stayed there until June 27th. It was such an exciting gathering. All attending blinds were either seminary students or different fellowship group leaders. We all have been communicating with each other through the computer online programs regularly. But it was a rare opportunity for all to have this chance to meet in person. They sang hymns, prayed and studied with high spirits. Some of them expressed their appreciation for our help to the Chinese blinds. They strongly felt that it is about time for them to think how they can start to take over part of the responsibility of this ministry themselves. It was exact what we were hoping for.

We have reserved the space with 888 Seafood Restaurant for our annual sharing dinner party on Saturday, Oct. 11 in the evening. Please mark the date on your calendar, we do hope all our friends can join us this year. We will email an invitation letter to you late August/early September.

With blessing,
William Lei