Bicycle adventure 1/17/10

Dear family,

Today Sister Busath and I went on a bicycle adventure. It is really pleasant today, blue skies and warm enough I don't need a sweater or tights. We started at the harbor, and just followed it, figuring the coastline eventually would lead somewhere interesting; if not even the harbor was impressive. There were huge steamers and ships and green hills and a boarded path to follow. We eventually found a man made bay wall and walked out to the end of it and enjoyed the view of the China Sea. There were lots of fishermen on it and we couldn't tell if it was a hobby or a livelihood for some of them. We had been intending to buy lunch somewhere but couldn't find anything so ate Mike and Ikes and decided to keep going.

We found a beach in front of a hotel. We had to pay a dollar to get in but had it all to ourselves. It had very soft black sand and palm trees and beach chairs. It made me like a rich person on vacation. We just soaked up the sun and waves and relaxing atmosphere. It is rare to be a missionary and not have anything to do or anyone you feel like you should talk to. We may go back. Mmmm, there is something very relaxing about a day at the seaside.

Okay, on to Weird Story of the Week

This week we had some extra time so decided to go visit a woman from dead stack. She was very nice, invited us in and to come back and to "call her if we needed help with activities" (yeah, I don't know...). However, she told us she is Yiguandao. Yiguandao is sort of a belief system or religion but you ask someone what they believe in, they are very hazy what it means to be Yiguandao. They believe in Budda, Jesus, Muhammed, a pleathora of local gods - pretty much everyone. Apparently though, this woman's husband decided that he wanted to go baibai at a different miao than he usually does. When he was there they him buy some pills for his health. He took the pills and died a week later. This all just happened in November. We aren't sure if she thinks it was the pills that killed him, the new god he worshiped, or his usual gods punishing him for baibaiing someone else. Anyway, she's not quite ready to try out new religions yet.

Sometimes I understand all the words in Chinese but still don't understand what people are saying because it sounds so weird that I figure I must NOT understand. I'll be listening, and think, What I think she is saying is so bizarre that I must be misunderstanding.
A lot of times I am not though.

Sister Busath and I have been running up a bit of Monkey Mountain and some stairs instead of our normal river-side route. I think it was really inspired because this week we have randomly needed to climb 10 and 12 flights of stairs a couple times this week. Normally, climbing 12 flights of stairs would be rather unpleasant, but it actually was fine, thanks to our training :) Neither of the people were home though... go figure. It got one of them to come to church and start answering her phone though :)

Alright, much love!
Sister Johnson



Cami's short letter response to Donna:

Wow, I'm glad you made it okay to Virginia! It sounds like you were really blessed not to have problems that could have presented itself. I sure am sorry to miss the cowboy poetry gathering. Everytime I try to tell someone about it, they don't get it :) Thanks for the pictures

FML
Cami