God is moving us !

In a little more than a week from now we will be boarding a plane to Beijing China. Things are starting to come together for the trip. I am excited. I got an email today though that surprised me but I am at peace about it. We were pretty much told that we will not be having a camp in Beijing after all. What??? Yes that is true. Due to the heigtened security surrounding the upcoming Olympic games we will not be camping in Beijing. A couple of days ago a small team of Bring Me Hope staff took a train to Xinzheng City in the Henan province to explore the possibility of moving camp to this area. They connected with a local university and they were very willing to host our camp. They just got final approval today. You can check out the school's website here http://www.sias.edu.cn/en/
Bill and I will still be going to Beijing for two days of siteseeing. We will then fly to Zhengzhou which is about an hour flight. It was either that or travel up to eight hours by train. We figured it would be better time management to fly. Spending the extra money at this point is incidental. God is amazing though, He never shuts a door without opening another. Sias International University where we will be having the camp is the first solely American-owned University in central China. They are affiliated with Zhengzhou University and in cooperation with Fort Hays State University in Kansas. Pretty cool!! Check out the campus map below.


I found this info on Henan province on Wikipedia. The name Henan means "south of the (Yellow) River" (Huang He). With nearly 100 million people, Henan is the most populous province of China by residency. It borders Hebei to the north, Shandong to the northeast, Anhui to the southeast, Hubei to the south, Shaanxi to the west, and Shanxi to the northwest. Henan is a relatively poor province and given its large population of almost 100 million people, its GDP per capita is only about US$1,670. Since undergoing reforms, however, the speed of economic development has increased by an average of about 10% each year for the past twenty years. If it were its own country, it would be the twelfth most populous, just behind Mexico.

I think this trip is going to be an awesome expierence. I will post more updates soon.