Introducing Mr. Ding

Meet my neighbor Mr. Ding and his youngest child, Wendy. Three times in the last week or so Wendy and Mr. Ding have come over to practice English, and I've chatted with him outside his workshop and in his house 3 doors down on several occasions as well. I also enjoyed sitting with them for an hour or two during a Mid-Autumn Festival barbecue at their house they invited me over to attend.

Mr. Ding is a wood-carver. He carves idols to sell either to individuals or to temples. He is very skilled and also strikes me as a moral, conscientious husband and father.

Tonight after casually teaching English for a half hour or so in my living room, I turned to my laptop to show Mr. Ding and Wendy a few English-Chinese learning tools on the web. I also showed them a few other applications which I thought my interest them. Finally, when I closed the windows, my wallpaper, which shows Rembrandt's depiction of the Prodigal Son, provided a sharing (as well as language-learning) opportunity for me as I opened my computer bible up to Luke 15 and Mr. Ding, who had heard part of the story before, gave me his vernacular Taiwanese rendition line-by-line as he read the biblical story in Chinese silently. When we finished, I pointed out how the moral of the story applies to our Heavenly Father. May God grant that Mr. Ding and Wendy know more of God's love.