Update #2- Tibet

Hello Everyone. Once again, I have taken far too long with updating this thing. It has been difficult finding time on a computer with a team around... But finally, the team has returned home, and Sam and I are alone at his parent's hourse. Over the next days, as I'm at Sam's house, and once I go to Chengdu in 5 days, I am going to try to put in a few updates marking the major sections of the second half of the summer in China.
This first part, I want to tell you about Tibet! We were in Xining, a city in Western China, very close to Tibet, for a few weeks. During this time, we traveled up into Tibet for 6 days. It was an amazing experience, and although we never stayed at one spot very long, we had a great time being exposed to Tibetan culture first-hand.
One of the greatest blessings was the opportunity to go to Yushu. For those of you from Fayetteville, you have probably heard this name before. For the rest of you, Yushu is (or was) a city in Western China of about 30,000 people, primarily known for being the hub of trade for Kham Tibetans (a sub-ethnicity of Tibetans). It has been focused on for ministry through a rug factory for the last 12+years, but over a year ago, an earthquake hit the town, causing complete destruction of the entire town, and killing thousands. But as well as destructive, this earthquake caused an amazing response in believing circles, both Chinese and foreigners, and helped bring about the establishment of the first group of brothers and sisters ever known of among Kham Tibetans! Our group had the opportunity of visiting the place where these people meet and got to work for a day moving around the city with some Chinese brothers and sisters that were also there for short term. Although our stay in Yushu was small, it was an absolutely incredible blessing to see a glimpse of what amazing things were going on in the midst of this destruction. Although the Chinese government wants complete control in rebuilding Yushu, there is still an amazing amount of friends (mostly Chinese) getting involved with the building process, and trying to give people hope.

I will try to post pictures, as soon as this dumb computer will let me!

More updates to come in the next days! Keep checking in!