Packing my bag for the trip this weekend to get Chowon.

Looks like we may not get much help with the last stage in this ordeal... but when mankind is deceitful and stingy, everyone suffers.

Lies and greed.

So, the online world is getting more and more cool all the time... It's too bad it's online.

We had some Chinese workers at our factory today. We ate lunch with them, and they took pictures everywhere we went. They even took pictures of the sky -- like, it's just going to be a blue photo, because we don't have clouds here that often, and there were none today.

In my highlighting project, I'm going to do the 10 commandments tomorrow. I'm kinda nervous and excited about it! I'm finally getting into the law, and this is such a special and important chapter. What a treasure! What a privilege, to be given liberty to mark up the very words of God, so precious in the eyes of all of God's great nation. God, who speaks and the universe transitions from nothingness to chaos, and from chaos to order, and from order to conscious awareness. God who encapsulates all of life's mysteries, all wisdom, all love, all goodness, in just a few words. God who strikes terror into the heart of all Hell itself by simply quoting his own words, "Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only." Those words, God wrote on a page, and invited us to study them, know him through them, and utilize all the power that comes with being a representative of God by sharing them with one another. God, mighty. God, just. God, merciful.

I've read the histories. I know that God's people have suffered much worse on earth than I will ever suffer. I'm stressed, but I know that God will provide. Even if I do suffer, I know that God is able to make it bearable; to give peace in our hearts; and to protect us from compromising our integrity.

Take James, for example, the brother of Jesus. He was known by the Jews as "James the Just" because of the time he spent on his knees in the temple, praying for God to have mercy on Jerusalem before the foretold and imminent Day of the Lord (though we know how hard the punishment on Jerusalem ended up being -- the recorded histories of it are extremely graphic), and some ancient records have him nicknamed "leather-knees" due to the callouses on his knees from all that time keeling to pray. All this he did while Christians in his own town were being killed on a regular basis just for being Christian. In spite of his excellent reputation and his well-known hopes for the betterment of Israel, and the harmlessness of his behaviors, when the Jews were satisfied with their certainty that James would not forsake worshiping and serving his half-brother Jesus, he was dragged out of the temple and beaten for it. Seeing that he would not give up his faith even when beaten, he was brought to the top of the temple and thrown off, and then seeing that he survived in a state of physical brokenness, he was beaten again until he died. No amount of righteousness on earth will shield a Christian man from earthly suffering. But this we know about James: he did not give up his conscience. He died with integrity, and he lives in Heaven with our God in eternal, blissful fellowship with his Redeemer.

Whatever happens, I know that God will enable me to complete the race, and I pray all the time that God would provide and enable me to provide, and that things would not be difficult for my family.

"Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die."