More tea, please.

What a lovely evening. It was Bible study night for our group of girls from church, and we had the pleasure of a guest speaker. We listened to her tell of her experiences as a missionary in China. She moved there five years ago after her husband passed away, leaving her kids and grandkids here, a somewhat surprising decision since she was more of a homebody, always wanted to be close to her kids, and didn't like to fly. But she had a willing heart and a passion to teach English to students over there. She had so many beautiful pictures to share and stories to tell, many of which brought tears to my eyes, especially the stories about helping the kids in the orphanages. The hostess even had some customary tea for us to drink and fruit and cookies to snack on. We tried two types of teas, chrysanthemum and blooming flower, the second of which was our favorite. The chrysanthemum was bitter tasting, but the blooming flower, well, I don't know how else to describe it -- it really tasted just like what a beautiful flower smells like.

(This picture from Flickr is similar to what her blooming flower tea looked like.)

She also had a fun little game for us where we had to try our skills out with chopsticks by transferring caramels, cherry sours, and lemon drops from one cup to another. I've never been able to eat any meals with chopsticks, so I had to concentrate quite hard to grab those candies with just the chopsticks, which, of course, was still far easier than when I have attempted to eat rice with them. Of course I had no problems at all eating the candies...

It's nights like these that remind me of the importance of remembering that God can use us at any age, any stage of life, if only we are willing. We don't have to go overseas to be used as missionaries. We just need to be willing to plant the seeds and allow Him to do the rest.