This is why we serve...

Early Saturday morning, Dar and I headed out by ourselves and left the younger girls sleeping. :) We had plans to meet up with them later at the Forbidden City. We traveled almost 2 hours across Beijing in order to go to a little shop that sells American Girl doll clothes and accessories at a MUCH reduced price. (If you have a daughter that adores her American Girl dolls, you'll understand. Especially when said daughter is growing up WAY too fast and this might just actually be the last time one ever buys doll clothes for her again!) Upon arrival at the little shop, we discovered it was closed! Ugh. (We did get a number to call the owner and discovered she'd be there the next afternoon. We went back the next day and dug through piles of doll clothes to find several matching sets to take back to my #1 daughter.)

But after discovering that the shop was closed, we decided to go to the Lama Temple since we had several hours before we were supposed to meet the girls.

Found these beautiful New Years' decorations so we sweet-talked a stranger into taking a picture of both of us.

The Yonghe Temple, or Lama temple is a temple and monastery of the Geluk School of Tibetan Buddhism located in the northeastern part of Beijing. It is one of the largest and most important Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in the world. The building and the artworks of the temple combine Han Chinese and Tibetan styles.

Other than the enjoying the obvious detailed beauty of the structures, our visit here was a very vivid reminder of why we are serving in Asia-Pacific. There are countless numbers of people in Asia that do not know the truth. But each of these numbers represents a face and a heart of someone who needs to hear about Jesus.

From Isaiah 44...

"From the rest he makes a god, his idol;
he bows down to it and worships.
He prays to it and says,
“Save me! You are my god!”
They know nothing, they understand nothing;
their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see,
and their minds closed so they cannot understand." (vv. 17-18)

Notice all the money and incense that has been given

So thankful for this real-to-life example in my life. I love her heart.

Prayer wheels

Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

One of the MANY stands where one could buy incense to burn

I will end this post with two videos that we took that day. I pray it will challenge you to pray for those all over the world who are spreading the Truth.