Day 4: The time is going so quickly and by this time in the trip I'm starting to notice a lost day. It's a 16hr time difference from the Pacific Coast time zone. My first few days in China I was so out of whack I didn't really think much of it but now I'm waking up pretty consistently at 3am. Interesting to note that the beds in China, at least the ones I've seen, are all hard. More like sleeping on a box spring than a mattress that we would be familiar with. My first night I thought, "that's strange" and then slept fine. We are not running into too many tourists this time of year and we're starting to notice every where we go we stand out more and more. We left Chengdu this morning and traveled to Xi-Cong. Each time we pick up and move it feels like we're getting deeper and deeper into China. The country side gets to be a bit more rural and the towns in between see a bit smaller. Now that being said these are still huge cities by our standards,and they're not far from population centers of millions of people.

 Here is a church outside Xi-Cong. It started with prayer. Really, it started with the prayers of 1 woman, then 10, then more and more, and the word spread and a church was built.

This is the sanctuary. The building used to be a candy making factory and they've now converted it into a church. The founding members got a great deal on a government foreclosure deal. They're prayers we answered a thriving church was born.

Here are some of those faithful church ladies.  They pray for their church and their community.  They are excited and grateful to be a part of a church.  

Another picture of the women of the church.  

This little boy kept popping up in places to keep an eye on us.  He eventually came out of his hiding spot to be our friend. 

Classic scene of meat drying in a small village market.  From what I heard it is fairly common but more popular for New Year celebrations.  

Here is a picture of a farmer in the fields.  We are still pretty close (relatively) to a huge city but you don't have to travel far to get out into rural China.  Food production for a country this big is important and we saw a lot land in production.  

This picture was taken from a balcony in one of the restaurants we ate in for lunch.  There were two weddings going on at the same time on either end of the hall.  It seemed to be a strange mix of ancient marriage ceremony, western marriage, and a show or production.  The wedding pictured here even had pyrotechnics!  The service was fairly short, there was a lunch and that was that.   

Our trip has been amazing so far.  We've seen a lot and we have a lot yet to see.  I am so inspired by the church and its sense of mission.  The people here seem to be excited to do the work of spreading the good news in word and deed.  It's been a great joy to see and be a part of what's going on here in China!