A Blessing to My Heart!!
When I first came to China, on the very first day I arrived, I was taken to a small tiny, dingy hole in the wall restaurant, by one of the other foreign teachers from Jiangxi Normal University. She and all the other foreign teachers frequented this little place regularly. The food inexpensive and it was GREAT! One only needed to walk outside the back door of the “old” campus and walk a few feet and you were there. The owner is a hard working, kind and intelligent woman who works very hard, along with her husband (who is the cook) to provide for the family.
Since my Chinese skills are not very good and going there regularly, she learned quickly the dishes that I liked and she started to learn their English names so that we could communicate. This way I helped her with her English pronunciation and she was able to understand communicate all the foreigners when it came to food items and certain dishes. This helped the foreigners and her business as well.
Because the poor little restaurant was so dingy many still would not come there, so God laid it on my heart to use this little restaurant as a community project for my speech students. I had a student interpret for me to explain to the owner that I wanted to clean-up, paint and redecorate her little shop so that more people would come and so that it would be more sanitary and attractive. At first she couldn’t agree to closing it for a few days so we could do it but she finally agreed. I hired some street workers to first come and clean and degrease the place. Then the students and I went shopping for paint, brushes, and equipment and then borrowed some ladders from our university.
It took two days, a group of visiting foreigners from Chicago and my speech students to get it all cleaned, painted and looking sparkling clean and new. The owner made sure that we were feed, some of her wonderful dishes and my students were given a wonderful opportunity to do something they had NEVER done before… paint rooms in a building. They had a ball and took part in giving back to their local community. What a great time was had by all, even though it WAS a LOT of work!
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