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Tuesday, December 19, 2006

We spent the first half of the day touring some of the important sites in Guangzhou. We started by visiting a Buddhist Temple. We were surprised to see that it was a very active temple, much different from the more historical ones that we’ve seen in Beijing and Nanchang. Here, we saw monks going about their daily chores and many local people coming in to pray and offer incense. Our guides have stressed many times that Buddhism is a philosophy and not a religion, but when you are there, next to someone praying, you realize they place every ounce of faith they have into their beliefs, just as we do.

I was surprised by the impact it had on the boys. We spent much of our time discussing the differences between our belief and faith in a living God and the manner in which they pray and believe. It was a good time to remind ourselves that we all have things in our lives that we can call idols and worship more at times than our God and Savior Jesus Christ.

From there, we went to the Chen Ancestral Hall dating back to AD500. It was a beautiful series of halls, rooms and garden where we were able to view historic art dating back to the same period in ivory, jade, porcelain and embroidery.

Finally, we finished with a little shopping at a local store, seemingly devoted to tourists.

We spent the remaining day with family and friends here.

We want to stress how much we enjoy hearing from you in our guestbook and email. It’s the voices from home that we need to hear and reinforces what we already know to be true, that we are being prayed for, which means more than we can express. Thank you for your love, your words, and your caring.

Grace and the boys continue to do well. Tucker has fully recovered from his bout with a fever. Tammy, Tim and Phil also are doing well. Everyone is looking forward to the trip home on Friday.

A huge congratulations to Sienna who just graduated from college in Montana!!!!!

Love you all,

The Andrews Gang

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