The Triumphant Return!

About a month-and-a-half ago, my friend e-mailed me and told me that she missed reading my blog posts.  Apparently, my last post was over a year and a half ago... That's a long time - especially in a city like Shanghai.

In that time span, my sister got married, some of my best friends have left Shanghai, and I've come to learn a little bit more about myself and the God I serve.

But Christ in me, the hope of glory, remains. And I want to continue thanking Him each and every day for His new mercies, His providence, and His blessing.

So let me share a little story about God's providence.  At the expense of my beautiful sister on the night before her wedding day.

On the day of the wedding rehearsal (which was one day before the wedding day), my sister went with her bridal party to go get manicures.  For the manicure, she took her engagement ring off and tucked it into her jean pocket and promptly forgot about it.  As she was running late for the actual rehearsal - literally making the pastor and everyone else wait - she changed quickly in the empty parking lot of the nail salon and was driven to the church by her maid of honor Christine.

About three hours later, we were done with the rehearsal and were heading to Rudy's for dinner.  Christine walks up to me, pulls me away from my friend, and tells me: "Your sister can't find her ring.  We searched my car and it's not there.  She thinks it may have fallen out while she was changing in the parking lot."  Christine was surprisingly calm while she told me this - my sister, on the other hand, was actually a little pale.  Quite an accomplishment, really, because me and my sister are actually pretty tan (much to the chagrin of my Taiwanese mother). 

So my sister starts insisting on going with Christine and me to the nail salon to try and find the ring.  No dice.  She has to stay at the restaurant and host the rehearsal dinner with my brother-in-law.

Christine and I pile into her SUV, start driving to the nail salon... only to figure out 15 minutes later that we were going west on the highway when we should have been going east.  In the meantime, my sister keeps calling and asking us if we're there yet and continues to insist on taking her car to join us at the nail salon.  My job, during this entire time, is talk my sister into staying at the restaurant.  In my head, all I can think of is trying to picture what the ring looks like and where I can go buy a similar one at 10 pm on a Saturday night.  I quickly give up that thought and start praying.  Please Lord, let us find that ring!

30 minutes (but it really seemed more like an eternity) after we left the restaurant, Christine pulls into the parking lot, and as soon as her car's headlights hit the parking lot pavement, I see something shining.  I jump out of the car, grab the ring (not even checking whether it's Shan's or not) and we start driving back to the restaurant.

The entire time we're driving back to the restaurant, all I keep saying is: "Thank you Lord. Thank you, thank you, thank you."  It's just a rock, but He knew it was important to Shan and her family.