美國哥哥的日記:31 13 Sept 2010
Version 4 Vol. #6 Sept. 13th , 2010
Greeting from the Unique City of San Ming, China,

The Close of the Summer Working Program

Finally the end of my summer working program with my six woodshop boys. I was glad because it is hard work for me to keep 6 boys working hard. All together I believe the program was very successful. I was a little bit depressed by the activity of the boys on their last two weeks of work. It seemed that after the boys made some money their desire to work became almost nothing. So the last week I had to persuade and prod and encourage my boys to keep going. But my boys had fun spending their pay checks. Some of the boys bought new shoes, others new books, one boy bought a guitar. Some of the boys tried to save their money, but others just went and bought a bunch of junk food. It was so interesting watching the personalities of these children in how they spent their money. I trust and I know they learned some lessons of life. Maybe not as much as I learned or as much as I wanted them to learn but it was all worth it!!!

My Sister’s American Groups Visit
My sister and brother along with my two cousins a second cousin and three other American friends came to San Ming Children’s Village to help with a week of Summer camp for the children. It was hard work, but it was rewarding work. I was excited to have some people to whom I could speak to in English. I was also happy for accomplices to help me sneak off to Mc Donald’s to eat something besides rice. We spilt the children into several different groups. The mornings were filled with English classes. It was good practice for the children because now theses English teachers did not understand Chinese. The American group had many different activities planned for the afternoon including baking, sports, games, art, etc… Friday Night was game night after the games we had a hot dog roast out on the basketball court. On Saturday morning we had a spelling bee for each English class. The reward for winning the spelling bee was the privilege to accompany the American group Sunday evening to a fancy restaurant. When It came time for my friends to finally leave some of the children cried and I also almost cried, but they left me with several pounds of good American cheese, double stuffed Oreo cookies, Orbit gum, American beef jerky, Combos, and other American snack foods. Wow! I think they should come more often!

An Unsung Hero!
No electric on the second floor. Stephen ge ge come help! Being a Jack of all trades is good but sometimes it is annoying because I am the guy that gets called when things go wrong. When I came back from Hong Kong from renewing my visa it seemed the children did not even say welcome back but they started listing off all the stuff that needed to be fixed. Light bulbs, bathroom doors, closets, sink faucets, etc… This time it was the electric outlets. So the first thing I did was unplug all outlet items and check the circuit again. It still trips! Bummer! That means there is a problem inside the wall or with an outlet or junction box. I took apart some of the outlets and start disconnecting junction boxes. Arg! The circuit still trips. By now the sun was down and the children were all in bed and I should be in bed to. Okay I’ll wait till morning to fix the problem. In the morning after all the children went to school I started working again, but this time the circuit stays on. Wow! What happened? Maybe water got into a circuit box, but I check and no water. Maybe the fire battery emergency lights charger was causing the problem. No it was not the battery emergency lights. I started to Thank God for answering my prayer in fixing the electric problem, but then 5 hours later the circuit trips again. What is going on? I was determined to find the problem. After much searching I found the problem. The problem was we just had a metal gate installed on the second floor and when the people installed the gate they drilled into one of the electric wires. The gate was metal so sometimes depending on how the gate was positioned it was able to carry electric current. Causing the reason for sometimes electric and sometime no electric. Once I knew the problem was it took me about half a day to install another wire and fix the problem. The children do not know the danger they were in but I have saved them from a shocking gate opening experience. Heh!

Thanks for your Prayers and Support,
Stephen Burkholder