Yes, our 10 weeks of community English classes for adults – running on Tuesday evenings for beginners and Thursday afternoons for the more advanced (each class 90 minutes) – are now over for this semester, and last night we brought both groups together for a ‘Happy Ending’ Party! Ah, it was so much fun! Friends, families and a large group of our student fellowship turned up too and added some extra energy to the occasion.

Each of the English class members brought along some yummy food, I prepared some games and our good friends Marge and David provided the sharing and entertainment. We all danced along to the ‘Playing for Change’ YouTube video of ‘What a Wonderful World’ by Louis Armstrong, and as everyone in that video is wearing different brightly-coloured T-shirts, so Marge and David gave each one of us a T-shirt from their T-shirt company. Thank you!

We played Musical Chairs….

And Musical Statues with animals – check out the photos below and you can see penguins, elephants, giraffes, frogs, snakes, spiders, crocodiles, pigs and more. We even had the same 2 winners as for the Musical Chairs, the 2 ladies – one in red and one in yellow with me above – they really got into the drama below, so real!

Special thanks to the most important person in these English classes ~ Shiao-Chien, one of our church members – formerly our senior warden – and retired military officer here at St. John’s University. She and Marge are founding members from years ago, they both come to the Thursday afternoon class, and Shiao-Chien also comes every Tuesday evening to help with the beginner’s class, many of whom are her friends and neighbours. Marge often helps out if Shiao-Chien needs a week off. Shiao-Chien organizes everything – it’s all so wonderful! Every week she also prepares 5 minutes of faith-sharing / Bible teaching (in Chinese) at the end of each class, while the Thursday afternoon class currently has the first half of the class devoted to a Bible Story. This is part of the outreach ministry of Advent Church, everyone is welcome – of whatever faith and none, and classes are free – with lots of fun!

We finished with a prayer…

And of course a group photo!

Thanks to everyone who came along, and to our SJU Chaplain Rev. Wu for taking most of the photos. These classes had to be cancelled in the spring semester earlier in the year as a precaution against Covid-19, but with no domestic transmission since Easter, we are so pleased they could take place in this autumn semester. Thanks be to God for his many blessings ~ and here’s to the next semester of English classes, starting, we hope, after Chinese New Year!