I write this update as our US friends & family at home are sleeping Friday evening - it’s Saturday afternoon in China, and the Mills family has great news to report. We are doing well. Our flights were great (but LOOOONG, according to Jake), our luggage arrived safely, and our apartment was ready when we landed Wednesday night. We were pretty worn out from the trip, but our friends from Haidian Church greeted us with smiles and hugs, and we opened our apartment door to a mountain of beautiful gifts to help us setup our home.
We didn’t fully understand what it would be like to arrive in Beijing at the start of the Chinese New Year celebration. Spring Festival, as this week is called, is the most significant annual holiday in China, and almost all activity shuts down. Most Beijing residents have moved here from somewhere else in China, and they travel back to their hometowns to visit family and celebrate the new year. To make a comparison in American terms, our arrival here would be the equivalent of landing in the US on December 23rd and realizing every American is busy with Christmas events. Our friends from the church welcomed us Wednesday evening and then announced they would be gone for the next 10 days!
There was a little food in the fridge to start with, but beyond that, we’ve had to find a grocery store and start figuring stuff out on our own without a translator. We have definitely been thrown into the deep end of the pool, but we’re learning to swim and we’re making some fun family memories. At first we were disappointed we weren’t going to be able to be with people. However, we are now seeing these first quiet days as a gift - its nice to have some time to rest, get over jet lag, and get our life and home organized.
We have learned that moving into a Chinese residence has quite a bit to it. I had to sign an 11-page rental contract that was only partially in English with the landlord (who spoke no English) staring at me. Thankfully, we had some help from our Christian real estate agent (whose name is Rainbow :-)). She helped us register at the police station - we were so thankful for that, since our 60-day visas are shorter than the 6 month lease agreement. (we will exit for a couple days and re-enter China in April and June, but as long as we follow the visa rules, we will be fine) Rainbow also helped us setup a bank account and get familiar with our neighborhood.
We have also learned that in Beijing, when a someone moves out of an apartment, no clean up is done before the next tenant moves in. I'll spare you the details (YUCK!), but many hours have been invested cleaning our every corner of our apartment. All 3 of our kids have really embraced this space as our new home, and we have worked hard together as a family making it a warm environment for us and hopefully many guests who will join us for coffee and conversations about the love of Jesus. (ok .... most Chinese people don't drink coffee, but we will be. We've already visited our neighborhood Starbucks twice!)
As you can see from the photos below, we are now urbanites, and there is tons of activity on the streets right around us. The 9th floor view from our apartment is pretty cool, and the air quality has been good thanks to some windy weather. We are thankful we received coats and boots as Christmas gifts, since the temperatures have been in the 20’s. Walking is the name of the game in Beijing - my Apple Watch recorded nearly 19 miles of walking in the past 48 hours alone!
Our ability to communicate online started out a little rough, but it’s starting to improve. Internet service in the apartment is speedy, but China has recently increased their censorship of almost all Western web services. WeChat is definitely the best way to get in touch with us. We can see American social media at times when our VPN is working, but it’s not consistent. I’m hoping we can get the VPN working by Monday, since we are hoping to stream the game for a 7:30am Monday morning family Super Bowl party!
We get to start building relationships tomorrow at church, and we hope to have some ministry reports to share as we jump into the week ahead. For now, we’re focusing on getting our life together and having some fun as a family.
Here are a few photos of our home and the streets around us:
We leave you with a short video we recorded the day before we left home. As a family of 5 musicians, we thought it best to have a theme song for our trip. We hope to use this song as a icebreaker - we’ll pull out our phones and share a little music with people (especially since we often can’t share anything else with the language barrier!)
We love you and thank you for your prayers. We feel them and we need them. God has been faithful to watch over us, and we are praying towards the days in front of us as we begin to connect with the people we came to serve.
God bless,
Brent, Kim, Ali, Livy & Jake
The best way to contact us in China is with the messaging app WeChat. The app has some great messaging, calling, and video features. http://www.wechat.com Send a friend request: @brentmills3 | @kmills503 | @AliMills @OliviaMills | @JacobMills
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