“Enough! Enough!” I tried to tell her, but she kept cooking more dishes. Pinky and I had joined our apartment guard in her little hut to celebrate Spring Festival. The small dinner we had planned together was turning into a huge meal. We were filling in as our guard's adopted daughters since her own children and grandchildren could not be there for the holiday.
I could not imagine the four of us finishing all of the 13 dishes she had set on the table. All of them tasted just a bit strange to our American taste buds. Thankfully, we had brought our own dish to share – Pinky's homemade chicken pot pie – to help appease our taste buds in between bites of the unfamiliar meat dishes.
It was a fun occasion. Her cute little husband (who is literally only half my size, I am not kidding!) bought a bottle of coca-cola for the special day. He kept raising his paper cup to toast us periodically throughout the meal. Did I mention they don't speak English? So we made light conversation in our very-limited knowledge of their language. I love using the universal smile. (Pinky, after a little too much coke, discovered that burps are also universal! Yeah, the guards had fun with that!)
At midnight, with fireworks going off around the city, Pinky and I had a powerful time of prayer up on our rooftop. As the explosions lit up the dark sky around us, we felt like it was symbolic that God is doing something spiritually to break strongholds and bring His light to our city this New Year!