Missionary Newsletter

566 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE Missionary Newsletter There was Tim's Hui friend Davy, there in central China, and Tim and Davy there celebrating Davy's classmate, gathered to party at a "hot pot" restaurant. They sang the dearest songs. It mattered little that Tim knew barely a phrase, or swath of tune. And so, on the current ofsweet hospitality, and dearly wanting to include Tim, they all chimed in loudly with our "Happy Birthday" song. The notes were held long, as befits a jolly crowd's smiling orchestrating. They were all proud of Davy's friend, and the party itself, not to mention Tim, too, who even trotted out the trailing coda, tail-line, And many more! raising his arm to make a warm toast. Yethe noticed that the actual words of Davy's friend were, and any more? and that floored him really, the cost involved in that mishearing. He tossed and turned all night, finding it funny but also, on China's broad plains at new year, the most alien, alienating, and lonely mistake that could be made by one together with friends to mark a non-departure, and that he, far from home, could ever hear. He's some ESLteacher; that much is clear. BRETT FOSTER ...