Tuesday

Dad and I went up to Chattanooga as early as possible yesterday in order to do some cleaning and painting. As usual, we entirely underestimated the amount of time all would take - so we have not finished, but do have a good start...The three main living spaces - living room, dining room and kitchen are pretty much ready to go. Tomorrow, we attack the bedrooms and will try to organize cupboards...On the way home, we stopped and had dinner with Grace and Justin...Thanks!!!...

Today, I babysat the Ryan children, as usual. Poor, pregnant Jeannette had suffered food poisoning as a result of jambalaya eaten two nights before, but managed some sushi today - her comfort food from childhood! I read with the younger children all morning, then took them all to the library this afternoon. While there, I picked up two films - entirely unalike. One is the Jimmy Stewart movie everyone in the world except me has seen - It's A Wonderful Life. The other is The Rape of Nanking...Dad and I watched that earlier this evening. Every word in it is original documentation - either from diaries or interviews with survivors...As the Japanese invaded in 1937, a core of German and American people determined they would form a safety zone. Even though permission was denied, they carved out a two-square mile zone and manned it....Some of them, and probably most of them, were missionaries who refused to leave the city, even when told to by their embassies....One was named Minnie Vautrin, an American woman who headed a girls' school. She seemed fearless, protecting her girls from the rampant and often deadly rape that was taking place all over the city, as best she could. A few years later, she was invalided home with nervous exhaustion and ended up taking her own life shortly after that - just couldn't live with the memories and her own sense of failure at not having protected everyone perfectly. There is a martyr of a different order. A martyr nonetheless!...Older people shared their memories - the men weeping more than the women. I wonder if that is because they were not able to protect their loved ones - even though they were just boys, and couldn't...The saddest tales I have ever heard. Still, that small group of committed people managed to save over 200,000 lives - equal to the number taken by the Japanese...Both a terrifying indictment of human nature and an amazing testimony to the courage and beauty of God's people.