Hope , Faith and Trust
Western Academy of Beijing , Lee , Michelle - 9
S he was eight colours of the rainbow , a real beauty , but more , she was so generous and kind with a big heart that everyone in the village knew her . She was always helping out whenever she could . Unfortunately , during a fundraising drive to help the Red Guard brigade , she was assassinated . At the time I was eighteen months old , father said . I never really knew her , only from stories and photographs that father kept .
We moved to Shanghai right after my mother ’ s death so that I could live a new life away from what had happened .
Since we left Nanjing to our new home in the east of Shanghai , in a village called Pudong , I haven ' t been in school much . I have been helping father grow crops such as bokchoi and carrots , as the area around the village was mainly farmland . I also spend my time listening to stories that father tells about what happened in the old days and of my mother , the dresses she wore and her hobbies such as sewing and cooking for the family .
My father teaches me english , since he wanted me to speak a second language so he taught me vowels and consonants , such as a , e , i , o , u and sometimes a y . He learnt his English , working odd jobs for the many foreigners living across the river in Puxi . He had such wonderful stories of the way they lived and the many books that they had in their homes . He read to me a lot and it wasn ' t long before I started reading on my own .
One evening , I walked to my bedroom to go to sleep and I found a small book like thing sticking out of the cupboard , it was black and it had 2 words on the top left corner , “ Holy Bible ”. I thought about what it could be , so I picked it up and flipped through the pages . There were a lot of words in that book so I looked at the first page , “ 10 Commandments ” I wondered what that was , but I was too sleepy so I jumped into bed and and closed my eyes , the next thing I knew , it was 5:00 o ’ clock n the morning .
I got up , brushed my teeth , and changed into my farming cloths , quickly ate breakfast and set off to the field to work . “ Dig Dig Dig ” I said to myself , I will probably be doing this for the rest of my life . “ Hurry up Meilin , hurry up ” I heard father calling . “ Got it !” I yelled back . I quickly finished collecting the carrots that I dug up , and ran back to the tiny kitchen to make a simple lunch of carrots and rice soup with a few pieces of meat left over from the previous night ’ s dinner . Somehow I found myself eating faster than normal , putting one big spoon and than another quickly in my mouth . It wasn ’ t because I was hungry from all the digging and running around watering the plants . I just felt the urgency to finish my lunch as quickly as possible .
I ran to my room to find the Holy Bible that I found yesterday . I remembered tucking it under the cupboard where I had found it earlier . I gently picked it up and read a few pages . It felt so interesting reading about when God created heaven and earth , and it was dark , so God said , let there be light , and there was light which was the first day of creation . I found the book very interesting so I ran up to father and asked him about it , he said that he was glad that I found it . He then told me he had something special to tell me . He said that he was a Christian and that the Bible I was reading was given to him by a foreigner living in Nanjing Lu in Puxi . It seemed funny to me that we had come from Nanjing and he was given the Bible by someone living in Nanjing Lu .
A week later I went with father to the city to see what it was like . I also brought some food with me , but not much . As soon as we got into the city I saw a boy sitting in front of a sweetshop asking for food so I went up to him and started to say “ Don ’ t beg , work for somebody .” but the boy replied in a sad way . “ I can ’ t .” he said . So I said back “ You can work for me , if you want . Do you want to ?” “ Sure I do .” the boy said . So I gave him some food while we walked for a few more minutes , since this is my first time in the city . When father saw us , he said was “ who is this boy ?” I told him that he is a beggar and is willing to work for us if we feed him , so father agreed .
The boy ’ s name was Xiaoming . I also read the Bible to him . Sometimes father and I read together with him . He soon learnt that all that we did was written in the Bible , and he started to pray and say thanks to God , almost everyday . I enjoyed reading with Xiaoming and pretending that the was my brother . It felt good to have someone to trust and tell secrets to .
We never forgot the day when Xiaoming came into our family . Maybe the stories in the Bible made me help Xiaoming . Or maybe it was because the foreigner gave the Bible to my father in the first place .