Sunday, December 21, 2008

Wedding for Chinese Students

About a month ago, my friend, Gordon Goh called and asked if I would officiate a wedding for a young couple from China. They attend the Lynchburg Chinese Christian Fellowship at Beulah Baptist Church and the pastor had a prior engagement. They are both students at Liberty University and had only been in the United States since August 2008. I was very happy to be able to help.

Bing Yang and Wenzhuo Zhao were married on the 20th of December 2008. When we had the rehearsal the prior evening they both had quite a bit of difficulty with the English phrasing in the wedding ceremony. So, they copied all the words that they would have to recite, took them home, and practiced them Friday night. By the time for the wedding on Saturday they had it all down perfect.
It is my understanding that they do not have church weddings in China. You got to the court house and get legally married. So neither of them had any reference to what to do and how it would all go. Fortunately they had an abundance of friends to coach and help them.
The two flower girls were a class act. They came down the isle dropping handfuls of rose petals. As soon as the made it to the front of the church their got them. He said that they had been practicing and he was afraid that they would go back and pick the petals up out of habit.
Now they may not have known a lot about the ceremony, but they apparently knew about feeding each other cake a making a mess of it. They did that very well.


This is Gordon Goh and his wife, Anna with Joanne and me. I worked with Gordon at the hospital for over 20 years. When Gordon and Anna got married almost 25 years ago, I was an usher in their wedding. I was honored when he asked me then and I was honored that he thought of me to officiate the wedding here. Gordon is one of my oldest and dearest friends. When I left the hospital to work at the doctor's office, I missed being able to sit and talk with Gordon most of all. God brings people into our lives that we would not imagine and enriches our lives through them.