We’ve been here in Xining this weekend celebrating Anna’s sixth birthday with her expat friends.  (Photos and video will be up this week sometime.)  Today we joined the expat community for a Christmas Celebration Service.  It was nice to gather with 30-40 folks from all over the world–who now call Xining/Qinghai home–and sing Christmas carols and think about Jesus showing up on the human scene as a little babe.

During the service I noticed a guy I hadn’t seen before at these periodical gatherings.  But he looked familiar to me.  Really familiar.  After the service I went up to him and said, "Hi there.  You look really familiar to me.  Where are you from?"

His reply:  "Florida."

"And where did you go to college?" I asked him. 

"Asbury College."

"Yeah, me too."  I told him, shocked.  Crazy.

He then told me, "I graduated in 1997 and lived on Trustees East 3rd Floor."

"I lived on Trustees East 2nd Floor."

Talk about surreal.  This guy (who shall remain nameless for privacy purposes) and I had grown up in the same state (different cities) and went to the same (tiny Christian liberal arts) college EVEN living in the same dorm building (separated by only one floor).  He graduated from Asbury in 1997, his wife in 1998, and I in 1996.  Even though we didn’t really know one another at Asbury we did have mutual friends and acquaintances and I found out that his roommate back then had dated the same girl I had later dated.  That’s just weird.  Now this fellow alumni and his family are in Xining starting language study just like we did 2 1/2 years ago.  His daughter is in the same Chinese pre-school that we had Sarah in before we moved out to the country.

The coincidence counter is just off the charts.  It is almost as surreal as the time when I first moved to Edmonds, Washington from Florida and my next door neighbor there in Washington recognized me as his former camp counselor from the summer camp he had regularly attended in Alaska!  Yeah, that just blows your mind.  You move across the country and right next door to someone you knew from a different state entirely.

It’s a tiny world I tell ya.  Too small to be so big.