WeChat ESL Class on May 27, 2017

A. High-lights of the Week
B. Short Story: A 4-Finger Pianist

Hee Ah Lee was born with sever physical deformities. She only had two fingers on each hand. And her legs ended at her knees. Her doctors didn’t expect her to live.

But she did live. At the age of six she started to play piano. At the time, her four fingers were very weak. She couldn’t even hold a pencil. Her mother hoped playing piano would strengthen her grip.

It worked. But more than that, Lee found a calling. She now tours the world, playing for stunned audiences. She plays pieces that would be difficult for able-bodied pianists.

Hee Ah Lee is Authentic. It is the story of a mother and a daughter who have overcome odds from the very beginning.

Lee’s mother became unexpectedly pregnant while married to a disabled man.  Doctors told her that because of a medication she had been taking her child would not be normal.  She elected to continue with the pregnancy and in 1985 in Seoul, South Korea, little Hee Ah Lee was born with only two fingers on each hand, disfigurement of her legs, and slight brain injury.  The hospital told Sun that she could not care for the child at home and relatives wanted her to place the child for adoption in a foreign country.  Sun thought her baby was beautiful, however, and was determined that she would live a successful life.

When Lee was a pre-schooler her mother decided that she wanted her daughter to take piano lessons and for two reasons.  One was that she felt it would help her strengthen her hands so she could hold a pencil.  The other was that she felt that if she could master the piano, she could master anything.   For six months piano schools turned them down then the one teacher who did accept the task got discouraged and wanted to quit.  It became a three-month contest of wills between mother and daughter that led to a confrontation in which Sun actually threw her daughter on the floor in frustration.  She said Lee got back up on the piano bench and for the first time played the children’s song she had been trying to learn.  That was the turning point and one year later Lee won the grand prize in a piano concert for Kindergartners. It was at age 7 that Lee won Korea’s 19th National Handicap Conquest Contest and was presented with her award by the President of Korea.

Today Lee is 22, has won numerous awards, and is a widely traveled concert pianist with more than 200 appearances.  Her first album titled “Hee-ah, a Pianist with Four Fingers” was to be released in June, 2008.

Lee gives tribute to her mother for challenging her to master the piano and said that although her training was difficult, “as time went by, the piano became my source of inspiration and my best friend.”

C. American Idioms

1. He was all ears when his boss talked.
2. He is a chip off the old block.
3. He is thick in the head.
4. The bank robbers were armed to the teeth.
5. His comments threw a wet blanket on the discussion.
6. They were beat after three days of hard work.
7. Jack was hard up to pay his rent.
8. The storm left them all in the same boat.
9. The house fire meant we had to start from scratch.

D. Bible Lesson:

Psalm 91English Standard Version (ESV)

My Refuge and My Fortress

91 He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
    will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
2 I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress,
    my God, in whom I trust.”

3 For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler
    and from the deadly pestilence.
4 He will cover you with his pinions,
    and under his wings you will find refuge;
    his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.
5 You will not fear the terror of the night,
    nor the arrow that flies by day,
6 nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
    nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.

7 A thousand may fall at your side,
    ten thousand at your right hand,
    but it will not come near you.
8 You will only look with your eyes
    and see the recompense of the wicked.

9 Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place—
    the Most High, who is my refuge—
10 no evil shall be allowed to befall you,
    no plague come near your tent.

11 For he will command his angels concerning you
    to guard you in all your ways.
12 On their hands they will bear you up,
    lest you strike your foot against a stone.
13 You will tread on the lion and the adder;
    the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot.

14 “Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him;
    I will protect him, because he knows my name.
15 When he calls to me, I will answer him;
    I will be with him in trouble;
    I will rescue him and honor him.
16 With long life I will satisfy him
    and show him my salvation.”