Waiting

A blurry polaroid picture that they took of us and put on the wall of the
coffee shop we visited of "my friends" (heehee, it says "my friends" on the
side of the wall). :3

            As of now, our third camp is almost 100% sure cancelled (we’ll probably find out more when Lisa!!! comes to visit us tonight). However, I think Dad is going to be blessing us and challenging us greatly through this week of rest. Yesterday was our first day of rest since our first camp started, and ugh, it was just glorious. In the morning, we got to sleep in until 8:30 (we’ve had to wake up at around 6:45 or earlier every morning since July 8th). We fellowshipped with one another until we ate lunch with our Chinese partner, where we had an amazing time with amazing food and company. Then we went to a new coffee shop that opened in Shenyang called Queens Coffee, and that afternoon spent there was just such a blessing. The walls of the shop were decorated with these beautiful murals that depicted the redemption story of the owners’ marriage. The wife had to lay down her crowns at the feet of J and the husband had a smoking problem that contributed to their issues. In the end, J redeemed their marriage, and they’ve now opened up this coffee shop in the hopes that it will be a testimony of Dad’s love to this city. 

The story reads from left to right, top to bottom 

— it's so beautiful!! The owner hopes that the 

customers that come into his shop can strive towards

Dad's love like depicted in the last frame. :) :)

           One thing that the owner said that really moved me was that his vision for the coffee shop was for people to come to their coffee shop and feel like they were part of one family, rather than just individuals at a coffee shop. The heart and boldness for Dad we’ve seen here has just been amazing (yes, I’ll continue to overuse the word amazing, because it really was just amazing).

So on one hand, I can foresee how this week is going to be great, because we’re going to see the ways that Dad is moving even if we aren’t necessarily doing the work ourselves, AND we’re going to have beds and showers for an entire week, which is just amazing. However, I think in the midst of all this accommodation, comfort, and no work, we will be tempted by the comforts of, well, comfort. Because during the camps, when things were hard and it was difficult to love the kids or work together, it was necessary to turn to Dad, and He proved himself to be faithful. However, when things are less busy, it’s easy to feel like we don’t need him, when the truth is we need him even more.

Earlier this morning, Sophia shared about this as well. She shared this passage with the group:

“I know your works. Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. Because you have kept my word about patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world, to try those who dwell on the earth. I am coming soon. Hold fast what you have, so that no one may seize your crown.” (Rev. 3:8,10-11 ESV)

And I feel like this passage captures a lot of what I feel like will be challenging in this week — trusting that Dad has already opened the door and now all we have to do is wait. And what more must we do as we wait but seek his presence? Sophia also said that if anything, if we don’t have any real mlnlstry with other people in this week, that this would be a good time to press in for greater unity within our team — for our team to be of one mind and one splrlt. And I completely agree, because in the last few posts I’ve sent home, I’ve asked for pryer for unity, and I still sense that there is still some disunity within our team. Things have improved greatly, so thank you for all the pryers you’ve been sending my way, but please continue to pr for this!! Also, there is one co-teacher who still decided to come to Shenyang although the camp was cancelled. She said she felt it would still be worth it to come and meet people, and she also said that she’s pretty interested in coming to know Dad (!!!), so it looks like we won’t be completely without mlnlstry this week! J

So to recap… pr requests to please be pr-ing for:

1) Passion — to desire to seek his face even when times aren’t trying

2) Rest — I want this last camp to just be amazing, and I know we can’t do that if we don’t use this time wisely to rest in Dad

3) Unity — I feel there are still walls people have put up that haven’t been broken down yet, so please pr that Dad would be uniting us in Him

4) Boldness and love — especially with respect to the counselor that is still spending the week with us!!

As always, hope all is well with you guys. J

Halfway Done Already?!

Some of us being just a tad 嘚瑟 with some flowers that
the really young kids very cutely gave us!

Whooo, I’m reporting to you from the comforts of our hostel in Beijing! It's hard to believe that we're more than halfway through ISEC! :o After three weeks of sleeping on hard floors, eating the same food day after day, and suffering from immense heat with no A/C, it’s so good to have beds, showers that are clean enough that you’d feel comfortable putting your feet on, and A/C. So we just had our closing ceremony for our second camp yesterday, and there were just so many blessings over the past week.

We had foot washing in the morning yesterday, and it actually was probably the highlight of this entire trip thus far. To give some context, my class for this camp has been pretty difficult to handle. There have been quite a few of them that have been quite problematic especially during, for example, our tutorial 1-on-1 times. In each classroom, we have three teachers, the foreign teacher, the co-teacher, and the 生活老师 (“live-in” teacher), and while I’d like to have my co-teacher there to talk to the kids with me (and translate the bits I don’t understand… haha), I usually can’t, because the 生活老师is out trying to find kids that have just randomly left the classroom, and my co-teacher then has to make sure the rest of the kids stay in the classroom. One of the kids has a fairly big stealing and lying problem, but I think he also has some sort of undiagnosed learning disability, so communicating with him is especially difficult. One of the kids has a hearing disability, which also makes her speaking harder to understand, and even worse yet, she doesn’t really understand she has a hearing disability, meaning she gets really frustrated when we have to ask her to repeat herself, but she also has a hard time understanding what we’re saying. She’s also (Dad, forgive me) a bit of a brat and doesn’t really listen to the teachers even when she does understand what we’re saying. The young teenage girls didn’t really feel comfortable opening up to me and would often give me some controlled sass. Overall, classroom management went a lot less smoothly than it did last week.

But foot washing was great. Although the kids were a little adamant against letting me wash their feet at first, they eventually all willingly allowed me to do so. I explained it to them that teacher wants to wash their feet because he loves them — that truly, I am no better than them, and that I am there to serve them. In the end, one of the teenage girls who didn’t really feel comfortable opening up to me actually washed my feet too. And lemme tell you, this girl would literally only say one of three phrases to any question or comment I had — 哦, which means “oh,” 随便, which means “whichever is fine,” or 我不知道, which means “I don’t know,” and it was SO frustrating to basically learn nothing about this girl, because nothing she said actually revealed what she believed or thought. But after the foot washing, she wrote me a note and told me to talk to her after I finished reading it. Part of the note read, “…I was actually going to tell you some of my secrets during the 1-on-1 time, but then you told me to go back to the classroom — don’t blame me that you didn’t get to hear my secret! And of course, the most moving thing teacher did for us was when he washed our feet!...” And it was really great to hear direct affirmation that what we were doing was impacting. I talked to her after reading the note, and we just chatted until lunch time — someone actually had to come and get us because we lost track of time. Even though a lot of the conversation still comprised of 哦’s, 随便’s, and 我不知道’s, it was still nice to know that the conversation was appreciated.

Also, during the past week, students from the first camp have been coming back to visit us and to help around for the second camp. One of my kids, S, came back quite often. She also came back on the day of foot washing and asked if she could wash my feet. As she began washing my feet and speaking to me, tears were slowly coming down her face, and she told me that she and the other kids keep talking about the summer camp, and they all agree that those short eight days are something that are going to stick with them for the rest of their lives. Here we are, just teaching them some simple English, preparing some skits, listening to them talk, and spending time with them, but Dad is doing something so much greater, and it touched my heart so much to hear her say that. It really shows that it’s not our own love, but Dad’s love that is really being shown here at these camps. So as the second camp progressed, I came to appreciate both camps we had in 中山 more and more — the second as Dad filled us with his love for the kids, and the first as Dad showed me the extent to which we are impacting these kids.

Some small other praise reports and pr requests to finish off this post!

Praise reports:

1) Yesterday, some more kids from the first camp came and visited us, and we actually got to eat all-you-can-eat barbeque and hot pot with them!! It was so good to see the kids again, and the time spent amongst foreign teachers, co-teachers, 生活老师, and kids from the first camp was just so, so sweet.

2) The day before yesterday (i.e. the night before M left), our team of foreign teachers went up to the sixth floor and just had a great time of fellowship. We got to sing, run away from scary bugs, and affirm each other before we had to say good-bye to M. X took a video of me getting rid of the rhinoceros beetle that flew into the room we were fellowshipping in. Even though it was an initially frightening thing, it was so funny afterwards — enjoy the video (k, I might not be able to upload it... so I might try again later...)!

Pr requests:

1) We have had to say good-bye to a lot of people again the last couple of days. Yesterday, we said good-bye to M, one of our teammates, because he has to head back to Australia for classes, and we today said bye to E, another teammate, who has to go home early for one of her best friend’s weddings, and we said bye to J, our camp director who has to go to Chicago to give a presentation on one of his papers. Our smaller team is now recombining back with the Blue Team (who also lost two members going home for that same wedding that E is going home for), and although it’s good to be reunited, it’ll also be a little difficult and sad adjusting to the fact that many people have now left, so please chat for joy in the midst of farewell pains.

Finally have a complete group photo with Team Purple!! First and last batch of photos with our whole team. :(
From left to right — Top: R, A, X, E, N; Bottom: K, M, J, me!

2) Our first Shenyang camp actually got cancelled today. We’re still traveling out to Shenyang tomorrow morning, but as of now, we don’t have any plans, so please pr for Dad to provide opportunities for us to do his work even if it may not be at this camp that we originally planned to go to! Pr for eyes and hearts that are open to these opportunities!!

3) Rest — after two consecutive camps in 中山, I think our team is feeling quite burned out. Please pr that in these next couple of days (or next week), that our team would be wise in the free time that we have in using it to rest well in Dad’s presence.

As always, hope all is going well with y’all too. Love and miss you all! J

Zhong Shan: Take 2!

Hey guys, it's actually already been a while since I last updated. It's crazy to think that this camp definitely just flew by when the first camp felt like it lasted for AGES. Honestly, I think that it's probably because there were a lot of internal struggles with this camp, especially considering how this second camp was located at the same school as the last camp. To start things off, we were all extremely discouraged after the first day of teaching. I mean, it was difficult, because the kids were just SO different. If you remember in my last update, I said that my kids in the last camp were like perfect - they were really emotionally mature, understanding, selfless, and loving. During the afternoon activities when we talked about characteristics that come with following Dad (activities that relay the importance of love, joy, forgiveness, hope, etc.), the kids already knew it all, and they had the life experiences to prove it, so there was a lot of direct sharing of the lepsog, because that's kinda where my kids were at. But this camp has been so different. The kids are just not as understanding of these concepts, and kids are all crying everywhere - whether it's because they're homesick (probably because they're used to a certain amount of attention) or because they're recently "heartbroken" or other attention seeking tactics. And something that's kinda small, but still has made a pretty big difference, is that during free time, these new kids really don't play outside much whereas the first set played outside whenever they had the chance. Basically, after the first day, it was really easy for us to compare the two camps. With only a day in between the two camps to recover, I don't think we were really emotionally ready to love a new set of kids, especially a set of new kids that were so different from the first set of kids. But we had a really good time of chatting that night, and we talked about the sp-r-tual warfare that people have felt in the air, and things only went up from there. Praise Dad for always providing us with the strength and love that we need.

Really, Dad has really been good, and there have been so many testimonies of the ways he's still been moving here despite the stark difference in personalities and despite the increased security measures. Especially over the past couple of days, Dad has really blessed me with a heart to love these kids as I've loved the first set, especially in the face of their flaws (whether that's love of money or selfishness), and I've seen in the ways that the kids tell me little things about their day or ask me to play games with them that they really are receiving the love that I have been trying to show them, which has been really exciting to see! :)

I'm sure I'll be able to fully collect my thoughts once the camp ends, but that's kind of it for now. Dad has been super faithful in increasing our ability to love these kids, so please continue to chat for:
1) strength - especially for myself, I think that I'm starting to burn out. After SO many days just being stuck here with only one day where we really got to leave the schoolgrounds, I can feel myself just starting to get super antsy and wanting to leave. Strength to love these kids even in the face of exhaustion.
2) unity - there are still some issues concerning unity within our team. Please chat for wisdom in handling the situation.
3) boldness - our director briefed us before this camp started saying that security is much higher at this camp, because a lot of kids come from the city (unlike the children of migrant workers from the last camp), and so many of their parents are in important government positions and things of the such, meaning that we have to be a lot more careful of what we say to whom. However, please chat that the HS will continue to fill us with boldness and wisdom to share what is appropriate and pleasing to Dad.

Thanks so much for your chats. I know that Dad hears them, and I am glad to say that he is definitely answering them. Hope all is well with you. Love and miss you all!

P.S. Also, my toe has been getting a lot better PTL! I'll be honest with y'all, because of it, I have been kind of scared to shower, so I uh... definitely went a full week without showering eeeee. No worries, as usual, I didn't actually smell, but people definitely gave me a lot of crap for not showering for a full week mip mipppps. :3 #nojudgmentpls

Camp 1: Finished!

My first class! Top left: my co-teacher, bottom left: my live-in teacher, the other five: my lovely kids :3

­WARNING: VERY LENGTHY POST — I’M TRYING TO PUT THE EVENTS OF A WHOLE WEEK IN A SINGLE POST, AND IT’S PRETTY HARD… I’M ALREADY CUTTING A LOT OUT TOO MIP

            And once again, my plan to update you all in a timely manner has utterly failed, but we just finished our first camp at Zhongshan! Honestly, there are a lot of mixed feelings running through me, but there were so many praise reports as well. So many people saw breakthrough — so many Books were given out, so many chats were had, and I am most certainly sure that Dad blessed us with much more fruit than we had expected.

            Our class sizes were actually ridiculously small — about five to eight students each — which made the “tutorial” time when we have one-on-one conversations with the kids super effective, because it was possible to give direct focus and attention to each and every one of the kids. Honestly, even with such small classes, it was still a struggle to talk to all the kids for a sufficient amount of time, but kids really opened up, even ju­­st by the second day, and that really is the work of the HS in their hearts.

There were about… five new babies, and so many more who are interested, constantly reading their Books, asking difficult questions, and really showing that they have a hunger to seek Dad. There was one particular baby, J, that I want to share about though. One of our team members, N, said that when she chatted with Dad with J, she asked him how he felt. He was feeling particularly down that day, because he had a nightmare with ghosts the night before and he heard a sad story earlier that morning. And when they started chatting with Dad, he said that he started to see the ghosts from his nightmare again, but as N chatted, he said that there was a bright light that came and destroyed the ghosts. Praise Dad, he was truly moving in that moment! The next day, N got the chance to chat the sinner’s chat with J and he said that he saw a man with his hands in the form of a red heart, and that red heart eventually consumed the man until it rose to the sky and burst into a myriad of tiny hearts, and he said that some of those hearts went into him. It was such a moving testimony that this is all Dad’s work. We are nothing; we only have the privilege of partaking in his work.

As for my own experience, things were much mellower — at least from my perspective. My kids were all really, really good kids — like they all had extremely good hearts. I think a lot of kids come to want to know Dad and His love for them because there’s a large lack of love and ability to love others in their hearts. But my kids had it down — they knew that love of money can’t bring you happiness; they know to forgive the people around them and they have life experiences to prove they know it; they weren’t naughty or mischievous, and they showed care and loved others fairly openly. However, after talking to each of them, there were definitely still things that made it very clear that they are still broken and in need of Dad’s love — loneliness, lack of attention, the fear of not being understood. In some ways, I felt like I could see a bit of myself in each of them, and I don’t think that was a coincidence. I didn’t end up giving away any books to them, but I did get the opportunity — mainly through sharing my own life experiences — to share Dad with each of the kids, and I also downloaded QQ and have been talking to them still, so I’m chatting that I will be able to water the seeds I sowed in them.

However, my relationship with one of my students, T, left a fairly bitter taste in my mouth. When I first met T, I noticed that she had a pretty quiet personality, but she still carried a lot of joy with her, often smiling and laughing. Even though there would be times where her face would just be kinda expressionless, they would still be interspersed with moments of great laughter, so I didn’t think anything was wrong really. However, on the last day of classes, during our tutorial time, we washed the feet of our students. My class as usual took things fairly graciously and accepted the foot washing without much resistance, but when I later talked to T in our one-on-one time, she said she was fairly uncomfortable with the activity, and you could clearly tell so by her facial expression (she was also the one most resistant to having her feet washed). She also said she doesn’t like rainy days or being abruptly woken up, and she was abruptly woken up from naptime after a rainy day. She also shared that she was a little sad because she was moving schools next year for middle school. This camp was mainly composed of students from the school we were teaching at, so this was potentially the last time she would see these people for a long time.

This storm of mainly negative reactions was actually pretty surprising, because she was the student that seemed to have it most together — particularly in terms of her character. So I felt convicted to share why I believe I can love and choose joy even in the face of loneliness (i.e. the lpsog). She responded by saying she wanted to get to know Dad (!!), and so I shared how we can talk to and listen to him – by chatting and reading His Book. She said she wanted a Book, and we chatted together so she knew how to do so. I asked her how she felt after we chatted, and she said she couldn’t describe it, but it was a good feeling (!!!). However, the next day, she was clearly cold and distant. I had written her a message in the Book I was going to give her, and I asked her during breakfast that morning if she still wanted a Book, and she said she didn’t. I was pretty confused; I didn’t know what had happened or what she had thought that made her change her mind, but I had to respect what she wanted. Later, after the closing ceremony, she didn’t seem sad to leave like the other kids, and she didn’t give me a bittersweet goodbye like the other kids did, and it just left me with such an unsettling feeling. So while everyone else was crying, saying their heartfelt good-byes, I was pacing around, saying my good-byes as they came, but inside, I felt like a failure. In one way or another, I felt like I failed to love T as I had wanted to, or she didn’t receive it the way I had hoped she would, and I may never know why. However, throughout the rest of that day, Dad gave me a lot of peace, reminding me that he is sovereign. I may never know why T reacted to things the way she did, but I can trust that Dad will be with her and be continuing to reveal himself to her. In the end whether she chooses to accept him or not is still her choice after all, and all I can do now is chat.

A lot of other stuff happened within the team and whatnot, but this post has gotten quite long, and I think I’m going to end it here. In the past eight days, Dad has been really faithful in providing strength, discernment, and wisdom in the face of fatigue, uncertainties, and lack of knowledge. He is so, so good and always worthy of praise. Thank you all for your chats. Our second camp is starting today, so if you could, please be chatting for:

1) my toenail — yesterday during our day off, I bruised my second toe on my left foot, and the toenail is completely black now… and I have this giant fear of toenails falling off, so please chat for peace and strength in the face of this physical trial. Also, if you know what I should do to treat it, please let me know — I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do to help it…

2) peace and joy — this camp will be fairly different from the last camp in terms of authority, scheduling, and freedom; please chat for us to still work with a joyful heart

3) unity — I’ll probably write an entire separate post about this later, but yes, unity. Both unity within our own IS-C team and the larger body we are serving with (the co-teachers [Chinese teachers who help translate] and live-in teachers [Chinese teachers who keep the kids clean, make sure they get enough sleep, etc.])

4) increased love from Dad — we just said good-bye to our first set of kids, and although we only spent eight days with them, it feels like it was much longer. Please chat we will still be able to love these kids we will meet today with that same love.

Thank you for bearing with me through this entirely too long of a post, and thank you in advance for chatting — they really are greatly appreciated. The work we are doing and the fruit we have seen would not be possible without your chat support. And as always, hope all is well with you. J

Zhongshan -- 中山!!

An epic selfie we took during our bike ride! :3

(This was written on 7/8/14 mip mip)

Our first camp in Zhongshan is finally starting tomorrow (well, as of now, it started already, because I wrote this yesterday) and we just arrived at the school we’re going to be teaching at over the next eight days! Sorry I haven’t been updating lately. We haven’t had very good access to wifi and to be perfectly honest, my mind has been pretty muddled. We rode a total of nine hours on two separate bullet trains from Beijing to Zhongshan on Saturday (the total travel time was probably from about 6:45 am – 9:00 pm).

Even though we haven’t actually started the camps yet, we’ve had… pretty packed days. We’ve been staying at one of Dad’s houses the past few days, and on Sunday, we woke up at around 8 am to get ready to go to Dad’s house and to let people prepare for the meeting. Dad’s meeting ended at around 12:30, and it was honestly such a blessing to see how much our siblings in China were fervently seeking Dad and serving us foreigners with genuine hearts. Everyone literally just KNOCKED out after lunch until we had a book study later that afternoon. Then we ate dinner and played games and w0rshipped with our Chinese siblings and some seekers until… late… lol. Monday, we had to be ready to leave the house club at a deathly 7:00 am, but as our reward, we enjoyed this beautiful twelve-kilometer scenic bike ride around the Zhong Shan area. We also had a book study there, but by that time, I was feeling exhausted. We ate lunch at around 1:30 pm, and afterward, I really wanted to take a “holy” nap — as Sophia has dubbed it — but instead, we got to experience the joy of communal clothes washing! It was honestly really awesome and heartwarming to see brothers and sisters like… washing my dirty boxers haha. That night, we were invited to dinner at the house club’s leader’s home with his family, and that was really awesome too — the grandma was really cute keke. We got back pretty late, and then we had a meeting until pretty late too. Although I was feeling really exhausted, we had a time where we got to share our “fillers” and “drainers” from the day, and that was quite a blessing.

Because… it’s been pretty hard to be here — don’t get me wrong, I’ve been having lots of fun hanging out with people and hearing random life stories from teammates and the Chinese people we’re meeting here, but I don’t feel like I’ve been getting rest. Yeah, we get around six hours of sleep a night, and we got to take a nap on Sunday, but I don’t feel like I’ve been able to get rest. I don’t feel like I’ve been able to have the freedom to talk to people one-on-one, where I can just say whatever I want and know I won’t get judged regardless of how stupid I may sound saying whatever I’m saying. Everything’s been in a group setting, and it’s honestly been pretty draining. Not that I feel like I’ve been putting on a front, but I don’t feel like I’ve been able to fully relax and rest while I’ve been here. To some extent, I feel like there’s a level of passion I have to maintain or feign, and it’s been a little tiring. However, I was blessed to have a chill one-on-one conversation with one of my teammates Monday afternoon, when I got to share a little bit of what was on my mind, and I got to hear his honest opinion about whatever. Later that night, I also got to talk about some of my cultural background as an Asian-American and some of my experiences and thoughts over the past couple of years with my camp director and that was quite restful, so I’ve definitely seen ways in which I have been able to get rest, but I don’t really feel like I get ample opportunity to really experience rest as I feel I really need it. But at the very least, it was really nice to be able to share that thought with my teammates even if I haven’t been able to share those word-vomity thoughts with them. As of now, I’m really chatting that Dad would give me His strength to reach out and love even when I feel like I can’t love — to hold Dad’s heart for the people around me, instead of attempting to love these people with my own fallen, human love.

Besides my own internal emotional conflicts, some praise reports!

1) On Saturday, we met two seeker friends who welcomed us when we arrived in Zhongshan. They went to Dad’s meeting on Sunday, and continued to come with us to book studies, nights of fellowship, and the crazy bike ride on Monday — like it was honestly really cool that they kept coming back even though they didn’t like… understand the book studies or why we always w0rshipped or whatever. But today, when we were about to leave to move into the school grounds, one of them, L, suddenly appeared with her bags. She was supposed to go back home today, because she recently finished her exams, but she called her mom to not come and pick her up, because she wanted to volunteer as a counselor/live-in teacher at this Zhongshan camp! I was seriously so delighted to see that she was so willing to serve and spend more time with us, especially knowing the Ch—sti-n context from which we serve from. To double as a chat request, please be chatting that we would be intentionally meeting her and being bold in sharing the good news with her.

2) One of our sisters fell during the bike ride and got a few scars on her face. She’s all right now, but instead of taking the day off to rest, literally only three hours after the incident, she was back at the house club, ready to serve us and take us to the house club’s leader’s house, and she even stayed after dinner to help clean up the bathrooms. When we said bye today, she still maintained a genuine heart of humility truly believing that she had not done much still. Ahhh, such sincere hearts of service we have met here!!

3) Team bonding is going well. I mean, honestly, we all met for the first time a week and a half ago, so given the amount of time we have known each other, team unity has been strong. However, please keep chatting that we will learn to be vulnerable and open and encouraging with one another, especially as the camps begin — that we would be keen of how to accommodate to the needs of one another in the face of our own respective experiences and busyness.

I think I’ve basically hit all the chat requests either throughout the post or through the praise reports, so I think I’ll end it here; this post is getting a tad long haha. Overall, please be chatting for us to maintain sincere hearts of love for these kids as we begin our first camp tomorrow!!! GO BLURPLE! J